The legacy of Stewart Symonds

We acknowledge and farewell a dedicated Museums of History NSW (Sydney Living Museums) supporter, whose collection of sheet music has done so much to illuminate the history of domestic music making in colonial Australia.

On 21 September 2020, Dr Stewart Symonds (1937–2020) was farewelled by his husband, Cliff, family and friends in Sydney. Stewart had a close relationship with MHNSW through his donation to the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection of an important collection of sheet music provenanced to 19th-century NSW families.

Donated through the Commonwealth Cultural Gifts Program in 2016, the collection comprises more than 1500 pieces of print and manuscript music bound into 46 volumes, and is mostly for solo piano, or piano and voice. The collection includes Australia’s earliest surviving settler composition, ‘Currency lasses, an admir’d Australian quadrille’ by Tempest Margaret Paul, published in London around 1830, as well as rare Australian sheet music prints and examples of English, Scottish and Irish works retailed through early Sydney music sellers.

A passion for collecting

Stewart began collecting historical pianos in the late 1960s, along with examples of sheet music that would have been played on these instruments. In 2016, he gave his collection of 140 rare pianos to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts; he was also keen to find a home for his sheet music. Our house museums contain a historically significant collection of sheet music, and when we examined Stewart’s collection in 2015, with the assistance of consultant music historian Dr Graeme Skinner, we immediately recognised the importance of this collection and the opportunity it offered to contextualise the domestic music story of our properties.

Stewart couldn’t have imagined that two years after his donation he would be attending the Bel Canto in the Bush concert, organised by the SLM Foundation, with special guest and international opera conductor Maestro Richard Bonynge AC CBE. At this concert, examples from Stewart’s collection were performed by soprano Jane Ede with Thomas Johnson on historical square piano. Maestro Bonynge commented on the strength of the music selection, and the event gave us an opportunity to thank Stewart publicly for his gift.

Reaching new audiences

The significance of this collection and its impact on our understanding of the history of music in NSW cannot be overestimated. Most importantly, we’ve been able to reach contemporary audiences through concerts and recordings and online, connecting them with our music history. Since 2016, the collection has featured in an international music symposium, eight public concerts, 12 videos, two CDs, and the award-winning (past) Songs of Home exhibition at the Museum of Sydney. Over 200 pieces from Stewart’s collection are now digitised and freely available online, with more to come, and researchers from both Australia and the UK have taken advantage of this access while working with the collection.

We have been privileged to be able to convert the Stewart Symonds Sheet Music Collection into beautiful sound and to share it with the broader community. It was also a pleasure to share many discoveries with the man who spent decades following his passion and collecting this material for future generations.

View the digitised Symonds scores.

Sheet music

Ornately decorated printed cover with kangaroo design at top, with title printed below.

The Stewart Symonds sheet music collection

A recently acquired collection of printed sheet music provides valuable insights into Sydney’s music trade and concert scene in the 19th century and offers opportunities for musical interpretation of MHNSW places

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Dr Matthew Stephens

Dr Matthew Stephens

Research Librarian

Matthew Stephens is research librarian at the Caroline Simpson Library & Collection. He is particularly fascinated by early book, musical instrument and sheet music collections in NSW and the stories they tell. Addicted to the historical research process, Matthew has reframed the biography of the eighteenth-century British cross-dressing soldier, Hannah Snell, rediscovered the lost library of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, and completed a PhD on the early history of the Australian Museum Library and the origins and use of scientific literature in nineteenth-century New South Wales. More recently, Matthew has led the interpretation of the history of domestic music in MHNSW house museums. Since 2015 he has been MHNSW’s representative in the Sound Heritage network (UK) and is co-author and co-editor of Sound Heritage: Making Music Matter in Historic Houses (Routledge, 2022). In 2019, Matthew curated the Songs of Home exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, which examined the musical landscape of NSW during the first 70 years of European settlement. He has collaborated with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, on numerous projects including as Partner Investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project ‘Hearing the Music of Early NSW, 1788-1860’ (2021-23). Two research projects led by Matthew on the reinstatement of part of the dispersed Macleay family library at Elizabeth Bay House and the Dowling Songbook Project have received National Trust Heritage Awards.

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