Dr Rosemary Richards: The C. J. La Trobe Society, Melbourne, 10 June 2018
The 2018 series of Member Talks for The C. J. La Trobe Society recommences on Sunday 10 June 2018 at the Mueller Hall, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, on Birdwood Ave, virtually opposite La Trobe Cottage. The doors open at 2.00 and the talk is scheduled to commence at 2.30 pm. If you are driving allow ample time for parking. Best Public Transport is any St Kilda Road tram to Domain Interchange then a pleasant stroll through the parklands to Mueller Hall. The 605 bus stops at the Shrine but run infrequently on Sundays.
A $5.00 entry fee, payable at the door, will include a delicious afternoon tea. Bookings are requested for catering purposes. RSVP by Wednesday 06 June; please include the names of all persons in your party.
- Online: click on the ‘Click to book’ button on the Talks information page at
http://www.latrobesociety.org.au/events.html OR email: to talks@latrobesociety.org.au
- Phone: 9592 5616 and leave a message OR send an SMS on 0427 042 753
Speaker: Dr Rosemary Richards, musicologist and educator
Subject: Georgiana McCrae and her ‘favorite’ music
This talk, accompanied by live music, explores Georgiana McCrae (1804–90) and her ‘favorite’ music. Collecting handwritten music was a fashionable practice in Britain and its empire during the first half of the nineteenth century. Georgiana McCrae brought three of her manuscript music collections from Britain and continued to transcribe and share music after she arrived in Melbourne in 1841. Her fourth collection, bound as an album in Melbourne in 1856, contains references to her friendship with the La Trobe family. While her manuscript music collections reveal her musical preferences, they also functioned as a form of diary over thirty years of her life. They reveal clues to her musical education in London, her identification with her aristocratic Scottish Gordon relatives and her maintenance of connections with Britain during her ‘exile’ as an unwilling migrant to a distant colony. In her paper, Dr Rosemary Richards explores ways in which surviving manuscript music collections can shed light on the lives of collectors as well as on wider issues of migrant and colonial history.