So much of the history of Australia’s art music is derived from ostensibly British and European people, places and creative traditions. Men, and occasionally women, have left their homes and careers in the northern hemisphere to travel south in search of new lives and opportunities, and new audiences with whom to share their music, often exploiting these audiences in the new world for cultural and financial gain and the advancement of their careers. Foreign virtuosi, composers, conductors and entrepreneurs all plied their trade in Australia from the early days of colonization – and they still do. There are dozens of accounts, scholarly and otherwise, of the exploits of great British and European women and men making their mark in Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and Latin America, to name just a few spots, whose histories have sometimes been relayed in narratives of the missionary, the conqueror of low culture in unsophisticated lands, the improver of taste, the civilizer of the new world. The exoticization of the foreign and the presence of the cultural cringe have sometimes loomed large, conscious or otherwise, in framing these historical narratives. These histories once went unchecked and unchallenged.

Thankfully, the days of imperial and imperious history are behind us, or nearly so. Good scholars of art music in Australia have long been able to situate British, European and North American cultural, even economic and political influences, in the context of global and transnational history and have been alert to, indeed critical of, any hint of patrician narratives. Cultural clashes, battles for artistic supremacy, self-promotion and cultural improvement are now interrogated under a stronger critical gaze than ever before. And it is up to music scholars to do this work. As Peter Tregear and Anne-Marie Forbes imply in this book we cannot rely on our colleagues in Australian history to do this work for us. There is no largescale study of the nation’s history that includes any substantial discussion of the nation’s music.

It is for this reason, amongst others, that new books on music in Australia need to be written. But is a biography the right genre? Is an account of an Englishman’s life the best way to go about furnishing yet another book on Australia’s musical past? Is, in fact, Hart (1874–1949) a worthwhile subject? In my own, modest, work on music in Australia since colonization I have rarely encountered Fritz Hart; I had always considered him a marginal figure in the nation’s musical history and something of a parochial interest to Melbourne alone. However, as I will get to shortly, I could not be more wrong.

This biography of Hart is unusual in two respects, represented by its sub-title and its authorship. The book’s subtitle, whether by accident or design, sets up the reader for a surprise: ‘An English musical romantic at the ends of empire’. It is a sub-title aimed to tease. As readers will discover, Hart was a product of the English Musical Renaissance, and arguably a typical musical romantic, but his move to Australia in 1909 to work with the J.C. Williamson Company, then to Honolulu in 1931 (as guest conductor of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra), characterizes the composer (and educator and entrepreneur) as a pragmatist, and not an idealist lost to giddy aesthetic ambition. He appears to have settled in Australia without fuss or bother, relishing his new environment, rather than complaining about it or standing aloof from his colleagues and audiences. We might say Hart assimilated, though that word is loaded with all sorts of dreadful connotations. The other part of the book’s sub-title, locating Hart ‘at the ends of Empire’, is delightfully ambiguous. Do the authors mean their aim is to situate Hart in a country at the far end of the Empire (or the ‘arse-end’ of the world as locals still refer to Australia’s location on the globe) or does it mean Hart was working at a time when the British Empire was in the process of crumbling? Or do they mean both?

Hart was well entrenched in an array of cultural and musical activities in Australia and these connections are brilliantly handled by a duo of biographers. Both the authors have significant experience writing national and cultural history, bearing in mind that these are still complicated compartments of scholarship in a colonized setting. Whatever their motivations for the sub-title of the book, the authors have given us not only a carefully crafted biography but an incredibly thorough work on the musico-political life of Australia, but especially Melbourne, in Hart’s time. This biography is not a life and times, nor is it a life and works necessarily; rather, it stands out as a biographical account of institutional culture and politics in which of course, Fritz Hart was the protagonist.

The challenges and complexities of a biography of a British, or indeed Australian-born musical subject is addressed head-on in the book’s introduction. The authors ponder the extent of the overinfluence of a dominant British culture or cultures in the Australian context and whether history and historiographies of the nation’s music are derivative; in so doing, they discuss the various ‘transnational and historical perspectives’ in British Australian discourses. Drawing on the work of historian David Canadine, and others, Tregear and Forbes offer a sophisticated portrayal of the milieu where Hart may be situated, a topic they come back to in the final chapter of the book, ‘Who’s Hart’?

Early chapters of the book provide an engaging account of Hart’s influences. Hart was, as the authors demonstrate, something of a sponge and polymath, soaking up inspiration and interest in a huge array of interests in art and literature, and choral music (and later opera). Hart’s interest in the folk-music movement as well as the many factors influencing his decision to concentrate on composing are outlined.

One of the many highlights of this book is the ease in which the music of Hart is explained with a touch that speaks to both an interested reader and a musicological specialist. In Chapter 2 for example, Hart’s ‘fifty or so songs’ composed with the J.C. Williamson Company, are described to be ‘indebted to the Edwardian sentimental ballad’, finding inspiration in works by Blake, Robert Herrick and William Ernest Henley (p. 35). The influence that Debussy and Wagner would bring to Hart’s work, as well as that of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets, is also examined. An appearance of Wagner’s Tristan chord is illustrated in one of Hart’s songs. The authors note ‘However, rather than evoking tonal tension or tonal ambiguity, it [the Tristan chord] is treated more as a sound in itself; a colour chord that chromatically descends until the appearance of a perfect cadence in F major’; a musical example illustrates how Hart managed the sound. This succinct, easy to read account of musical language and style is achieved throughout the book. It is not off-putting for the general reader nor is it over-simplified for the specialist. Other parallels in music and literature are found in Hart’s other works including Riders to the Sea (1915).

Of particular interest to me through this book was Hart’s connections to so much music-making in Melbourne. He was deeply involved in tertiary education in the city, principally through what was known then as the ‘Albert Street’ (later ‘Melba’) Conservatorium, and in particular his close friendship and professional work with Nellie Melba, but also through his rivalries with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Music and especially its head, Bernard Heinze. The extent of Hart’s work with Melba is documented in detail in this book for the first time, including an unreliable claim that the two parented a child. But beyond the rumours, Melba’s work teaching at the Conservatorium and her other activities in Melbourne are discussed. Other challenges in this period were the prevalence of anti-German sentiment; Chapter 3, ‘War songs’, describes the ways in which she navigated this tricky local culture as well as Hart’s involvement with the First World War effort and the ways in which he craftily cooperated with inquiries about himself and his own German connections by the representatives from Australia’s Army Intelligence Corps.

Along with Melba, Hart was a fervent supporter of female students, but particularly aspirational composers. Tregear and Forbes quote Hart, writing in a letter to his second wife, Marvell: ‘I have so great a belief in women’s capacity that I cannot consent to be like many European musicians who, crudely, say that most girls are only good for a man to go to bed with’! (p. 64). Tregear and Forbes are most likely correct to assert that ‘Hart’s professional aims for his many female composition students [were] ahead of his time and with few precedents elsewhere in the world’ (p. 64) Equally, Tregear and Forbes do not shy away from exposing the less savoury aspects of Hart’s association with women. He was, after all, a womanizer, his flings and affairs apparently causing his reputation to come under ‘strain’ (p. 90), especially when, in 1930, Hart was publicly named as a close associate of Mary (Mollie) Dean – a teacher, writer and artists’ model – who was brutally murdered, the details of which were played out in the press.

The final two chapters of the book, ‘English interiors’ and ‘Celtic borders’ provide a closer look at Hart’s musical style, with both chapters providing clear (and sensible) insights into Hart’s works. In the chapter on English interiors the authors are sensible not to plunge immediately into a stereotypical or conventional analysis of influence, instead pointing out that ‘Categorising and interpreting his [Hart’s] music is no simple task. There is no well-worn critical path for the historian of classical music composed in Australia or Hawai‘i to follow’ (p. 128). The authors argue that since most of Hart’s works deal with words ‘these sources can suggest ideas that may have directed Hart’s musical tension and shaped the trajectory of his compositional output’ (p. 128). This, in my view, is a significant moment in this biography, and a lesson for biographers working on British or imperial subjects: the temptation to rush-in with familiar tools of musical analysis can lead to the usual ends, or a dead end. What this chapter does so admirably is trace the specific influences from literature in Hart’s treatment of subject matter through phrasing, metre and narration in select scores. Aspects of Hart’s interest in spiritualism in general, and Celticism in particular, are discussed in the final chapter. The authors write of the pervasiveness of interest in Celticism in Australia noting, perceptively, that Hart’s interest in the subject ‘reflects a peculiar complex of assumptions that he, and many of the artistic circle around him, had about British Australian cultural and national identity in the post-Federation period, as well as the experience of immigration itself’ (p. 149). This is a valuable point to make: it looks to an ideology or cultural influence that is not static, immovable, rested in one spot or with one character or hue. Examples in the chapter include Hart’s songs ‘In the Fern’ op. 69, no. 3 (1926) and ‘The Great Breth’, op. 34, no. 4 (1918). This chapter also draws attention to Hart’s admittedly modest engagement with Indigenous culture, especially in relation to his attempts to engage directly with the Australian landscape. There are considerable connections made to Hart’s The Bush from 1923 in which a section from the programme note illustrates the ‘moods’ of the Bush, particularly in Victoria and Queensland, which Hart described as ‘terrifying’ (p. 152).

At a time when scholars are preoccupied with the continued disruption and devastation of the British Empire, there is, arguably, never a right moment to publish a monument to a British musician. However, this cynical view depends on how the job is done; this biography is neither apologetic nor defensive but sets absolutely the right tone for this kind of cultural cultural life-telling. Hart, it seems, did not come to Australia to merely exploit local cultures for himself and his own music; if we trust that Tregear and Forbes have it right, Hart was not as ambitious as many of his colleagues, and he made a concerted effort to work with, rather than against, local cultures. His association with Indigenous cultures was slight, but this is not atypical of most white people of the period.

Tregear and Forbes have made a success of a difficult genre, not just of biography, but of a joint biography, of a man with many interests, connections, influences and limitations. The skill behind the writing of a book such as this is the authors’ detailed knowledge of music as well as musico-politics in Australia, especially Melbourne, but also of the varieties of Hart’s transnational and transcultural literary and artistic encounters. Hart comes through the pages not as a stereotype of the English Musical Renaissance transplanted to the south, but as a multifaceted character, engaged in a large variety of creative interests in which his contribution to Australia’s musical life ‘at the ends of Empire’ were significant and worthy of this new book.