Between the Parlour and the Pub: A Social History of Violin Playing in Australia Over the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This study is the first to provide a social history of the violin in Australia between 1788 and 1914. Present since the British first arrived, the violin’s diverse history reveals many aspects of Australian music-making, and illuminates the complexity of Australian history, culture, and society more widely. Few instruments have such variety in expression and value among different social classes, genders, and ethnicities as the violin. This thesis aims to examine how - given the diversity of Australia’s settler and Indigenous population - the violin operates differently depending on who is playing, what they are playing, where they are playing, and why.

This history of Australian violin playing has been shaped by the contexts of colonisation, empire, and imperialism. Appreciating the role of the violin within Australian culture requires an understanding of how members of colonial society thought and felt about themselves and music-making within their everyday lives. Drawing on a mix of historical sources and Bourdieu’s Theory of Capitals, this thesis examines the lives and experiences of several violinists from varied backgrounds in each chapter to both illuminate these themes and follow the broader history of music in Australia.

In Australia, I argue that the violin as an object is mobile across class and cultural situations, and so operates as different forms of Bourdieusian capital. Tracing the local take-up of the violin over time reveals narratives that have typically been overlooked, silenced, or forgotten within Australian history, such as the rights of women to play the violin, and the resilience of Aboriginal people. To follow the history of the violin in Australia is to not only to learn more about the musical tastes, attitudes, and values of Australians, but also provides insight into Australian history, differences of social class, Australian colonial culture, and music making.