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

A rounded portrait of the Royal College of Music, investigating its educational and cultural impact on music and musical life.

David C. H. Wright (Author)

9781107163386, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 September 2019

386 pages, 10 b/w illus. 10 tables
25.3 x 18 x 2.4 cm, 0.91 kg

'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

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Colleges of higher education [JNMH], Organization & management of education [JNK], Educational strategies & policy [JNF], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Music [AV]