A Piece of Australian Musical History at St. George'sThe First Sunday of Lent, 2010 at St. Georges East Ivanhoe, saw the first performance in well over 50 years of a Passacaglia by the Melbourne composer Aileen Hedgemont.  This piece, a substantial work lasting some 8 minutes, was written by Mrs. Hedgemont in 1951 when a music teacher at Fitzroy High School. It was performed twice that year, most notably by Bernard Clarke at All Saints Anglican Church East St. Kilda but was never published. And although the work is listed in the Catalogue of Australian Organ Composers of the Organ Historical Trust of Australia it was apparently never subsequently performed - possibly due to the inaccessibility of the musical score. In 2008/9 a former student of Mrs. Hedgemont, Professor Michael Cwikel began a process aimed at having the piece recorded, in order to replace a very old and poor quality sound recording given to Mrs. Hedgemont soon after the Passacaglia was written. This eventually led to the preparation of a new computer set musical text and to the performance of the piece at the conclusion of the Sunday service at St. Georges on February 21st 2010, in the presence of the Composer and a number of friends, family members and former students. Mrs Hedgmenont was then presented with a recording of the Passacaglia which may be heard here. As Musical Director at St. George's I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with the composer in preparing this work for recording and performance and to have had the pleasure of publicly performing it for her. Roger Brown |