As with other enterprises, developments in public school music were abruptly halted by the declaration of war in 1914. For the next four years the shock of World War was felt in every sphere of national life. Two further years were then occupied by the slow process of demobilisation. A new spirit now made itself felt and it is no coincidence that this sense of invigoration was also found in the educational field, or that attempts were now made to establish music on a less tentative footing in public schools. What had already been achieved in some schools – and then placed in jeopardy by wartime decimation – proved to have been the disparate achievement of a handful of enthusiasts, each improvising as best he could to suit the needs of a particular situation. Attempts were now made to review individual aims and devise a less random approach.

An early manifestation of this activity occurred in a symposium on ‘Music in Public Schools’ published in Music & Letters in 1922–3. The paper's editor, A. H. Fox Strangways, was particularly well placed to initiate the event. After graduating at Oxford in 1882, then studying music at the Berlin Hochschule, he had taught modern languages in two public schools before succeeding Alan Gray as director of music at Wellington in 1893. Although he later gave up teaching for musicology and musical criticism, Fox Strangways' knowledge and experience of working conditions in public schools equipped him notably to lead an investigation of musical conditions there.