Half a mark: the day a coalfields choir won in Sydney

On Friday 22 April 1938, page 5 of the Cessnock Eagle carried a notice four sentences long. The Coalfields Combined Choir, "seventy-five singers from Cessnock, Weston and Kurri Kurri", would sing at the City of Sydney Eisteddfod the next afternoon for a cash prize and the City of Sydney Gold Cup. The choir, the Eagle said, would "endeavour to put the coalfields in the musical forefront".

By Monday the result was in the Sydney papers. The coalfields men had won the chief choral contest for male voice choirs, the main prize for men's choirs at an eisteddfod held that year as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations.

Won by half a mark

The Daily Telegraph printed the marks on 25 April. The Combined Coalfield Male Choir of Cessnock, conducted by Robert W. Dixon, scored 178½. The Sydney Male Choir, conducted by Livingstone C. Mote, scored 178.

The adjudicator was Stanley Oliver, conductor and director of music of the Royal Wellington Choral Union. According to the Newcastle Morning Herald, he told the audience it had been one of the most exciting days of his life, because he had heard some of the finest male voice choir singing to be heard anywhere. The standard, he said, was "magnificently high", and the winning choir was "outstanding and a credit to the country".

The Herald ran its report under a two-word headline: "Cessnock Best".

Hymns on the steps

The choir did not go quietly back to the train. After the adjudicator's decision, the Eagle reported a week later, its members "formed up on the steps of the Assembly Hall" in Sydney and sang hymns.

They sang well-known hymns in which the crowd which quickly gathered joined in, and through traffic was held up until the choir dispersed for tea.

At home, the Eagle's "Pithy Pars" column said the news "was received with great jubilation in this district". The choir had gone close for several years, it added, "and at last they have been successful in bringing the trophy to the coalfields."

The prizes, and a small disagreement

The Herald listed the prizes as the City of Sydney Cup, presented by Dr Henry Smallpage, a cash prize donated by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and the F. H. Stewart Challenge Shield. When the trophies went on show in Barney Duggan's window in Cessnock in May, the Eagle valued the gold cup at 50 guineas and the shield at 35, and called the prizes "amongst the finest ever offered for Male Choir competition".

The papers do not agree on the cash. The Eagle's preview said the choir was singing for £100, the Herald's result report gave £60, and the Eagle's May report said £75. We have not found a fourth account to settle it.

The choir held its victory dinner and social at the Church of England Hall in Weston.

The conductor from Weston

The Eagle described the conductor, Mr R. W. Dixon, as "of Weston". Weston's local history site lists an R. W. Dixon as conductor of the Weston Male Voice Party in 1929, a group formed for "the cultivation of vocal music by practice, public performance, and competition". The 1938 choir drew its singers from three towns; its baton came from Weston.

Back on a Cessnock stage

Ten days after the win the choir was singing at home. On the night of 3 May the New Theatre League staged two plays at the Strand Theatre, Cessnock: Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty and Where's That Bomb? The Newcastle Sun's music writer reported that "the big theatre was filled", and that between the plays the choir sang unaccompanied items whose "quality and blend" made them "enjoyable additions to the programme".

In June the choir gave a Sunday afternoon programme at the Methodist church in Cessnock, with the mayor, Alderman J. Brown, presiding. The church "was filled to capacity", and the Eagle recorded the congregation's verdict: the choir had enhanced its reputation as "the first male voice choir in N.S.W."

Cessnock's habit of competing in song is older than the choir and has outlasted it. The town ran its own eisteddfod through the 1920s, and one coalfields eisteddfod is still going: Abermain's runs its dance solos at Vincent Street from 6 October.