Browsing through a secondhand bookshop last year for old sheet music, I found a copy of The Australian Musical News for March 1st, 1916, (price threepence). This publication has long since ceased, and the articles make fascinating reading. A recital series at the Melba Hall, University of Melbourne, caught my eye. The recently appointed piano teacher at the University, Mr. Edward Goll, (who incidentally had been a pupil of Emil von Sauer, who in turn had been a pupil of Liszt), was listed as giving three recitals during the year. Their programmes make interesting reading:

April 5: Bach Programme
French Suite in G
Fugues: Book I., Nos. 4 and 21
Book II., nos. 2,7,9 and 5.
Partita in B flat.

June 28th: Beethoven Programme
Sonatas Op. 22, 78, 81a, 90, 101, 111.

September 20th: Brahms Programme
Variations (Op. 21): Variations on a Theme of Paganini (Books 1 and 2).
Ballades, Nos 2 and 4.
Fantasias (Op 116) Nos. 1 to 7.

Audiences of those times must have been make of sterner stuff than modern audiences to sit through a programme of not less than six Beethoven sonatas! And the Bach programme has six fugues (but not the preludes?!?!?)

How long would it take to get through all that?!?!

I had a sort of similar experience yonks ago buying a slender little volume of GIlbert and Sullivan lyrics. Buried inside was the program of a presentation of 'the Mikado' at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Patrons of the G&S Society included Lord and Lady Sir WIlliam Flavelle, Dr. and Mrs. SIr Howard Ferguson etc....etc....and assorted other Knights and Ladies in decidedly Empire Toronto of 1921. I've still got it somewhere....

....and now I am the ruler of the queen's na-vee!


BTW, IMO anything Gilbert & Sullivan is well worth whatever else you have to go through for it.

I think I would have liked the Beethoven Day. Possibly with a break though.