ANU School of Music
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| Australian National University School of Music | |
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| Address | |
|---|---|
| Block 13, Section 28, William Herbert Place, Australian National University, Acton, Canberra, ACT, 0200, |
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| Information | |
| Established | 1965 |
| Head of School | None until January 2009 |
| Faculty | Music |
| Enrolment | Approximately 200 |
| Campus | Urban |
| Color(s) | Crimson, Gold, Navy |
| Information | (02) 6125 2527 |
| Website | ANU School of Music |
The School of Music is a school within the Faculty of Arts of the Australian National University. It consists of four buildings, including the main School of Music building, which contains The Llewellyn Hall and the Peter Karmel Building.
The School of Music encompasses Brass, Composition, Ethnomusicology, Guitar, Jazz, Musicology, Percussion, String, Voice and Woodwind departments; the Keyboard Institute; and the Music Library.
Contents |
[edit] History
The School of Music was established under the name The Canberra School of Music in 1965 with Ernest Llewellyn as the founding Director. The original plans for the School were prepared in the 1960s when the Department of the Interior recognized the need to establish centres for art and music study in the national capital, with the vision of providing high-level performance and practice. Sir Richard Kingsland, Secretary of the Department from 1963 to 1970, provided valuable support for Ernest Llewellyn's vision. The Canberra School of Music was established in 1965. It was first located in the Canberra suburb of Manuka and in 1976 moved to its current site on Childers Street in Canberra City, becoming the first purpose-built music school facility in Australia.
Llewellyn's grand vision for the School was based on the Juilliard School; he regarded Isaac Stern, with whom he had studied at Juilliard and who was his long time friend, as the "father" of the school. He set the School up with a hand-picked staff and a focus on the training of soloists, chamber and orchestral musicians. As part of his grand plan he also envisaged the development of a national symphony orchestra based in Canberra. This has never been established, although Canberra has its own professional part-time orchestra, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, based in Llewellyn Hall.
Responsibility for the Canberra School of Music passed from the Department of the Interior to the Minister for Education and Science, John Gorton. Control was transferred in 1974, and Sir Richard was the first Chairman of the Canberra School of Music. The Kingsland Room in the School of Music is named in his honour. The current School of Music building was opened in 1976. In 1987, the Canberra School of Music combined with the Canberra School of Art to create the Canberra Institute for the Arts. In 1992, it became part of the Australian National University. In 2001, the Peter Karmel Building was opened to house the Jazz and Percussion Areas, and the Centre for New Media Arts. An extension to the Music Library was completed at the same time. In 2004, the ANU Keyboard Institute was established at the School of Music, providing an Australian centre for research into historical keyboard performance and Australian composition for piano, and hosting Australia's first graduate programs in fortepiano. Also in 2004, the National Institute of the Arts was dissolved, with the Schools of Music and Art becoming part of the ANU Faculty of the Arts.
[edit] Present day
The current state of the School of Music is somewhat controversial. It has been embroiled in financial troubles, with a running loss of $1.5 million due to declining enrolments and a lack of funding from various sources including government and the university. Despite this the school of music has managed to maintain a generally acclaimed past and present staff, including Don Banks (composer), Geoffrey Lancaster (fortepianist/ conductor), Vernon Hill (flute), Larry Sitsky (pianist/composer), David Pereira (cello), Alice Giles (harp), Alan Vivian (clarinet), Megan Billing (oboe), Max McBride (double bass/conductor), Virginia Taylor (flute) and Rick McIntyre (bassoon). The Head of School until mid-2008 was John Luxton, who, at the beginning of 2009 was succeeded by Professor Adrian Walter.[1]
The School offers the academic degrees Bachelor of Music, Bachelor of Arts (Music), and Bachelor of Philosophy. Since 2005, such combined degree programs as the Bachelor of Music/Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Music/Bachelor of Laws, and Bachelor of Music/Bachelor of Science have been offered by the ANU. Postgraduate programs include graduate diplomas, Master's degrees in Performance, Fortepiano Pedagogy, Composition, and Musicology. It also offers the award of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) - available in Performance, Composition and Musicology.
The School of Music has a number of ensembles in residence, including the Canberra Wind Soloists, “Virtuosi” and dominantSEVEN, and the Fantastic Flutes of the ANU. It also hosts recipients of the H. C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellowship. The ensembles formed by the School itself include;
The ANU Big Band The ANU Brass Ensemble The ANU Flute Ensemble The ANU Guitar Ensemble The ANU Harp Ensemble The ANU Orchestra The ANU Recording Ensemble The ANU Styles Ensemble
However, the School also has a large research role, most importantly in the areas of Classical performance, piano, fortepiano and harpsichord performance, jazz performance, composition, musicology and ethnomusicology – especially Australian ethnomusicology.
The School of Music also runs a pre-tertiary program for students who study music at primary school and high schools in the Australian Capital Territory. Gifted pre-tertiary music students are able to take single study lessons in various instrumental disciplines, under the supervision of the School's full time teaching staff. A School of Music Foundation assists the School to continue its projects with students and the community. The Foundation is presently chaired by former Vice Chancellor of the Australian National University, Prof Deane Terrell.
The future of the School of music is currently under threat[2].There is also a risk to the future of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, which draws upon the staff and resources at the school of music. As of October 2007, a 'Working Group' or committee was created to advise the Pro-Vice Chancellor on the future of the school, namely how to increase income and reduce cost. [3]
[edit] Location, Grounds and Buildings
The School of Music complex is situated on the south-eastern edge of the Australian National University campus, between the School of Art and University Avenue, bordered on the north-western face by Childers Street. It is also close to the popular landmark and performance space The Street Theatre.
The complex itself consists of four buildings; two non-transportable and two demountable. The demountable buildings, which are joined, were installed in the 1990s and house the some of the graduate facilities as well as some administration and technical capacity of the Music area and are colloquially known as "The Shed".
The two permanent buildings, the main School of Music Building (SoM building) and the Peter Karmel building are both built in contemporary architectural styles. The SoM building currently plays host to the Brass, Composition, Guitar, Musicology, String, Voice and Woodwind departments, the Keyboard Institute and the Music Library. It also houses the foremost performance space in Canberra, the prestigious Llewellyn Hall. The building is currently heritage listed by;
- Royal Australian Institute of Architects (Ref: R031);
- ACT Heritage Register (Nominated);
- Commonwealth Heritage List (Place ID – 105636);
- National Trust of Australia (ACT) Classification List: Classified.
The Llewellyn Hall came about directly through the initiative of its namesake, Ernest Llewellyn, the founding Head of School and instigator of the Canberra School of Music project. Llewellyn's plans, drawn with renowned architect Daryl Jackson, provided for a grand hall with seating for 1,300 people and full audio and lighting facilities. The recent refurbishments to the SoM building have included a complete rebuilding of the Llewellyn Hall and an update and redesign of the Musicology and Composition Departments.
The Peter Karmel Building, named after former ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Peter Karmel, was designed and project managed by Guida Mosely Brown Architects in conjunction with commissioned artist Marie Hagerty[4]. It currently houses the Centre for New Media Arts, the Jazz Department and the Percussion Department. It also contains the fourth most important performance space in the ANU campus (after Llewellyn Hall, the Theatre Arts Performance Space and Theatre 1, the Home of Canberra Repertory), the Band Room.
[edit] Architectural Design
The SoM building was designed for the National Capital Development Commission in 1970 by architects Daryl Jackson and Evan Walker. The architectural works of Jackson at this time can be seen to be in parallel with those of noted U.S. architect Paul Rudolph, most notably his 1960s interpretations of Le Corbusier's later works. [5]
The following, taken from the Australian National University's Heritage Factsheet on the School of music, provides a physical description of the building and its architectural merits and heritage:
The building is a six level building, oriented inwardly to the core of the site, with the public and administration areas wrapped around the more acoustically sensitive performing and teaching areas as a barrier against the noise. In vertical relationship of areas the spaces which tend to generate greater noise problems are located on Levels Five and Six. It was originally anticipated that there would be significant external traffic noise from an arterial road but this was never built. Daryl Jackson described the design in the following way 'The School's boldness of form is due to these factors as well as a desire to produce an assertive cubist arrangement whose parts explore landscape and figurative metaphors, to create architectural presence'. The building has white off form concrete walls, concrete framing and floors with white concrete blockwork infill and no large areas of glazing, apart from glazing to the external circulation routes around the 1,500 seat auditorium and a metal deck roof. There is a sculpture by Norma Redpath adjacent to the entry.
The heavily sculptured forms of this building come from the phase in Daryl Jackson's work when he pursued ideas of rendering large mass in a way he called 'cubist', using common materials, particularly off-form concrete and masonry. In addition there are a number of other items which are manipulated sculpturally, such as the external expression of stairs as cylindrical tubes and a visually weighty cantilevered room at the upper levels of the building as if it were a garret.
– ANU Heritage Factsheet, School of Music
An addition to the School of Music is the Peter Karmel Building, opened in 2001. The work of MGT Architects, this building is discreetly separate – both in a site planning and architectural manner - to the original building.
The Peter Karmel Building was designed as a new freestanding addition to the Canberra School of Music to accommodate numerous practice and performance functions for the School, with specific accommodation of the Jazz and Percussion Departments and the Australian Centre for Arts and Technology (ACAT). The two-storey building forms a new Entry Court to the School of Music complex and provides integrated connections between practice and performance spaces in both the original School and new addition. The façade design commission by artist Marie Hagerty was intended to be an opportunity for the artist to work with the large-scale architectural forms in their three-dimensional landscape setting to create a patterning, ‘marking’, and enlivening of the glazed and solid surfaces of the building's exterior.
[edit] References
- ^ "NEW HEAD OF ANU SCHOOL OF MUSIC APPOINTED, FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER 2008". http://www.anu.edu.au/music/future_directions/index.php. Retrieved 2008-12-12.
- ^ "School of Music under threat". http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/general/school-of-music-under-threat/1176490.html. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
- ^ "Future Directions". http://www.anu.edu.au/music/future_directions/index.php. Retrieved 2008-03-28.
- ^ "GMB Architects, Peter Karmel Building Project". http://www.gmbarchitects.com/projects/educational04/index.html. Retrieved 2008-12-13.
- ^ "ANU Heritage Factsheet, School Of Music Building". http://heritage.anu.edu.au/index.php?pid=1112. Retrieved 2008-12-12.
