From the Archives: The gift of a Music School

“It must be admitted that the proposed building is still only, as Plato would have said, lying somewhere hid up in heaven.” In 1936, headmaster James Darling was acutely aware that the School’s ability to support the study and appreciation of music was seriously hampered by a lack of adequate facilities in which to teach it. He dreamed of a modern building, fitted with the latest methods of sound insulation, and equipped with a variety of performance spaces, and had plans drawn up by the School’s architects, Messrs Buchan, Laird and Buchan. But the construction costs were prohibitive, and the building could not be financed with a loan because it would not be income producing. It was a matter of hoping that a kind benefactor might make the dream a reality.

Remarkably, within a matter of months, “a small group of friends of the School” –siblings Alan (GGS’10), Max (GGS’04) and Gladys Bell, and their aunt Janet Biddlecombe – expressed their wish to give the school an even better music facility than the one originally proposed.

Council gratefully accepted the gift in May 1937, and within 12 months the work was completed as a memorial to the Bell siblings’ mother Anne, sister of Janet. Their gift acknowledged, too, the fine work of William McKie in building up the School’s music programme, and particularly his close involvement with the design of the new building. McKie saw the Music School completed but left soon afterwards to become organist of Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently of Westminster Abbey where he directed the music for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Even so, it was the 1936 performance of Handel’s Messiah at Corio that, years later, McKie remembered as one of the most inspiring of his career.

The new Music School’s “fine concert hall, three teaching rooms, music library, eight practice rooms and teaching and practice rooms for the band” were the result of McKie’s specifications. To great fanfare, the building was formally opened on 14 August 1938 by the famous English conductor and composer, Dr Malcolm Sargent – who confessed he had never heard of Geelong Grammar School before but professed to be charmed by what he saw. Music, he said, enabled students “to establish contact with the verities of life” and therefore the new Music School “should be cherished as one of the greatest assets of the School”. It was cherished so much, in fact, that for decades afterwards a concert was held annually on 14 August, the anniversary of the building’s opening. Music entered another dimension, with performances ranging from The Marriage of Figaro to Haydn’s Creation, and notably the performance of Bach’s entire Mass in B Minor in the centenary year of 1957, in which the whole school accompanied guest soloists.

In 1938, Max Bell expressed the modest wish that the Music School “will be of lasting benefit to the School in the encouragement of the practice and enjoyment of music”.

John Manifold AM (GGS‘05), acting chairman of Council, corrected this understatement of significance by referring to the gift of the Music School as “a miracle”.

“This miracle has been performed quietly and unobtrusively by the four generous people whose names you have just heard. It is one of those things we have hoped for and dreamed about but, waking, have been forced to put from our minds as utterly impossible and utterly unattainable – at least in our time. And it is just plain fact that never in our wildest dreams have we conjured anything so near perfection as this wonderful reality – a complete unit, perfect in its minutest detail; beautiful, and so exactly suited to our every need.”

Nearly 90 years later, the Music School still functions, proof that generous acts – and even dreams – have far-reaching consequences, and transcend generations.

This is an excerpt from a project currently in progress recording the history of philanthropy at Geelong Grammar School.