George William Louis Marshall-Hall (28 March 1862 – 18 July 1915) was an English-born musician, composer, conductor, poet and controversialist who lived and worked in Australia from 1891 till his death in 1915. According to his birth certificate, his surname was 'Hall' and 'Marshall' was his fourth given name,Certified Copy of An Entry of Birth, Given on 22 January 1975 at the General Register Office, London, No. BC871181 which commemorated his physiologist grandfather, Marshall Hall (1790–1857). George's father, a barrister – who, however, never practised that professionA. L. Munn The Alpine Club Register 1864–1876 London, 1926, pp. 6–8 – appears to have been the first to hyphenate the namesee e.g. Marshall Hall to J. H. Collins 18 September 1875 and 21 October 1875 in Archives of the Mineralogical Society, London and his sons followed suit."Tristan and Isolde" by John E. Marshall Hall in Musical World 18 January 1889
Family Marshall-Hall was born on 28 March 1862 in London and died on 18 July 1915 in Fitzroy, Victoria. On 5 April 1884, he married May Hunt at St Matthew's Church, Bayswater, London. She died in 1901. On 6 March 1902, in Melbourne, Marshall-Hall married Kathleen Hoare, who for some time had been passed as his wife. George Marshall-Hall and May Marshall-Hall (née Hunt)'s daughter Elsa Mary Marshall-Hall was born on 17 August 1891. She married John Thomas Inman in Traralgon on 17 August 1917. She was a teacher at a number of Victorian country schools. She also taught piano and, like her father, she was a composer. 29 of her works have been preserved, many at the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne. Elsa Marshall-Hall died in 1980, and is buried at Brighton Cemetery, where her father was also buried.
Early life Marshall-Hall's father owned a 65-ton iron ocean-going yacht which, he said, was kept "in great measure to give my family fresh air, the opportunity of seeing foreign ports, of leading a healthy life such as cannot be led on shore". He was, he declared, a "family yachtsman who likes to see his youngsters' skin-tanned".Field Quarterly August 1871 pp. 170–171 As a child George probably participated in family trips on this vessel when it explored Norwegian fjords and grappled for broken telegraph cable in the Atlantic Ocean.see e.g. Geological Magazine 1869 p. 528
Born in London, Marshall-Hall began his schooling in Brighton. But then his family moved to Blackheath in London's southeast where in 1873 he enrolled in the Blackheath Proprietary SchoolPrincipal's Register, New Boys: Visitors' Book in Local History Department, Manor house Library, Lewisham, UK and at much the same time began taking private music lessons.Typescript in Marshall-Hall papers, Melbourne University Archives Group 1/1/2; the writer identifies himself as Marshall-Hall's brother which means he is either John E. or Algernon S. Marshall Hall His interest in music, according to his brother, had first been aroused by his paternal grandmother and his great-uncle. The latter, it seems, was himself an organist and composer.J.E. Marshall-Hall to William Moore n.d. Marshall-Hall papers, Melbourne University Archives Group 1 1/1/2 In 1878 the family moved again, this time to Montreux on the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where George formed a choral society which met to practise in the family dining room.Typescript in Marshall-Hall papers, Melbourne University Archives Group 1/1/2; the writer identifies himself as Marshall-Hall's brother which means he is either John E. or Algernon S. Marshall-Hall
By 1880, having become proficient in both French and German, he was back in England teaching languages and music, first at the Oxford Military College, Cowley,John Tecklenborough, Seven Years' Cadet Life. Containing the Records of the Oxford Military College ..., Oxford, 1883, p. 12 and afterwards at Newton Abbot Proprietary College, South Devon.Testimonial from G. Townsend Warner 21 October 1885 Melbourne University Council Letter Book 3, 295 in Melbourne University Central Registry Then, late in 1886, bent now on devoting himself to a career in music, he returned briefly to Switzerland to take up a position as organist in LausanneNewtonian vol. 12, p.176 before becoming musical director of Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berkshire.Melbourne University Council Minute Book 3, 297 In 1888 he was appointed orchestral and choral conductor as well as composition- and singing-teacher at the London Organ School and Instrumental College of Music.J.E. Marshall-Hall to William Moore n.d. Marshall-Hall papers, Melbourne University Archives Group 1 i/i/2 At the same time articles written by him on musical subjects began appearing in English newspapers and magazines.see e.g. Magazine of Music June 1888, August 1888
He was later to claim that his father disapproved of his choice of career, declaring that "he wouldn't want any damn fiddler in his family" and, when thwarted in this regard, cutting his son off without a shilling. So George apparently received no paternal assistance when, unable to get enough work in his chosen profession on occasions in the 1880s, he was compelled, he recalled, to sleep in the snow in Trafalgar Square and to button his jacket up to the neck when in polite society to conceal his lack of a shirt collar and waistcoat.Ella Winter to Herbert Brookes, 9 January 1921 in Marshall-Hall papers, Melbourne University Archives Group 1/5
His fortunes took a turn for the better in 1890 when he was appointed as foundation Ormond Professor of Music to head the newly created Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne.Sir Arthur Brownless to Graham Berry, 1 September 1890, in Melbourne University Council Letter Book 3, 351, Melbourne University Central Registry He had few formal qualifications for the position. In 1883 he had enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London but left after only a single term,Students' Register, Department of Portraits, Royal College of Music, London having, according to a friend, become "impatient with the college's slow ways and slower Professors".John Runciman in Magazine of Music, June 1892 This was the sum total of his tertiary education in music. His only other relevant achievement apart from his freelance music journalism had been a February 1888 performance by the London Symphony Orchestra of an excerpt from his opera Harold.Programme note on "The Defence of Earl Godwin before the Witan" from Harold in Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music archives, Melbourne The appointment of Australian university professors at that time was usually based on recommendations from expert committees set up for the purpose in London. The deficiency of Marshall-Hall's formal qualifications for the Melbourne chair is reflected in the fact that, although he was one of 48 applicants when the post was first advertised in March 1888, the London committee declined to make a recommendation. One member, the Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, Frederick Ouseley, conceded that there were "some eminently respectable men, and good musicians in the ordinary sense of the words" among the applicants, adding however that there were "certainly not five – hardly one – of whom I could honestly speak as first-class ... The best men have not become candidates."Frederick Ouseley to Victorian agent-general Graham Berry, 3 May 1888, Melbourne University Central Registry Correspondence file 1888/31 Certainly two other committee members, principal of the Royal Academy of Music Alexander Mackenzie and concert pianist Sir Charles Hallé, while echoing Ouseley's view, agreed that Marshall-Hall was the only candidate who was "near to the mark".A. C. Mackenzie to Graham Berry, 30 May 1888, C. Hallé to G. Berry, 27 April 1888, in Melbourne University Central Registry Correspondence file 1888/31 But when later that year the job was re-advertised, Marshall-Hall was still not considered the most suitable applicant by the committee, which selected four names, including his, to send to the Council of the University of Melbourne, but declined to rank them.G. Berry to Sir A. C. Brownless 1 February 1889 Melbourne University Central Registry Correspondence file The impasse was broken in 1890 when the Council obtained private advice from Hallé (then on a concert tour of Australia) and (indirectly) from Mackenzie and the Director of the Royal College of Music, Sir George Grove, all of whom recommended the appointment of Marshall-Hall.Sir William Cleaver Robinson to G. Berry, 19 June 1890, Melbourne University Council Letter Book; Australian Critic, 1 October 1890; Melbourne University Review, October 1890; A. C. Brownless to G. Berry, 2 September 1890, Melbourne University Council Letter Book 3, 351 in Melbourne University Central Registry
Musical contributions in Australia As an extrovert, Marshall-Hall prized "constant activity ... constant striving" that absorbs one's "whole energy",Alma Mater June 1900, August 1899 arousing "a condition of ... superabundant life"Herald, 28 February 1901 and enabling one to partake "to the utmost of the joy of living".Weekly Times, 30 December 1899 And this outlook was reflected in the way he lived his life. Contemporaries remarked on his loud laughter and his habit of humming operatic airs as he strode around town, of tapping his baton importunately on the podium and glaring at restive concert audiences to achieve silence when conducting, and of writing explosive comments – such as "O superfine Assiduity" and "monstrous ignorance" – in the margins of books he read, by way of showing his contempt for the writer.e.g. Ernest Scott, A History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1936, p. 145
This same insatiable energy governed his musical activities in Melbourne, where he arrived to take up his new position at the beginning of 1891. During the following quarter of a century he was to exercise a wide-ranging and deep influence on music education, appreciation and performance in his new home. He soon showed that he would not be satisfied with simply presiding over the university's new music department with its degree and diploma courses. The former was focused on composition, the latter on performance, but there was little sustained demand for either. In the whole of the first decade of the chair's existence only three students obtained a degree in music and twenty-three acquired a diploma.Melbourne University Calendar, 1902, pp. 361–387 Moreover, Marshall-Hall complained that he had no control over the practical work of diploma students, as apart from himself the university employed no music staff, which meant that students had to take private lessons from teachers of their choice in the external community.Argus, 1 December 1891 To overcome this problem and increase enrolments Marshall-Hall called for the establishment of a university conservatorium,Argus, 20 February 1891 and on 19 July 1894, legislation was passed to create the first conservatorium in the British Empire within a university. With the professor as ex-officio directorMelbourne University Calendar, 1895, Melbourne, 1894 pp. 3425–3426 it opened for business in 1895, renting premises initially in the unfinished Queen's Coffee Palace on the corner of Rathdowne and Victoria streets, Carlton,Leader, 9 March 1895 but moving soon afterwards to the ground-floor of the Victorian Artists' Society building in East Melbourne.Victorian Artists' society papers, Latrobe Library MS7593, Box 586/2 From the beginning enrolments boomed.