Hector R Maclean

Hector R. Maclean was a British music teacher, organist and composer who spent much of his career in Sydney during the second half of the nineteenth century.

He arrived in Sydney in 1874 as organist of St James' Church. Shortly afterwards he was appointed local secretary of the Trinity College of Music in London and, in 1878, used that post to found the institution's first branch in the city. He wrote theoretical treatises for Australian students and served as a music examiner at the University of Sydney.

He composed songs, pieces for piano and organ, and the patriotic cantata Australia (1880), written for the Intercolonial Exhibition. In 1886 he prepared the choral music for the first local performance of Agamemnon in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney. That same year, amateur performers presented his comic opera Populaire in Sydney, with a libretto by T. Moser. It is more notable for depicting sporting competition in a contemporary social setting than for the complexity of its score.

Some of his manuscripts are held in the Fisher Library of the University of Sydney. He is remembered today chiefly as a promoter of institutional music teaching in Australia.