Colonial Mobility and the Cultural Replication of British Music: Granville Bantock’s Australian Tour, 1938–1939

Abstract

ABSTRACT Legions of foreign musicians have toured Australia in an effort to transplant old musical cultures. One such tour was undertaken by Granville Bantock in late 1938 to further the examinations business of Trinity College of Music, London. As argued in this article, however, there was more to his visit than meets the eye: it was an attempt by Bantock to secure new audiences for his music. The press’s role in this tour was marked by fawning journalists reporting on the composer’s endorsement of local music-making as evidence of Australia’s musical maturity. Bantock’s music was celebrated by the press except for one journalist, who condemned his peddling of old-fashioned music in a modern Australia. Although Bantock’s visit to Australia in late 1938 was designed to promote Trinity College, it was in fact an exercise in cultural mobility, and the replication of a certain style of British music that invoked narratives concerning the cultural cringe in which Bantock, and most of the press, were complicit.