FRIDAY JULY 5, 7.30pm, BURNSIDE UNITING CHURCH, FISHER ST, BURNSIDE:
‘THERE ARE PIANOS EVERYWHERE’ OSCAR COMETTANT AND OTHER TRAVEL WRITERS ON PIANOS IN SA – Benjamin Nicholls
The French musician and composer Oscar Comettant’s hyperbolic writing on pianos in Australia has been taken up wholesale by Aussies in the last seventy years. Oftentimes he is quoted with little criticism, but occasionally there’s a note of suspicion. He guessed that there were 700,000 pianos in the Australian colonies by 1888. Ben will look to test these exaggerated claims along with those of other famous visitors from Trollope to Twain. Of course, we should be sceptical about the boasts of local boosters, but what about these tourists? With some context, we can separate the insights from the puff when it comes to pianos. Musical examples will also be given on the piano.
About the speaker: Ben Nicholls is a pianist and historian researching the piano in South Australia for his PhD in the Department of Historical and Classical Studies at the University of Adelaide. His research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. He has given lecture/performances for the South Australian History Festival, the State Library of South Australia, and PianoLab, as well as papers for the Society of Global Nineteenth-Century Studies and the Society for the History of Emotions. He’s written music for video games and short films, and studied classical piano performance at the Elder Conservatorium with Professor Anna Goldsworthy. He dreams of cycling around the state to trace the route of a piano tuner from the 1890s.