Ending up a Melbourne treasure

Literally hundreds of thousands of items have wended their way over time and distance to find a safe home in the University of Melbourne’s Collections. Here they are conserved, preserved and treasured for their own beauty or inherent value, but also as tools for learning, teaching and research. 

The forthcoming biennial Cultural Treasures Festival allows audiences to get up close to some of the treasures that make up the University’s 33 unique collections.

The power of Melba’s pitch

Melbourne has had a long association with cultural icon Helen Mitchell – better known as the flamboyant and notoriously difficult operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba - who wowed audiences through the late Victorian era.

A stunning portrait of her by Baron Arpad Paszthory is part of the University of Melbourne’s Grainger Collection and graces the foyer to the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music on the Parkville campus: the glamourous, almost regal, diva in full glory (above).

The less well-known connection is the collection of European pitch musical instruments she donated to the University, as well as a full set of tuning forks that now reside in Melbourne’s Physics Museum. Three of the instruments are currently on show in the Grainger Museum.

Physics Museum curator Philip Lyons says Melba was committed to French pitch, which was often referred to as normal pitch at the time, and which was even officially adopted by the French government, giviing the note A an official value of 435 herz. 

“Outside France however there was a wide variation of pitches, which caused Melba to need to sing too high,” he says, “and toward the end of the 19th century there was much debate among the orchestral and music industry about the standardisation of orchestral pitch. A range of pitches were then used by orchestras around Victoria.

“The Ormond Professor of Music at the time Professor Peterson and EJ Love, lecturer in acoustics, even held discussions with the Victorian Education Minister Mr Sanchse about standardising the pitch of music to create consistency.

“Dame Nellie donated £50 in 1907 for the purchase of a set of reference tuning forks (set to standard pitch) to be tested at the University in the hands of Natural Philosophy’s Professor TR Lyle. 

“Her aim was to eventually purchase sets of normal pitch tuning forks for all schools across Victoria, and settle the matter once and for all.”

It is difficult to imagine current government officials taking up the cause of standardised pitch, but nevertheless the original set of 13 tuning forks housed in a wooden case and manufactured by Max Kohl Chemnitz in Germany are on display in the School of Physics Museum, along with the original 1908 receipt from Berlin merchants Kallaene & Herzberg.

Keeping time with Grieg

Also originating in Germany and finding a home at Melbourne is a rose gold pocket watch, acquired in Leipzig and monogrammed EG on its case. It was owned by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who kept the watch all his life.

Grainger Museum curator Brian Allison says the timepiece is a “highly significant” artefact from the collection, and is symbolic of the bond that existed between composer and performer Percy Grainger and the legendary composer Grieg.

Mr Allison says during his lifetime Grieg became known as the leading proponent of Scandinavian music and, like Grainger, possessed a strong interest in Norwegian folk song.

“The Grainger Collection contains letters the pair exchanged, and that in 1906 Grieg wrote to Grainger: ‘Let me say it at once: I like your unspoilt nature, which not even ‘high-life’ has been able to corrupt, and then I like your deep feeling for folksong…Your conception of the English folksongs {sic} is full of genius and contains the seed of a new English style in music’.”

“During a stay at the Grieg’s home Troldhaugen, Grainger rehearsed his newfound mentor’s Piano Concerto and the two men planned to tour the work, with Grieg conducting and Grainger at the piano, but Grieg died before the first concert could be undertaken.

“Nina Grieg paid tribute to their close friendship by giving Grainger her husband’s pocket watch, to which she attached the poignant message; ‘Take it, keep it, and never forget him’.”

Mr Allison says that apart from the watch’s association with the two composers, it is a very sophisticated and accurate instrument, considered an important artefact within horological circles.

“Handmade to very high tolerances, the watch’s movement uses rubies as jeweled bearings, employs a bi-metallic balance (laminated metals that expand and contract at different rates) to compensate for fluctuations in temperature, and a Breguet overcoil hairspring to maintain even force from the mainspring as it winds down.”

A little piece of Mt Buffalo in Parkville

Three decades after Dame Nellie’s tuning forks were purchased, Australian botanist Percival St John was commissioned to make a collection of plants from the Mt Buffalo plateau in north-east Victoria.

This became the Grimwade Plant Collection, now housed in the University’s Herbarium.

In 2006 a grant from the Miegunyah Foundation to the School of Botany allowed this project to be revisited, beginning with relocation, curation and cataloguing of the original collection.

“One of the most interesting elements of that project was the collection of a new set of plants from Mt Buffalo,” says University of Melbourne Herbarium curator Dr Gillian Brown.

“A total of 226 species of plants were collected for the Miegunyah Mt Buffalo Collection during collecting trips made from April 2006 to January 2007. 

“The revised list of vascular plants (which conduct water and minerals through plant tissues from the ground) in the Mt Buffalo National Park now includes 617 species, subspecies and varieties.

“There were 129 new additions to the list made during the course of the study, which is important new information about that area’s floral environment and which will inform conservation practices into the future,” she says.

Researchers on the Miegunyah Mt Buffalo Collection project also gathered duplicate sets of specimens, which are housed at the University of Melbourne Herbarium. The other resides at the beautiful and iconic Mt Buffalo Chalet.

The Cultural Treasures Festival runs Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 July. All museums and exhibition spaces will be open to the public.

www.unimelb.edu.au/culturalcollections/