A music-seller and concert manager, at age fourteen Charles Cawthorne began studying the piano with Louis Ezelbach, and violin with F. Draeger. He also learned to play the bassoon. In 1870, young Cawthorne began work with his father in a newsagent's in Morphett Street. In 1884 the business later became Cawthorne and Co., with father and son as partners.
By 1887 Charles was running the business alone, and the newsagency was carrying sheet music from sixty publishers from England, France and Germany, as well as instruments, books, opals and fine art. The company acted as a box office for most musical events in Adelaide and by 1900 was also printing and publishing original compositions.
Cawthorne also conducted the Adelaide Amateur Orchestra and acted as manager to a succession of Adelaide orchestras in the 1890s. In 1910 he was founder and conductor of the Adelaide Orchestral Society. Cawthorne also composed the 'Olivia Waltz' (named for and dedicated to the wife of the South Australian Governor Sir William Cleaver Francis Robinson) and the 'Southern Cross Waltz'.
- Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070603b.htm, Accessed 18 April 2008.
