Adelaide Town Hall bells keep ringing out for city's great history of band, organ and orchestral music
Adelaide Town Hall opened in 1866 as the only civic building outside England to house a full peel of eight bells in its Albert Tower.
Adelaide Town Hall – a musical instrument in itself – was integral to presenting the city’s music through orchestras, bands and choirs.
Two special features of the town hall are its eight bells and its organ. Opened in 1866 as the “largest municipal building south of the Equator”, the town hall was also significant as the only civic building outside England to house a full peel of eight bells in its Albert Tower.
The city’s amateur musicians started a campaign for a £1,200 organ in the town hall's main auditorium by presenting concerts. This led to the Adelaide Amateur Musical Union and the Adelaide Philharmonic Society being formed as orchestras and choirs.
An organ ordered from William Hill & Son, London, arrived in 1877. (In 1885-86, local firm Fincham and Hobday updated the organ. An electric motor replaced the hydraulics in 1923.)
Town hall organist George Oughton conducted the concert to welcome the town hall organ. Oughton also led Adelaide's Volunteer Militia/Adelaide Military Band that made its first public appearance at the town hall in 1878 and regularly played at the Elder Park rotunda. He brought the band to a standard recognised as possibly the best in Australia.
South Australia’s police force – Australia’s first from 1838 – also formed its own volunteer brass band in 1884.
What became today’s Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – replacing the South Australian Orchestra – started in 1937 sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. The orchestra’s subscription concerts at the town hall in the 1950s/60s were well patronised with a record season in 1962. Civic band and choir concerts, along with lunch-hour organ recitals, fed the community musical awareness.
The town hall provides its own music to the outside world through the Adelaide Bellringers at work in its tower. The ringers, using the English style of full-circle changes, also operate the bells at St Andrew's, Walkerville; the world-renowned heavy octave at St Peter's Cathedral; the 12 bells at St Francis Xavier's Cathedral; the light octave of St Cuthbert's Prospect (scene of a record-breaking peal in 1995). A bellringing training centre is now in the eastern tower at St Peter’s Cathedral.