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Keyboard Institute

By nurturing the talents of the musicians of tomorrow, 
The Australian National University’s Keyboard Institute broadens the horizons of keyboard art. 

The Keyboard Institute is built upon The ANU School of Music’s long-established distinction in keyboard performance.

Through national and international partnerships, the Keyboard Institute reaches out to students, scholars, professional musicians and the broader community of music lovers who have a passion for keyboard music, ranging from western music’s past to cutting edge innovation and contemporary practice.

The Keyboard Institute provides an environment where keyboard related activities occur, such as:

  • Performance (including performance practice, improvisation and jazz),
  • Pedagogy and composition,
  • Research, and 
  • Instrument making and restoration.

In collaboration with the ANU Centre for New Media Arts, the Keyboard Institute continues to respond to the challenge of the ‘new’.

Read More About The Keyboard Institute

 

Head of Area

Associate Professor Dr Geoffrey Lancaster AM
Bachelor of Arts (Music) (ANU); Master of Music (University of Tasmania); Doctor of Philosophy (Sydney University); Postgraduate Fortepiano Specialist Study (Royal Conservatory, The Hague)
T: +61 2 6125 9781
E: geoffrey.lancaster@anu.edu.au

Performance Staff

Susanne Powell
T: +61 2 61255761
E: Susanne.Powell@anu.edu.au

Professor Dr Larry Sitsky
Higher Doctorate of Fine Arts (ANU), Fellow Australian Academy of the Humanities, Diploma State Conservatorium of Music, Sydney
T: +61 2 6125 5765
E: Larry.Sitsky@anu.edu.au

Arnan Wiesel
BMus (Curtis Institute of Music)
T: +61 2 6125 4878
E: Arnan.Wiesel@anu.edu.au

Matt Thompson 
BMus Jazz (Syd Con) Piano
T: +61 2 6125 5727
E: Matt.Thompson@anu.edu.au

Alan Hicks
Vocal Coach and Accompanist
T: +61 2 6125 5750
F: +61 2 6248 0997
E: Alan.Hicks@anu.edu.au 

Accompanists


About the Keyboard Institute

Goals

The goals of the Keyboard Institute are to:

- Promote keyboard performance, keyboard composition, and keyboard related research activity to the local, national and international community,
- Be a national centre of keyboard pedagogy and historically informed performance practice, and
- Facilitate and create unique collaborations and partnerships with the new media arts.

Structure and Location

The Keyboard Institute is located within the School of Music and is a place dedicated to the study of keyboard instruments, a research facility and a concert organisation. Its relationship and location within The Australian National University ensures a productive exchange with a diversity of instrumental and musicology studies.

Research

Research into the complexities associated with music and musicmaking empowers creative musicians to better understand the works that they wish to perform. It also offers stimulation to the imagination, and both enables musical scores to be interpreted and music to be made in a richly contextualised way.

A Place of Study

By providing specialised musical education, professional training and research contexts at the highest levels, the Keyboard Institute enables students to develop skills, knowledge, understanding and resourcefulness which will equip them to contribute significantly to cultural life both in Australia and internationally.

The Keyboard Institute offers courses of study in ‘period’ keyboard instruments, historically informed performance practice, pedagogical keyboard methods, and the care and maintenance of keyboard instruments.

Graduates of the Keyboard Institute will join the numerous distinguished alumni of The Australia National University’s music program, including many who are currently at the forefront of keyboard performance and scholarship both internationally and nationwide.

The Keyboard Institute provides opportunities for learning within the context of one-on-one lessons, workshops, lectures, colloquia, symposia and concerts provided within the framework of the Institute’s program of studies.

Scholars at the Keyboard Institute will have access not only to leading Australian and international master-teachers, virtuoso scholar-musicians, specialist keyboard instrument makers and restorers but also to the instrumental resources which make up the Institute’s unique keyboard collection.

Introduction to the Collection

In October 2004, the Australian National University established its Keyboard Institute. The Institute was
officially launched in March 2005 with an already-growing collection of keyboard instruments. Instruments comprising the Institute’s keyboard collection reveal the quality, variety and innovative thinking demonstrated throughout the history of the evolution of keyboard instruments; more than a few instruments in the collection represent monuments in the history of music.

Keyboard instruments of the past differ radically from their 21st century counterparts in design, construction,
sound, and touch. During the period between the second half of the 18th century and the early-20th century,
the rapidity of development in keyboard instrument design was such that the sound and touch of instruments
made five years apart is markedly different. Composer-performers such as Frescobaldi, Froberger, Louis and
François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, JS Bach, CPE Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy and Rachmaninov were aware of the latest developments in keyboard instrument design, and wrote specifically for the unique qualities of sound and touch inherent in the instruments of their preferred makers.

Historical keyboard instruments not only provide a ‘voice’ from the past for the ‘pronunciation’ and ‘inflection’ of earlier music, but are also the most appropriate research tools through which issues arising from historically-informed performance practice can best be investigated (the term ‘historically-informed performance practice’ refers to the conventions of performance and characteristics of notation that appear to have been prevalent among knowledgeable performers prior to our time, in different countries, and for different composers, including those customs that were so commonly understood that they were not notated, as well as aspects of performance that were too subtle to notate). Historical instruments, when given life through historically-informed performance, provide a vital key to our understanding and interpreting the incomplete record represented by musical notation, and enables a musical score to be read, understood and interpreted in a richly-contextualised way.

The cultural phenomenon of the ‘early music’ movement has enabled music lovers to prize earlier keyboard
instruments as more than just historical curiosities; as a result, not only is the future of clavichords and
harpsichords as the instruments of choice for the performance of Renaissance and Baroque keyboard
repertoire secure, but the piano of the Classic era and mid-to-late-19th century has escaped from a long
silence.

The ANU Keyboard Institute continues to expand its collection of keyboard instruments. The ANU School
of Music thus provides a nationally unique context within which virtuoso scholar-musicians, musicologists,
instrument makers and audiences may develop informed insights in relation to repertoire and sound sources

Dr. Geoffrey Lancaster AM
Professor of Fortepiano
Curator, ANU Keyboard Institute collection
(May 2007)

Click the following link to view the Keyboard Insititute Collection.