The Royal College of Music and its Contexts: An Artistic and Social History

by David C. H. Wright

Overview

Located between the great Victorian museums of South Kensington and the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal College of Music, founded in 1883, has been a central influence on British musical life ever since. This wide-ranging account places the College within its musical and educational environments. It argues that the RCM's significance lies not only in its famous performers and composers, but also the generations of its more anonymous former students who have done so much to improve the musical life of the localities in which they have worked as teachers and animateurs. As a cultural history, this account also captures how significantly society's consumption of music - from new technologies to the altered perspectives of historical and world musics - has changed since the College was founded, and how very different our points of musical reference now are. This study traces the effects of such developments on the College's work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316615171
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/24/2022
Series:	Music since 1900
Pages:	389
Product dimensions:	6.65(w) x 9.57(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

David C. H. Wright became Reader in the Social History of Music at the Royal College of Music, London after a professional life spent in both music college and university environments. His writings range from the culture and economics of Victorian music publishing to the Prom seasons of William Glock and Robert Ponsonby in The Proms: A New History (2007). In 2013, he published a social and cultural history of the Associated Boards of the Royal Schools of Music.

Table of Contents

Introduction – beginnings and contexts, the themes of a history; Part I. Building and Consolidating (1883–1914): 1. The founding directors – George Grove and Hubert Parry; 2. The students; 3. Establishing the musical and educational ethos – concerts and curriculum; 4. The buildings and finances; Coda – the First World War; Part II. Renewal and conventionality (1919–60): 5. Hugh Allen's RCM and musical life between the wars, 1919–1937; 6. The years of austerity – George Dyson and Ernest Bullock, 1938–1960; Part III. Changing Musical Cultures (1960–1984): 7. Keith Falkner and rebuilding institutional confidence, 1960–1974; 8. Crossing the RCM century – David Willcocks, 1974–84; Part IV. Into its Second Century, 1984–2018: 9. A changed state of rivalry – the RAM, the 'centre of excellence' and the Gowrie review, 1982–92; 10. The new realities of accounting and assuring – securing the RCM's public funding in the 1990s; 11. Reimagining for the future; Epilogue – a prosopography.

Editorial Reviews

‘This definitive study of the Royal College of Music is also an original and illuminating contribution to the social history of modern Britain.' Tim Blanning, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

‘This history fosters deep understanding of conservatoire education, applicable by extension to the whole sector of higher education. This is a richly rewarding volume …’ Jane Angell, NABMSA Reviews

From the Publisher