A curtain call for Christina Boughen

Guest blogger: Juanita Simmonds, recipient of the Christina Boughen OAM Fellowship for 2022

If, on the afternoon of Sunday 25 August 1940 you had switched on ABC radio, you would have heard several segments of music, including a short recital by Brisbane pianist, Christine Whyte. (1)

Even if listeners enjoyed the music, they probably wouldn’t have clapped at the end of the radio broadcast. Nonetheless, over the ensuing decades, audiences would hear this musician perform often in national radio programs, the touring Mobil Quest concerts, and concerts in South-East Queensland.

She was born in Scotland in 1920 and named Christina Urquhart Whyte. The family moved to Brisbane when she was six, and both Christina and her sister Margaret soon demonstrated musical talent in eisteddfods and exams. (2)

Christina went on to perform a vast amount of solo, duo, chamber and accompaniment repertoire in professional concerts and engagements. Although born in an era when married women typically stepped back from public spheres to raise children, Christina remained on stage including after she married fellow musician Robert Boughen in 1951 and started a family.

Margaret Whyte also performed, singing for the ABC as a vocalist and chorus member. What’s more, she kept scrapbooks with countless newspaper clippings of concert promotions, advertising and reviews that show the extent of Christina’s musical vocation. (3)

My project, “Christina Boughen: A Queensland musical artist and woman” will draw on The Christina Boughen OAM and Robert Boughen OBE papers, which include the scrapbooks mentioned above, and Christina’s concert programs.

As Christina played frequently in Brisbane City Council’s civic concerts and subsequently produced them as well, in future blogs I will look at Christina’s longstanding contribution to this aspect of Brisbane’s cultural life and other facets of her work.

Christina Boughen (1920-2014) was a Queensland figure – a musician, a woman – who had a successful performance career.

And that is worth applauding.

Juanita Simmonds

Collection

• Christina Boughen OAM and Robert Boughen OBE papers, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. 

References

• "A.B.C. Radio Entertainment", The Beaudesert Times, 23 August 1940, 10. This newspaper can be viewed on Trove.
• Christina Boughen and Margaret Whyte scrapbook (1929-1937), Unit ID 32654/2, comprises newspaper clippings of the early achievements of Chrissie (as she was called as a child) and Margaret Whyte.
• Christina Boughen scrapbook (1936-1988), Unit ID 32654/3.

Other blogs

• Concerts aplenty: Christina Boughen and the mid-century City Hall performances
• Christina Boughen and the Brisbane City Council concerts, 1978-1997