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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 52| August 2001


Hidden Talents

Dr Rhian Davies, Harold White Fellow 2001

Dr Rhian Davies, Harold White Fellow 2001

The first concert of the series Performing the Collection: Music at the National Library of Australia took place in June. Entitled Hidden Talents: The Words and Music of Henry Handel Richardson and Frederick Septimus Kelly the concert introduced two late nineteenth/early twentieth-century Australian composers little known to the public in this role.

Frederick Septimus Kelly (1881–1916) was born in Australia but left for England at the age of 11. He was an outstanding pianist and composer, but also an Olympic gold medallist in rowing and a World War I soldier who died in action on the Somme. Henry Handel Richardson (1870–1946) was the author of The Getting of Wisdom and Maurice Guest. Like Kelly, she studied music in Germany, however she decided only to compose and perform privately, thus hiding her musical output from a broader audience.

The concert wove biographical information and fragments of diary entries, letters and reviews with the performance of works from each of the composers’ repertoire. Stephen McIntyre performed two solo piano works and accompanied mezzo–soprano Elizabeth Campbell in the songs. Harold White Fellow Dr Rhian Davies presented the story of Kelly, with readings by Dr Bruce Steele and conductor Richard Divall who later continued with Richardson’s story.

Dr Davies brought her background as a singer and a documentary film-maker into play, enthralling the audience with her storytelling of Kelly’s life and music. Davies first came to the music of Frederick Septimus Kelly while looking for new vocal repertoire, and in her Masters thesis of 1985 profiled the composer alongside his contemporary, composer William Denis Browne. Compelling features of Kelly’s story are his shared wartime experiences with Browne and the poet Rupert Brooke who all belonged to the same battalion. In particular, Davies conjured up a strikingly romantic image of the two composers burying the poet in the moonlight on their way to the Dardanelles.

The Library holds eight volumes of the diaries of Frederick Septimus Kelly, as well as a large collection of manuscript music. Now Davies has seen first-hand these primary sources, she is preparing a biography and possibly a documentary film on the life of Frederick Septimus Kelly. She hopes that her work will be published in Australia as well as in Britain, as she likes the idea of ‘bringing him home’, and so it seems do Australian audiences.

Dr Bruce Steele and Richard Divall recently co-edited the Currency Press publication Songs by Henry Handel Richardson for Voice and Piano. Steele and Divall presented several of the composer’s English and German songs, and this was one of the first public performances of these works. Research has been carried out on Richardson’s music as part of the Monash University Henry Handel Richardson Project and Steele, with Clive Probyn, has recently edited publications of literature and correspondence by the writer/composer. At the end of the concert, the National Library of Australia was presented with manuscript music written by Henry Handel Richardson to add to the existing collection.

This series of performances provides the public with free concerts of the highest quality in addition to providing valuable exposure to the music in the Library’s collections. For an institution such as the Library with a focus on printed music material, it is very exciting to hear the actual sound of the works in the collection. As Davies says, it’s all about ‘bringing the music to life’.
—Kirsty Gillespie

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