After spending several years in
Melbourne, Alpen was appointed director of the
Vocal Philharmonic Society in the New South Wales town of
Tumut in 1862, and from 1865 was based in
Albury. He moved to
Sydney in 1880 to work as a singing master for the newly established Department of Public Instruction (now the
Department of Education), teaching at
Fort Street and
Hurlstone teacher training colleges. In 1884 he was appointed Superintendent of Music in the department. He advocated enlightened modern methods of music teaching for school children, emphasising aural development and
sight-singing, and in 1897 he published a treatise,
Practical Hints for the Teaching of Vocal Music in Public Schools. In the earliest precursors of today's
Schools Spectaculars, Alpen led massed student choirs in gala performances, often including his own compositions. His
Commemoration Ode (1899) celebrated Fort Street School's
Golden Jubilee. At the celebrations of the
Inauguration of the Commonwealth in
Centennial Park on 1 January 1901, he conducted an estimated 10,000 school children in a performance of his work
Federated Australia. Alpen was also the organist at St Patrick's on Church Hill and St Benedict's on
Broadway, both in Sydney. Among his later works, with words by Roderick Quinn, was
Hail! Men of America, Hail!, which was performed as an "ode of welcome to the
American Fleet" on its hugely popular first visit to
Sydney Harbour in 1908. == Death ==