Thomas Elder bequest for conservatorium at Adelaide University gives Australia its first music academy in 1898
Thomas Elder's statue outside Adelaide University's Elder Hall (left), with Bonython Hall at right, on North Terrace, Adelaide city.
Elder Conservatorium of Music, Australia’s oldest music academy, became a formal identity in 1898 after a bequest by Scottish-South Australian pastoralist Thomas Elder.
Elder’s funds guaranteed Adelaide University’s professorship of music that went back to 1883 when the colony’s governor William Robinson, a musician, had initially raised £5000 to employ a professor but only for five years. The controversial Joshua Ives arrived from England in 1885 to become first professor.
In 1883, Berlin-trained pianist Gotthold Reimann had started his privately=owned and -run Adelaide College of Music, with Cecil Sharp (later to become famous as collector of English folk songs) became co director in 1889. For its first few years, the university school of music (focussed on composition and theory) and Adelaide College of Music (focussed on practical training in performance) complemented each other.
In 1898, the two schools were merged, operating in the college’s Wakefield Street premises until 1900 when the North Terrace building was completed. Elder’s funds also enabled the Royal College of Music in London and the music board of the University of Adelaide to support the Elder overseasscholarship (in Music).
The “Con” also was a product of two others later mergers: in 1991, with the School of Performing Arts of the then-South Australian College of Advanced Education and in 2001 with the School of Music of the Adelaide Institute of TAFE (Technical and Further Education).
Primary focus of the conservatorium's annual concert series was Elder Hall, one of Australia's finest and most historic concert halls. It was opened in 1900 by the South Australian governor Lord Tennyson. Its spacious interior featured a hammer-beam roof modelled on the Middle Temple in London, and a three-manual organ built by Casavant Frères of Canada.
The Elder Music Library, in Adelaide University's Hartley Building, was the largest in the southern hemisphere, with about 30,000 books, 5400 journal volumes, 120,000 music scores and around 22,000 sound recordings.