Thesis (M. Mus.)--University of Melbourne, 1978. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves [279]-283) and index.

G. W. L. Marshall-Hall, 1862-1915, English-born musician who settled in Australia in 1891, is chiefly remembered as a pioneer teacher and conductor, founder of the Melbourne University Conservatorium and the Melba Memorial Conservatorium, Melbourne, propagator of the first orchestral subscription concerts in Melbourne, and founding Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne. An outspoken Bohemian, his book of poems Hymns ancient and modern (1898) was judged lewd and sacrilegious and led to his severance from the University in 1900. Marshall-Hall was also a composer of over 50 works, including operas, symphonies, overtures, string quartets, and numerous songs. The six extant operas are a representative sample of his creative work, exhibiting strong influence of Wagner and later Puccini, but flawed by the limits of a largely untutored technique. Most interesting is the effect on the composer's creative work of prolonged isolation from and occasional return-visits to Europe.

G.W.L. Marshall-Hall began work as first Ormond Professor of Music at Melbourne University in 1891. In July and August 1898 he published a book of poems and gave a public address, which, together, led to demands for his dismissal. The outcry against him came largely from a section of the community which Matthew Arnold, some thirty years earlier in England, had identified as Hebraic. The radical contrast between, on the one hand, the underlying assumptions of this group, particularly its epistemology and axiology and, on the other, the Hellenic, Existentialist axioms that informed Marshall-Hall’s thinking, created a situation which was structurally conducive to the hostile outbreak of collective action that occurred. This structural conductiveness was reinforced by a number of elements of strain - a belief in the debased character of the times; a pervasive Manicheanism; various misunderstandings in regard to Marshall-Hall’s views, deriving from the unsystematic and frequently allegorical manner of their exposition; and contemporary perceptions of his role as a university teacher, and of the tone in which his outbursts were couched (itself the outcome of a blend of conscious beliefs and unconscious motivation). (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, 1986. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 655-691).