This chapter considers evidence of European music making in the early colonial towns of Sydney and Hobart. Two concert series in 1826 show the role of music in reimagining colonial towns as organised and aesthetic cities. The musicians that led the concerts shaped these musical worlds, bringing European instruments, forms of opera and vocal music, chamber, orchestral and solo instrumental music that would continue to develop over the next two centuries in Australia’s urban centres. We trace several key musicians who shaped the early phase of these towns’ music-making, looking to the cultural practices of the British Isles and continental Europe. While contextual evidence from this time reminds us of the ongoing presence of Aboriginal people, there is only an occasional glimpse of the musicians’ awareness that their efforts to import a European musical culture took place on Aboriginal land.

This chapter explores the music histories of two internationally recognizable Australian sites – The Sydney Opera House and Uluru. By examining music’s relationship with place, the chapter discusses millennial-old musical histories, early colonial negotiations and contemporary musical encounters. The world-renowned Sydney Opera House opened to gala performances, protest and acclaim in 1973. Positioned on Sydney Harbour, the site has variously been known as Bennelong Point and Tubowgule, has fostered music making for millennia, and continues to be symbolic of Australia’s musical identity. Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) is a Dreaming site and geological phenomenon in Australia’s geographical ‘Red Centre’ with long-established importance in Anangu songlines, which also holds significant symbolic value in contemporary music making. Centring this account in place, the chapter explores the musical encounters that have shaped music in Australia across time, drawing attention to the acoustic possibilities of Country, people and stories of the past.

This concluding chapter considers the dynamics of music and place, issues of diversity, and the impact of Indigenous artists on building bridges to a whole history of music in this place. Reflecting on the four interlinked themes guiding this Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia: Continuities, Encounters, Diversities, and Institutions, it takes up musical threads not covered elsewhere in the volume, discussing pub rock and hip hop to consider dynamics of exclusion, inclusion, and identity. In advocating for a move away from anthropocentrism toward ecocentrism in considering the relationships between music and the place now known as Australia, it simultaneously foregrounds unresolved tensions associated with Indigeneity, settler-colonialism, and prejudice in music that are ultimately intertwined with concepts of place and belonging.

This Introduction provides an account of how Music in Australia has been conceptualised in previous music histories. It shows that music historians have sought to draw boundaries around what Australian music is by emphasizing the milestones of European settlement, and have often struggled to reconcile Indigenous music making and non-Indigenous music into one account of music in Australia. It explores also the history of cultural institutions in Australia that have built the foundations for music in Australia. Stepping back to look at these cultural institutions and the wide ranging music making in the past and present, the introduction summarises the book’s contents across the themes of Continuities, Encounters, Diversities and Institutions.