Self-guided Tour of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music

This tour will take you through the public areas of the Con and give you an insight into the building’s history, the personalities of some of its directors and a brief description of its main auditoria. The areas where you can visit are shown in black and those not open to the public, except on recital and guided tour days, are shown in blue.

The building

In 1815, Governor Macquarie commissioned Francis Greenway to design a stables and servants’ block on this site to serve the then existing Government House on the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets and its planned successor on its current site. Greenway based his design on two castles in Scotland and the original building was arranged around an open exercise yard for the horses, where Verbrugghen Hall now stands.

During the nineteenth century many internal changes were made and a haphazard approach to maintenance meant that by 1915, the building was in a very dilapidated state. The New South Wales government of W A Holman decided that this would be an excellent location for a Conservatorium and spent some 22,000 pounds on a main auditorium and converting rooms. The first Director, Henri Verbrugghen, 1915-1921, still had to spend more money as the concert hall was not finished and the initial conversion of some rooms was not suitable for their intended use. A small performance hall and a new wing were added in 1919, at the same time High School was established.

In 1957, Sir Bernard Heinze became Director and he found the place dilapidated and the Concert Hall crumbling. There was only a buffet and a small meeting room for the students, no staff common room, and the library comprised two tables and 12 chairs and its books were kept in metal filing cabinets in the corridors. The High School was housed in three haphazardly located rooms and the five staff had to keep all their equipment and books in a room of nine square metres!

Four levels were added in 1964 for the High School and library, and studios and a concert hall were built in the period 1964-1972. However, since its inception the building has suffered from damp, poor soundproofing, overcrowding and infestations of various types.

Between 1972 and 1984 there were seven separate enquiries into accommodation and between 1993 and 1997, four more. By 1995, however, the Conservatorium operated out of eight different buildings around the city and the NSW Government of Bob Carr decided to rebuild at a budgeted cost of $69 million.

The current building, designed by NSW Government architect Chris Johnson and the architectural practice of Daryl Jackson, Robin Dyke and Robert Tanner was completed in 2001 at a cost of $144 million and won an Australia Award of Merit for Urban Design Excellence in 2002.

The architectural challenge was to create a working Conservatorium and to open up vistas of the Botanic Gardens and the original Greenway stables. Plus, the site presented particular difficulties as the Cahill Expressway bounds it to the northwest and the City Circle rail line runs underneath the administration area and practice rooms in the eastern part of the building. Thus there were many soundproofing and noise reduction issues to overcome. The answer to these problems was to build the accommodation underground and to separate the whole building from the sandstone in which it is built. Thus the building rests on rubber pads throughout except for the Recital Halls where a different solution was necessary because of the close proximity of the rail tunnel. Each of the 70 practice studios and all four recital areas are physically separated from the structure to avoid sound and vibration transmission, thus creating a “room within a room”. So really, although some 30,000 square metres were built, the building is twice that size.

Let’s take a tour

Level 3

On this level, a convict-built roadway and gutters uncovered during the building’s recent reconstruction can be seen. These are located adjacent to the entrance doors and between the stairway and the northern glass wall.

On this level is the Verbrugghen Hall, the Conservatorium's principal recital venue. Named for the first Director of the Conservatorium, Henri Verbrugghen (1915-1921), the hall seats 500 and has a stage large enough for a full symphony orchestra. At the rear of the stage is the 1973 Pogson organ built at West Pennant Hills, New South Wales.

Under the stalls are the foundations of the 1790 bakery and mill that stood on the site before the stables block was built.

There is a clerestory of windows depicting “Music and Nature” in the north and south walls that dates back to 1915 .

Level 2

Round to your right as you come down the stairs is a cistern that was unearthed during the reconstruction. This dates from the same period as the 1790 bakery and was used for water storage for the bakery. You can see the marks on the inside of this seven-tonne piece of sandstone where the convict’s adze chipped out the stone to form the tank. (Archaeologists tell us that the convict must have been right-handed.) The top of the cistern was formerly about one metre higher, i.e. approximately at ground level, and it was modified over the years as building and road works took place on the site.

Continuing along this corridor brings you to the Library, which is open to the public to use, but borrowing material is only available to the students and staff. The library is on two levels; the upper is all music in various forms – CDs, sheet, tapes, and the lower level is all books. Both levels are served by natural light through the large circular roof.

If you would like to look at any music books or listen to any recordings, please ask the library staff for assistance.

Coming out of the library and back past the cistern, proceed along the walkway to the glass door (as far as you are allowed to go, I’m afraid). Look at the panels of 1829 drawings on the northern wall and see how many of those buildings you can still see around the city today. Clue: they are mostly in the panels to the left, except, of course, the Con itself.

You can also see where the two metre saw was used to cut through the sandstone.

On this level is the entrance to the Music Workshop. This is a multi-purpose room seating 220. The stage is a complex structure, part of which can be lowered two metres to form an orchestra pit. The first few rows of seats can be slid back under the back rows to create a large open floor. There is a sound recording studio and facilities for audio-visual presentations. This room is used for rehearsals, practice, teaching, examinations, recitals and even for opera performances.

Level 1

The Atrium houses a collection of artefacts which were unearthed during reconstruction, a lot from inside the cistern on Level 2. There is also a brick drain which was part of the road works.

The Atrium had to be moved from its originally planned location when the nineteenth century road and drain works were uncovered so the upper levels walls were shifted to the south to maintain scale. The timber steps perform a number of functions – steps to the East and West Recital Halls, sitting space for students and visitors, and informal practice and performance stages!


The Recital Halls are identical. Each seats 120 but the truly remarkable feature of the rooms is out of sight, underneath. Each room is supported by 15 concrete columns, at the top of which are eight coil springs about 350mm high, set in a resinous material to dampen vibration. The walls of the halls slope backwards so that sound is not bounced back and forth. These walls are of blackbutt bonded to 300 mm concrete; there is then a 50mm gap to separate the room from the actual building structure.

Outstanding Directors

Without diminishing the achievements of any of the directors, three stand out in various ways:

• Henri Verbrugghen 1915-1921
  
  The first director, Verbrugghen, was a Belgian conductor and violinist. Eventually fell out with the NSW Government over his salary of 1250 pounds, which he said should be doubled because he also conducted the orchestras. That orchestra played 450 concerts between 1919 and 1921 and toured NSW, Victoria and New Zealand. Around Sydney they played in schools and cinemas to bring music to the people.
  
  
• Sir Eugene Goosens 1948-1956
  
  Goosens raised musical standards exponentially. For example, when he came to the post, to graduate in piano a student had to have six pieces in the repertoire; Goosens changed that to 42!
  
  He composed a number of pieces, including Judith where he cast for the title role a young soprano named Joan Sutherland. It was Goosens who first suggested that Bennelong Point should be the site of an opera house.
  
  
• Rex Hobcroft 1972-1982
  
  A major innovator, Hobcroft introduced jazz studies, Church music, music therapy, electronic music and piano tuning as Conservatorium's courses.

As you leave

On you way out, stop for a cup of coffee and a snack in the Music Café at the entrance to the Con. This space, over two levels, was designed for small group jazz and as a nightclub, so that the sound absorption qualities are of a high order. Whilst you sit and sip, enjoy the splendour of the Greenway stable block and think of all the fine Australian musicians who have been here before you – James Morrison, Dale Barlow, Roger Woodward and many others.