The Archive and the ANU School of Music ran a joint programme in Advanced Musicology during the 1990s. For several years these classes included, for example, examination of research methodologies that included sound and moving image as sources of information for theses and performance studies, a broad history of recorded Australian performance and, in particular, biographical studies of ‘lost’ Australian recording artists.  The Archive’s holdings include a substantial collection of material related to the ‘lost’ composer from the 1930s, Varney Monk, who wrote the music for the Australian musical play Collits’ Inn.  Entrepreneur and film maker, Frank Thring Senior, who put the play on the stage, seems to have made screen tests for a feature film for his Efftee Productions. Established singer Gladys Moncrieff, made one of these that has survived.  

A student working in the Archive’s collection, Bronwyn Arthur, set about bringing together a comprehensive catalogue of Varney Monk’s compositions, letters, manuscript and publications. Bronwyn was awarded the Australian National University Arts Medal for her research submitted as Varney Monk and Collits’ Inn: a Landmark in Australian Musical History which gave rise to an excellent conference paper, The Pub with no Peer. This research greatly extended the Archive’s knowledge of material in its own collection, including Varney Monk’s settings of poems by Henry Kendall and Henry Lawson. It also made a listing of holdings in several other places. A copy of the thesis was placed in the NFSA library.

Sources

Varney Monk and Collits’ Inn: a Landmark in Australian Musical History, (copy of ANU thesis) NFSA library
Bronwen Arthur, A Pub with No Peer, Collits’ Inn: The First Australian Musical Romance in One Hand on the Manuscript: Music in Australian Cultural History 1930-1960, Humanities Research Centre, ANU, 1995