Music of the Anglican Cathedral and selected Anglican parish churches of the Diocese of Sydney 1869-1940

This Thesis is about the music in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney; this being the Cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia and in several nearby Anglican parish churches over a period of seventy years. It provides information as to the music sung by the Choirs of the Cathedral and of some of the parish churches over a period of considerable change. It touches on the music sung and instruments played, mainly the pipe organ, which accompanied singing in church. It begins in 1869, the year following the opening of St Andrew’s Cathedral on 30 November 1868. St Andrew’s Cathedral was the first Anglican Cathedral in Australia. It ends in 1940 when Australia had been at war for over a year. It concerns church life in the Cathedral between these years, the standards of the music sung, churchmanship issues, the leading musicians, the conditions under which church musicians worked and the influences which the Church of England had on the Australian Anglican Church. The main sources of the information used have been secular and church newspapers and minutes of meetings of the Cathedral Chapter and of Parish Councils. The Thesis demonstrates how heavily the Australian Church relied on, and was tied to, English church music and practice of the time. It stops short of the radical changes which took place in the Australian social order, in Australian attitudes towards England, and in Church music soon after the conclusion of the war.