Queensland Conservatorium of Music

Australian pianist Nancy Weir (1995-2008) achieved early fame as a child prodigy in Victoria and New South Wales. After studying with Ada Corder, she was accepted as a student by Schnabel at the age of 14. She subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Harold Craxton, and then had lessons with Tobias Matthay. In London, she continued to attract attention by winning major scholarships and prizes. She also made successful appearances at the London Proms and the Wigmore Hall until the outbreak of World War II, when Weir was 24, changed the course of her career. In the early 1950s Weir returned to Australia, where she pursued an active performing career as well as teaching at the Melbourne University Conservatorium and then the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. From 1946, Weir had begun to experience hearing problems; when these were eventually traced to a tumour of the acoustic nerve, she underwent a lifesaving operation which left her totally deaf in one ear. Nonetheless Weir continued her dual career as a performer and pedagogue.

This paper looks first at the pianistic traditions in which Nancy Weir was trained, and the way in which her prodigious talent shaped expectations of her future career. It then examines the way in which she forged a career which combined performance with pedagogy. Weir’s concept of the role of the teacher was a very broad one, and drew on her own very diverse experience of teaching styles in Australia and Europe. She focused not simply on training in repertoire and technique, but worked tirelessly to mould an entire generation of Queensland musicians and audiences through the Students’ Symphonic Safaris and similar initiatives. In Queensland Nancy Weir escaped the boredom of the long distance concert pianist, and in so doing developed a unique way of being a pianist in the Australian context: she brought a deep knowledge of European traditions and the highest standards of performance, but always responded to local conditions. Above all, she integrated music as a practice into the everyday lives of Queenslanders.

McKay, Belinda. ‘From Prodigy to Pedagogue: Nancy Weir’s Life in Pianism.’ In Wendy Lorenz, Philip Gearing and Laurence Lepherd, eds, Proceedings of the 2nd Australian National Piano Pedagogy Conference (Toowoomba: Music Department, University of Southern Queensland, 1996), pp. 74-85

https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/the-last-rag/

Composed by SoundEagle🦅, The Last Rag comes in two versions: the 1996 Original Edition and the 2010 Special Edition.

The Last Rag can be performed or listened to as a self-contained work, though it is also the middle movement of the three-movement Second Piano Sonata entitled “The Time Beyond”.

The Last Rag was first performed by Professor Stephen Emmerson in a music recital at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (formerly the Queensland Conservatorium of Music) in 1996, and was performed by David Pitman who played the Second Piano Sonata “The Time Beyond” on 9 October 1997 at the New Music Collective Concert held in the Recital Hall of Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University featuring SoundEagle🦅’s various compositions.

The Second Piano Sonata “The Time Beyond” (to which The Last Rag belongs) was also one of the major pieces featured at David Pitman’s final piano examination required for his Master’s Degree in Performance. The Last Rag was played by Professor Stephen Emmerson and recorded in the Orchestral Hall at Queensland Conservatorium by Daniel Fournier who, along with Peter Laughton, mastered all the edited tracks onto the CD entitled “The Rag Project” and released in 1998. More than a decade later, it had been fondly studied and played by Connie Stamatopoulou in 2009 and 2010.

The Last Rag had also been featured at least once on radio (in the vicinity of 2000 as the precise date is beyond recall) in one of the programmes hosted by Julian Day, an artist, composer and broadcaster who used to present the long-running experimental music programme called “New Music Up Late” as well as “Classic Breakfast and Afternoons” on ABC Classic FM.

The 2010 Special Edition of The Last Rag continues the salient features of the 1996 Original Edition further, including melodic angularity and atonality, contrapuntal textures, motivic extensions, thematic superpositions, harmonic piquancy, chromaticism, suspended tones, nuanced sonorities and dynamic expressiveness. Due to full-time filial commitments, both the score and the recording of the 2010 Special Edition are only just published by SoundEagle🦅 here in 2020.

Regardless of the degree to which the resulting composition may be regarded as an appropriation, reimagination or reinterpretation of classic Ragtime, The Last Rag has patently honoured the well-established tradition and true spirit of Ragtime in the process of sticking fairly closely to, whilst also deviating inventively from, the musical form of Ragtime.  As the accompanying poem indicates, apart from conveying certain personal and philosophical messages, The Last Rag also serves as a meta-commentary or meta-narrative to ragtime as a century-old genre, evoking nostalgia and contemplation, as well as simultaneously reflecting, acknowledging and transcending the eras and heritages of ragtime and related genres. Overall, SoundEagle🦅 has sought greater freedom, unity, sophistication and expressiveness in The Last Rag to reach beyond the stereotype and confined scope of this unique genre whilst exploring innovative techniques to decisively push the envelope of the Ragtime vernacular and its vocabularies.

Those who have performed, orchestrated or analysed The Last Rag to a high standard are welcome to contact SoundEagle🦅 for the possibility of their work being featured.

Major sections:
    Enlargeable Banner with Caption and Description
    Special Heading with Animated Moths/Butterflies
    The Last Rag Poem
    The Last Rag Notes
    The Last Rag Poll
    The Last Rag Visualization
    Audio Playbacks
    Video Captures of Score with Music
    Gallery of Score Sheets
    Printable Scores
    Ragtime Encyclopaedia
    Conversations between SoundEagle and Readers/Audience

Projet de recherche
                                  SHAKESPEARE  et  L’OPéRA

J'espère sincèrement que vous serez satisfait(e)s du résultat et que nous aurons bientôt l'occasion de reprendre ensemble ce chemin pour d'autres projets. Si vous désirez en acquérir d'autres exemplaires, vous pouvez vous adresser aux éditions LIM : lim@lim.it.  Vous remerciant pour l'attention que vous voudrez bien accorder à cette publication, je vous serai reconnaissant de relayer l'information. Par ailleurs, une présentation de ce volume aura lieu à l'issue de la prochaine séance du séminaire « les Romantiques et l'Opéra », samedi 20 mai, à l'École Normale Supérieure. Je vous enverrai une convocation en ce sens une semaine avant et serai ravi de vous retrouver à cette occasion. Vous remerciant d'avoir participé à ce projet, je vous prie de croire à mes sentiments les plus amicaux Camillo Faverzani

This paper explores the career trajectory by which pianist Nancy Weir redefined what it means to be a classical musician in Queensland, as well as some implications for Queensland identity of her attempts to reconcile the practice of European art music with the conditions of cultural and social life in this state. Through her activities as a pianist and popularizer of art music, Nancy Weir moved Queensland further along the path to a musical culture which exists not just an exotic specimen on the stages of showpiece cultural centres in a few large cities, but which is naturalized in the soil of Cunnamulla or Cooktown. In Queensland, the former child prodigy finally cast off the straitjacket of the concert pianist and developed a distinctive way of being a musician in the Queensland context, bringing with her a deep knowledge of European traditions and the highest standards of performance, but always responding to local conditions and integrating art music as a part of everyday life. In coming to Queensland, Weir symbolically reversed her childhood journey from the colonies to the European centre of musical culture. She found a role to replace the elusive dream, created for her by others, of becoming ‘the world’s greatest woman pianist.’ And in constructing a new identity for herself, she has helped to inscribe a musical identity on the canvas of Queensland.

McKay, Belinda. ‘“Beethoven by Bus”: Nancy Weir and Queensland Music.’ Queensland Review 2.2 (1995), 27-38.