Songs of Home & Distant Isles: Musical Soundscapes of Australia and Britain, 1787-1860

Research into the largely hidden world of private music-making in Georgian Britain has revealed how musical materials and practices were used to form and maintain social relations within the family and wider household; to construct spheres of friendship, trade, and other social relations that crossed the permeable boundaries of domestic space; and to create and affectively colour domestic material settings. Recent collaborative research funded by the AHRC Sound Heritage project further shows how music could be used to construct new domesticities through discourses of home and homeland. Analysis of how the notion of 'home' travelled c. 1800 shows how it bent to accommodate new surroundings, how it imported ideas and images from outside the home (the 'familiarising' or 'domesticating' of the exotic, of new flora and fauna, or the sounds of indigenous communities) and how it imprinted domestic practices brought from elsewhere onto previously existing contexts. The early period of Australian settlement provides a compelling case in point, as an environment into which vast amounts of British domestic music and musical objects were imported, and where European music-making practices were adapted and transformed as part of the creation of a uniquely Australian domestic soundscape.

In what is the first major exhibition of its kind, 'Songs of Home & Distant Isles: Musical Soundscapes of Australia and Britain, 1787-1860' (The Museum of Sydney, August-November 2019) will explore the domestic musical environment of colonial Australia. It is a story of song that begins millennia before the European invasion of Australia and is picked up by the exhibition just before the arrival of the British First Fleet in Sydney in 1788. Musicological discussion of this period is dominated by the music brought to Australia in the minds and luggage of early British settlers, and understanding how the musical world evolved in the colony relies on knowledge of this context. The exhibition accordingly constructs its narratives through a series of dialogues (between indigenous and non-indigenous Australian music, in Britain and Australia) and comparisons (the same music in its original settings and in new environments in both countries during the period of settlement), highlighting the concepts of home and homeland that emerge from episodes of encounter, migration, adaptation, and dominion.

British materials are crucial to the process and form an essential part of the exhibition, while also providing opportunities to achieve extensive impact for AHRC- funded research. Jane Austen's family music books and related objects show how 'British domestic music' is itself a construct drawing on socially, historically, linguistically and geographically disparate sources; and they enable comparison with the musical life of Austen's contemporary Elizabeth Macarthur, the owner of Australia's first piano. Films and recordings of music in historical sites in Britain will provide material for compelling multimedia interpretations to accompany and contextualise objects and texts now in Australia. The exhibition will be enhanced by an ambitious programme of creative work and public engagement. A new musical work commissioned from a British composer will reflect on the exhibition themes of home and homeland, focussing on the experience of British convicts and settlers. This will provide a parallel endeavour to the creative programme based on Australian materials, and allow performers and new music audiences to access research insights and engage with British historical materials in a similar way. Workshops in both Britain and Australia will stimulate heritage visitors to further explore historical and musical themes and to reflect on how music relates to their own understanding of home.

We see the non-academic constituency for the project as made up of five interrelated groups:

1) Heritage visitors, principally to the Museum of Sydney but also to other SLM properties and UK heritage sites. The 20,000 projected visitors to the exhibition represent a socially diverse group of Australian and international tourists, students, and local residents. Many visitors will have no prior background in European classical music; others will know little about Australian music, or traditional or folk practices. For most this will be the first opportunity to engage with the complex history of music in the period of settlement, and to explore music's links to concepts of home and homeland. For all visitors, the project uses music as an engaging way into important larger topics, to stimulate reflection on British-Australian interaction and the broader issues raised by migration and colonialism.

2) Users of online material. This group includes individuals engaged via Jane Austen's House Museum (JAHM), the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust, and Sound Heritage as well as SLM. Making exhibition material freely available online will extend impact substantially beyond the exhibition's closure, and provide tools for re-use in new contexts including education and heritage projects in both countries.

3) Workshop participants in Britain and Australia. This group will be much smaller, but the significance of their experience is likely to be high. Through discussion and group musical performance of historical material (for which no prior musical knowledge will be necessary) participants will gain new understanding of domestic musical repertories and performance practices, and explore connections between music and place. While many may be attracted to participate through familiarity with musical scenes in costume drama, the workshops will aim to dispel stereotypes and encourage more nuanced perceptions of domestic music culture c.1800.

4) Composers, professional and student musicians, and their audiences. Performers and composers involved with the project will have their professional work enriched by exploring the research themes, and by generation of new repertory (both little-known historical music and new works). The project spans both early and new music audiences and performers, provides opportunities to consider intersections between traditional/folk and historical repertoires, and will disseminate performance practice knowledge (including instrumentation as well as stylistic features such as ornamentation) that can inform future work.

5) Heritage bodies and professionals. Heritage partners will gain new interpretive tools as well as public engagement with previously underexplored aspects of their collections. SLM will benefit from enhancement of its work in sound heritage and the activation through music of its historic house museums, as well as drawing national and international attention to the variety and depth of its music-related collections. JAHM will similarly benefit from attention to its music holdings and to the role of music in Austen's life, and will enhance its profile in Australia; both JAHM and the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust will gain audiovisual materials for their own use in display and interpretation. The project will bring further benefits to heritage professionals outside the participating organisations, as it represents an unusual opportunity to integrate interpretation across a gallery (the museum type most often used for music exhibitions) and a suite of historic houses (a museum type in which music is more rarely deployed). The project can thus serve as a model for music curation in the wider museum world, as well as a practical demonstration of using music to access broad social themes and histories beyond music itself.