Percival Kirby

Percival Kirby (1887-1970) Scottish-born historian, musicologist, composer, arranger, and conductor.

Biography

Percival Robson Kirby was born on 17 April 1887 in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was educated at the Aberdeen Grammar School and the Aberdeen Higher Grade School, and was awarded a Degree of Master of the Arts from the University of Aberdeen after three years study with Philosophy and Biology as principal subjects. He then continued his musical studies at the Royal College of Music for three years, and studied composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, in whose College Orchestra he played timpani.

In 1914, Kirby immigrated to South Africa and was appointed as music organiser of the Natal Education Department. In 1921, he was appointed Professor of Music at the newly established University College in Johannesburg, later University of the Witwatersrand, where he remained for 31 years until his retirement in 1952. Here he directed the university orchestra and was responsible for numerous performances of little-known operas. In 1924, he was honoured as a Fellow of the RCM. In 1927, he founded and conducted the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra.

In 1931, he graduated with a Doctorate of Literature from Wits, the title of his dissertation being “Literary Contributions to the study of Music”. In 1936, he pioneered studies on Khoisan music through an expedition to the Kalahari Desert.

Between 29 May and 19 June 1958 Kirby was invited to guest-conduct the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra.

Kirby died in Grahamstown on 7 February 1970.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Soon after his arrival in South Africa he began studying and recording the musical practices of South African people, and advocated that it be studied in detail in South African schools. His most intense period of research was between 1923 and 1933 when he went on field trips, aiming to collect a comprehensive selection of southern African musical instruments, recording the music on wax cylinders, and photographing and sometimes sketching what he observed. He undertook more than nine expeditions as well as many shorter excursions around South Africa. He was hosted by local chiefs and taught to play the instruments he encountered. He managed to purchase many of them, and this collection, now known as the Kirby Collection, is housed at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town. In 1934 Kirby's The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa was published by Oxford University Press; the book remains as a major reference on the subject.

In a production of The Tempest at the Palladium Theatre, Johannesburg by the University Players in 1923, he was part of an ensemble of six who provided incidental music.

He composed the operas Open or Shut (1943) and A Maid of Amsterdam (1952).

Awards

In 1965, Kirby received an honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, and in 1969 from Wits.

Sources

Hilde Roos. 2012. 'Indigenisation and history: how opera in South Africa became South African opera'. Acta Academica Supplementum. 2012(1).

Sjoerd Alkema. 2012. "Conductors of the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra, 1914-1965: a historical perspective". University of Cape Town. Unpublished PhD thesis.

https://humanities.uct.ac.za/apc/biography-colonial-music-archive-percival-kirby-collection

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60594

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