Abstract
Catherine Milliken’s composition Steel-True Gold-Sole (Sounding Robert Louis Stevenson) demonstrates the power of a composer to contemporise a significant historical cultural object. Milliken wrote her work for my 2018 project, Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories, for which 12 composers from Australia and Germany were invited to create works inspired by the historical narrative of one of six colonial pianos. The pianos exist today in diverse locations around Australia and each presents a unique glimpse into Australia’s colonial history, embracing topics of gender inequity, genocide, famous artists and the harshness of remote locations. The chapter analyses Milliken’s new work, inspired by the colonial piano formerly belonging to Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1890, Stevenson moved with his family to Samoa, where he devoted much of his time to playing the piano and composing. In Steel-True Gold-Sole, Milliken utilises specific aesthetic and stylistic elements to revivify the colonial piano through her unique insight to Stevenson’s creative life. Written for flageolet, voice, modern piano and colonial piano (recorded to sampler), her work is an intimate interpretation of Stevenson’s compositions and writings through music, set in the historical context of the South Seas.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Gabriella Smart, piano, “Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories,” Tura New Music, Calloway Auditorium (Perth, Australia) June 29, 2018, https://www.tura.com.au/tura-program/broken-trees-elephant-ivories/.
- 2.
Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), viii.
- 3.
Debra Crisp, “The Piano in Australia, 1770 to 1900: Some Literary Sources,” Musicology Australia 18, no. 1 (1995): 25.
- 4.
Oscar Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Goldmines, translated by Judith Armstrong (Adelaide: Rigby, 1980), 127. Comettant estimated in 1888 that around 700,000 pianos had been imported to Australia, with a population of some 3 million settlers.
- 5.
Crisp, “The Piano in Australia,” 34.
- 6.
Graeme Skinner, “Toward a General History of Australian Musical Composition,” (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2011), 3. Daniel Thomas makes the same assertion in relation to colonial art. Daniel Thomas, in Tim Bonyhady, Australian Colonial Paintings in the Australian National Gallery (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1986), xvi.
- 7.
Jon Rose, “Ivories in the Outback,” BBC Radio 3, accessed January 21, 2021, http://www.jonroseweb.com/h_radio_ivories.php.
- 8.
Linda Kouvaras, “Making ‘Soundmarks’: Places and Ecologies in Contemporary Sound Art,” in Communities, Places, Ecologies: Proceedings of the 2012 IASPM-ANZ Conference, ed. Jadey O’Regan and Toby Wren. Brisbane: International Association for the Study of Popular Music (2014), 164–70.
- 9.
Kouvaras, “Making ‘Soundmarks’.”
- 10.
Jon Rose, “Listening to History: Some Proposals for Reclaiming the Practice of Music,” Leonardo Music Journal, 18 (2008): 9–16.
- 11.
Ross Bolleter, “Represented Artist,” Australian Music Centre, accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/bolleter-ross.
- 12.
Jocelyn Wolfe, “The Piano Mill Project,” accessed January 21, 2021, http://www.thepianomill.org/read-jocelyn-wolfe.html.
- 13.
The Piano Mill, “Index,” accessed January 21, 2021, http://www.thepianomill.org/index.html#learn-links.
- 14.
Michael Lea, “Upright Pianoforte Made by F Doerner & Sohn,” Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, January 2012, https://collection.maas.museum/object/246849.
- 15.
Michael Lea, “Upright Pianoforte.”
- 16.
Michael Lee, “More Discoveries about a Hidden Musical Treasure,” Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney, November 15, 2020, https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2010/11/15/more-discoveries-about-a-hidden-musical-treasure-robert-louis-stevenson/.
- 17.
J.F.M. Russell, “The Music of Robert Louis Stevenson,” accessed January 21, 2021, https://sites.google.com/a/music-of-robert-louis-stevenson.org/introduction/.
- 18.
J.F.M. Russell, “Music Manuscripts of Robert Louis Stevenson in Historical Order 1886–1892,” accessed January 21, 2021, http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/wp-content/uploads/historical-arrangement-of-rls-music-ms.pdf; Linda Dryden, “RLS’s Music,” accessed January 21, 2021, http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/music/.
- 19.
Oliver S. Buckton, Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), 219.
- 20.
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (London: Scribners, 1892), 28.
- 21.
Catherine Milliken, “Represented Artist,” Australian Music Centre, accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/milliken-cathy.
- 22.
Robert Louis Stevenson, “My Wife,” accessed January 21, 2021, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/my-wife.
- 23.
Both the Allison and F. Doerner & Sons pianos are deemed unplayable by the museums in which they reside (Telegraph Station and Powerhouse Museums), so public access is forbidden.
- 24.
Leigh Robb, “Curatorial Preface,” in Versus Rodin: Bodies Across Space and Time, ed. Penelope Curtin and Tony Magnussen (Melbourne: Thames & Hudson, 2017), 36.
- 25.
Jon Rose, “Listening to History: Some Proposals for Reclaiming the Practice of Music,” Australian Music Centre, December 11, 2007, https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/listening-to-history-some-proposals-for-reclaiming-the-practice-of-music.
- 26.
Rosalind Appleby, “Australia’s Female Composers are Having a Moment. We Need to Harness that Energy,” The Guardian, July 27, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/27/australian-women-composers-are-being-brought-into-the-spotlight-and-not-a-moment-too-soon-and-we-should-embrace-it.
- 27.
This topic has been much researched; two examples include: Daniela Lup, “Something to Celebrate (or not): The Differing Impact of Promotion to Manager on the Job Satisfaction of Women and Men,” in British Sociological Society (August 20, 2017), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017017713932; Wenhao Huang, Seung-Hyun Caleb Han, “Conceptual Review of Underrepresentation of Women in Senior Leadership Positions From a Perspective of Gendered Social Status in the Workplace: Implication for HRD Research and Practice,” in Academy of Human Resource Development (March 1, 2017), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1534484317690063.
- 28.
Matthew Norton Wise and Elaine M. Wise, “Staging an Empire,” in Things that Talk, ed. Louise Daston, 101–45 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
References
Carter, Paul. “Second Sight: Looking Back as Colonial Vision.” Australian Journal of Art 12, no. 1 (1996): 9–35.
Crisp, Deborah. “The Piano in Australia, 1770 to 1900: Some Literary Sources.” Musicology Australia 18, no. 1 (1995): 25–38.
Hatch, Peter. “Music Curation and Social Resonance.” Paper presented at the International Society for Contemporary Music’s World Music Days, Hong Kong, November 27, 2007. https://www.peterhatch.ca/music-curation-and-social-resonance
Kouvaras, Linda. “Making ‘Soundmarks’: Places and Ecologies in Contemporary Sound Art.” In Communities, Places, Ecologies: Proceedings of the 2012 IASPM-ANZ Conference, ed. Jadey O’Regan and Toby Wren. Brisbane: International Association for the Study of Popular Music (2014): 164–70.
Lind, Maria. “The Curatorial.” Art Forum 68, no. 2 (2009). https://www.artforum.com/print/200908/the-curatorial-23737
Parakilas, James, and Hirai, Atsuko. “1870s to 1920s: The World’s the Limit.” In Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano, ed. James Parakilas, 224–61. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Radic, Thérèse. “Federation: Music in Service to National Ambition.” Australasian Music Research 6 (2001): 1–26.
———. “The Lost Chord of Australian Culture: Researching Australian Music History.” In Community of Researchers: Proceedings of the XXIInd Annual Conference, ed. Ros Smith and Jane Southcott. Melbourne: Australian Association for Research in Music Education, 2002.
———. Whitening the Songlines. Melbourne: Australian Society for Music Education, 1991.
Smart, Gabriella, piano. “Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories.” Tura New Music, Calloway Auditorium (Perth, Australia) June 29, 2018, https://www.tura.com.au/tura-program/broken-trees-elephant-ivories/
Smith, Terry. Thinking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International, 2012.
———. Talking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International, 2015.
Vorachek, Laura. “The Instrument of the Century: The Piano as an Icon of Female Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century.” George Eliot—George Henry Lewes Studies 38/39 (2000): 26–43. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub/8/
Wise, Matthew Norton and Wise, Elaine M. “Staging an Empire.” In Things that Talk, edited by Louise Daston, 101–45. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smart, G. (2022). Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories: The Revivification of the Colonial Piano Manifested Through a New Work by Catherine Milliken. In: Kouvaras, L., Grenfell, M., Williams, N. (eds) A Century of Composition by Women. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95557-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95557-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-95556-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-95557-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)