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An Adventurous Life - Emily Sophia Patton: Music Teacher, Traveller and Foreign Correspondent

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posted on 2025-01-14, 00:10 authored by ROBIN STEVENSROBIN STEVENS
Emily Sophia Patton (1831–1912) began her professional career as an actress in Melbourne before turning to music teaching at her home in Richmond. She was one of Nellie Melba’s first music teachers at Presbyterian Ladies College. After the death of her first husband, she re-married and had two children. A series of tragedies—the deaths of her son, her father and second husband—gave her “such a distaste for Australia” that she emigrated at the age of fifty-eight with her daughter to Japan where she set up a music teaching practice in Yokohama. Patton was a fervent advocate of the Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching music and promoted the method widely in Japan. Her daughter died within a few years and, being on her own, Patton travelled extensively in the Far East and later transferred her music teaching practice to Shanghai. She was a prolific social commentator and wrote articles for Melbourne and Sydney newspapers as well as annual circular letters sent to friends in Australia. Her professional enterprise, adventurous spirit, strength of character and resilience in the face of her life’s tragedies epitomises a truly liberated woman.

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Place

Melbourne, Ausrtalia

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ArtsEdPress

Medium

Monograph

Research Statement

This monograph is a biographical account of a nineteenth and early twentieth century music educator that is part of the broader field of music education history. It builds on two previously published journal articles and a published conference paper, and it gives a fuller account of the life and work of an Australian music educator who was also a social commentator and widely travelled foreign newspaper correspondent in the Far East. The monograph is in the tradition of historical biography. This research presents a definitive account of the subject's life history which was previously incomplete. This monograph highlights the breadth of the subject's contributions to music teaching practice as well as documenting her work as a social commentator and newspaper reporter. The research documents the personal resilience, adventurous spirit and strength of character of a single woman in Japanese and Chinese society. This monograph builds on the favorable reception of previously published articles, the most prominent of which has had 45 views/downloads and has a five-year impact factor of 4.7.

Size or Duration of Work

73 pp.

Affiliation

Robin Stevens, University of Melbourne

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