1 An invaluable guide to London's historical topography that discusses the buildings and institutions mentioned in this article is The London Encyclopaedia, ed. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (rev. edn, London, 1993).Google Scholar

2 The NTSM building stands in the western shadow of the Albert Hall, and the RCM is below the steps to the Hall's south, on Prince Consort Road.Google Scholar

3 For an account of the significance for music of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, see Musgrave, Michael, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar

4 K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846–1886 (Oxford, 1998), 374.Google Scholar

5 Auerbach, Jeffrey A., The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (New Haven, 1999), 5.Google Scholar

6 A contentious challenge to this term came in Robert Stradling and Meirion Hughes, The English Musical Renaissance, 1860–1940: Construction and Reconstruction (London, 1993), later revised as Meirion Hughes and Robert Stradling, The English Musical Renaissance, 1840–1940: Constructing a National Music (Manchester, 2001). There is an excellent review of this book within a wider discussion of the issues raised by the concept of an English Musical Renaissance in Alain Frogley, ‘Rewriting the Renaissance: History, Imperialism, and British Music since 1840‘, Music and Letters, 84 (2003), 241–57.Google Scholar

7 The major source of information about British and European music education in this period is the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, First Report of the Committee …on the State of Musical Education at Home and Abroad (London, [1866]). The Committee took evidence from only three private British music schools, the National College of Music (1864–6), the London Academy of Music (1861; known as the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1935) and the London Vocal Academy. They were included as being the ‘3 chief private Academies of Music in the Metropolis’, and several of the teachers at the National College (its Principal was Henry Leslie) subsequently joined the staff of the RCM.Google Scholar

8 The text of the RAM's Royal Charter is preoccupied with details of its administrative procedures, and there is no mention of its purpose beyond the phrase ‘to promote the cultivation of the science of music’. This is in strong contrast to the way in which the RCM's Charter spells out its responsibilities (see below, note 62).Google Scholar

9 Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1985), 99.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., 80. Ehrlich cautions that most players worked in more than one orchestra, so that it is the proportions, reflected in Chorley's data, not the totalled figures, that are most nearly indicative of the situation.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 99.Google Scholar

12 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, First Report, 19, paragraph 401.Google Scholar

13 The primary source for this account of Sullivan's time as Principal are the Minute Books of the NTSM Committee of Management (CM), held in the RCM Archives, shelf-marks 001/1 and 001/2.Google Scholar

14 Henry Cole (1808–82) combined first-class administrative skills and a visionary sense with an obdurate and dictatorial personality. Damned by Lord Derby's epithet as ‘the most generally unpopular man I know’, Cole was the executive driving force behind the 1851 Great Exhibition and the subsequent development of the South Kensington estate (its museums and the Royal Albert Hall), as well as raising the quality of design in British manufacturing.Google Scholar

15 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, First Report.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 24, paragraph 420.Google Scholar

17 A detailed account of the quadrille-like preliminaries to the founding of the NTSM is set out in Giles Brightwell, ‘The National Training School for Music 1873–1882: Catalyst or Cul-de-Sac?‘ (MA dissertation, University of Durham, 1998).Google Scholar

18 Cole set out the situation starkly and with some force in his ‘Memorandum on the Teaching Branch of the School’ (dated 6 January 1876), a document drawn up as part of his resistance to Sullivan's appointment, which explains its tone. In the fourth paragraph, Cole emphasizes that the School was founded ‘as an experiment for 5 years only, to demonstrate, at the expiration of that period, that such a School is worthy of being supported by the State. A failure will put back Musical Education in this Country and will reflect disgrace on the management. It is absolutely essential that the School should succeed financially as well as professionally, and it must, therefore, be conducted with a full sense, on the part of all the Professors, of the necessity for economy and that strict performance of all duties which ensures economy’ (NTSM/CM, 8 January 1876, RCM Archives 001/1, 83).Google Scholar

19 This text is taken from the preliminary draft (dated February 1877) of a ‘Memorial’ requesting additional funding for the School from H.M. Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851. Paragraph 15 of this draft emphasizes the idea of the nation and its musical life more vividly than the progressively more measured tone of the annotated draft text (included as Appendix III of the minutes of the Committee of Management Meeting, 27 February 1877; RCM Archives 001/1, 134–7) and the final text (included as Appendix III of the minutes of the Committee of Management Meeting, 17 May 1877; RCM Archives 001/1, 157–60). This preliminary draft (also dated February 1877) was preserved, folded loose in the Minute Book, its back cover used for a pencilled draft of the minutes of the Committee's final meeting which concluded the School. The original scheme was that the School should offer 300 scholarships (paragraph 6 of the minutes of the founding committee appointed by the Council of the Society for the Arts at their meeting on 29 May 1873, inserted into RCM Archives 001/1 as p. 18a).Google Scholar

20 A prescient caution was expressed that ‘The first effect of the new school at South Kensington would seem to be to deprive the world of the services of the only English composer we have… . But to superadd to Mr Sullivan's routine occupations the duties of principal of the new school augurs well neither for Art, for the School where it is to be taught, nor for the Principal himself. It will be sad if Mr Sullivan's acceptance of the appointment involves the loss of opportunity of becoming a great composer’ (The Orchestra, new series, 19 (February 1876)).Google Scholar

21 This section of the minute has been crossed through, presumably in the light of what followed.Google Scholar

22 NTSM/CM, 27 November 1875, RCM Archives 001/1, 68–9.Google Scholar

23 The Royal Aquarium (opened in 1876 on what is now the site of the Methodist Central Hall, opposite Westminster Abbey) was conceived to accommodate a variety of entertainments, including tanks of fish, orchestral concerts, an art gallery and a skating rink. Financial pressures rapidly pushed the venture downmarket, and it was sold in 1903.Google Scholar

24 NTSM/CM, 8 January 1876, RCM Archives 001/1, 81.Google Scholar

25 ‘Memorandum on the Teaching Branch of the School’, RCM Archives 001/1, 83.Google Scholar

26 Letter dated 11 January 1876, included as an appendix to the Committee of Management Meeting, 15 January 1876 (RCM Archives 001/1, 94).Google Scholar

27 Quoted in Arthur Jacobs, Arthur Sullivan (Oxford, 1984), 100.Google Scholar

28 Arthur Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan: Life Story, Letters and Reminiscences (London, 1899), 111.Google Scholar

29 Germanophile piano virtuoso and composer who renounced his British citizenship; he left London to study with Liszt, who considered him one of his most important pupils, and his pianism was admired by Brahms and Busoni.Google Scholar

30 Cliffe had a national reputation early in his career as a composer and pianist.Google Scholar

31 The fascicle containing the NTSM entry was published in March 1885, nearly two years after the RCM's opening. The entry is headed ‘Training School for Music, The National’, and the entry on the RCM follows on as a subheading. The dating of the publication of the Dictionary's constituent fascicles has been established by Leanne Langley, ‘Roots of a Tradition: the First Dictionary of Music and Musicians’, George Grove, Music and Victorian Culture, ed. Michael Musgrave (Basingstoke, 2003), 168–215.Google Scholar

32 J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Door-Keeper of Music (London, 1929), 91–2. Fuller Maitland was Grove's assistant editor on the Dictionary and later an RCM Council member.Google Scholar

33 J. A. Fuller Maitland, ‘Sir Arthur Sullivan’, Cornhill Magazine, new series, 10 (1901), 300–9, contained the summary: ‘such great natural gifts – gifts greater, perhaps than fell to any English musician since the time of Purcell – were so very seldom employed in any work worthy of them’. Edward J. Dent's characterization of Elgar's music was: ‘For English ears, Elgar's music is too emotional and not quite free from vulgarity’, and made slighting reference to the composer's Roman Catholicism. Dent's article ‘Modern English Music’ was contributed to Guido Adler's Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (2nd edn, Berlin, 1930), ii, 1047. A translation is in Basil Maine, Elgar: His Life and Works (London, 1933), 277–8.Google Scholar

34 Quoted in Jacobs, Arthur Sullivan, 150.Google Scholar

35 David Wright, ‘Grove's Role in the Founding of the RCM’, George Grove, Music and Victorian Culture, ed. Michael Musgrave (Basingstoke, 2003), 219–44. I discuss the School's precarious finances on pp. 224–5.Google Scholar

36 In 1858, when Sullivan went to Leipzig, the conservatoire had 45 students (including 30 Germans and six British). By 1876, however, the numbers had risen to 186 (including 102 Germans and 26 British). Details of the structure, curriculum and student population of the Leipzig conservatoire are given in Leonard Milton Phillips, ‘The Leipzig Conservatory: 1843–1881‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1979), Table 5, pp. 204–5.Google Scholar

37 Reported by Sullivan to the Committee of Management, NTSM/CM, 26 July 1877, RCM Archives 001/1, 179.Google Scholar

38 One of Britain's great organ recitalists, he was Suborganist of Westminster Abbey and later Organist of Salisbury Cathedral. He played the organ for the coronations of Edward VII, George V and George VI, for which he was knighted.Google Scholar

39 Phillips, ‘The Leipzig Conservatory’, 155.Google Scholar

40 Sullivan had predicted that it would be necessary to recruit wind players for his Aquarium orchestra from abroad, and so it proved (Jacobs, Arthur Sullivan, 95).Google Scholar

41 Report to the NTSM Committee of Management, 10 December 1877 (RCM Archives 001/1, 185).Google Scholar

42 RCM Archives 001/1, 187.Google Scholar

43 Sullivan's scheme was for one professional string player per part. In a report on the class its constitution was given as nine first and nine second violins, two violas, six cellos (no double bass is mentioned), one flute and one clarinet, and ‘the other wind instrument parts are taken by pianists’ (which was the practice in Leipzig; see Phillips, ‘The Leipzig Conservatory’, 120). Source: NTSM/CM, 26 June 1880, RCM Archives 001/1, 238–9.Google Scholar

44 Charles Hallé, pianist and conductor, founded the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester; Sir Michael Costa was a leading orchestral and operatic conductor; Otto Goldschmidt (husband of the singer Jenny Lind, and a pupil of Mendelssohn at Leipzig) was a pianist, conductor and founder of the London Bach Choir; Henry Leslie was a choral conductor, and had been Principal of the short-lived National College of Music.Google Scholar

45 NTSM/CM, 14 July 1880, RCM Archives 001/1, 244–6.Google Scholar

46 NTSM/CM, 14 July 1880, RCM Archives 001/1, 247–8.Google Scholar

47 Letter written aboard HMS Hercules, dated 24 July 1880: transcribed as no. 34c in Reginald Allen, Sir Arthur Sullivan: Composer and Personage (New York, 1975), 64.Google Scholar

48 Conductor of the Philharmonic Society.Google Scholar

49 The Examiners' Report was formally received by the Committee of Management on 13 May 1881 (NTSM/CM, RCM Archives 001/2, 31–7).Google Scholar

50 NTSM/CM, 13 May 1881, RCM Archives 001/2, 20–1.Google Scholar

51 This time endorsed by the Duke of Edinburgh. Sullivan was thanked for the ‘Efficient and Satisfactory manner in which his duties as Principal of the School have been discharged’ and offered a seat on the Committee of Management (RCM Archives 001/2, 24).Google Scholar

52 It was to be detrimental, too. The fact that Grove managed to secure only 50 scholarships for the RCM in 1883, as opposed to the NTSM total of 82 in 1877, suggests an element of subscriber ‘fatigue’, but perhaps more particularly a perceived lack of return on the money invested in the NTSM scholarships.Google Scholar

53 See above, note 34.Google Scholar

54 Ehrlich, The Music Profession, 142.Google Scholar

55 This was not a rigid demarcation, as some of the best players would sometimes accept such engagements.Google Scholar

56 Ehrlich, The Music Profession, 162.Google Scholar

57 George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, ed. Terence Cave (London, 1995), 485.Google Scholar

58 The wider social and economic aspects of the British musical education context is set out in Chapters 4 and 5 of Ehrlich, The Music Profession; a vivid sense of the forces generating this change is given in Simon McVeigh and Cyril Ehrlich, ‘The Modernisation of London Concert Life around 1900‘, The Business of Music, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool, 2002), 96–120.Google Scholar

59 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven, 2001), presents a fascinating account of the determination for cultural and intellectual self-advancement in this sector of society. There is no reason to believe that the situation with regard to music was any different, as the mixed audiences for London concerts (including Newman's Promenade concerts) testify.Google Scholar

60 Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano: A History (2nd edn, Oxford, 1990), 157.Google Scholar

61 Dave Russell, Popular Music in England, 1840–1914 (2nd edn, Manchester, 1997), 205. However, Russell also points out that shortly afterwards, another Wright & Round publication, Brass Band News, put the figure at 30,000!Google Scholar

62 The Charter defined the College's purpose as ‘first, the advancement of the Art of Music by means of a central teaching and examining body charged with the duty of providing musical instruction of the highest class, and of rewarding with academical degrees and certificates of proficiency and otherwise persons, whether educated or not at the College, who on examination may prove themselves worthy of such distinctions and evidences of attainment; and, secondly, the promotion and supervision of such musical instruction in schools and elsewhere, as may be thought most conducive to the cultivation and Art of Music in the United Kingdom; and, lastly, generally the encouragement and promotion of the cultivation of music as an art throughout Our Dominions’.Google Scholar

63 In ‘Grove's Role’, 237–40, I discuss how Grove tailored his message to a Leeds audience.Google Scholar

64 The way Grove shaped the philosophical argument for the RCM is discussed ibid.Google Scholar

65 See Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, The Professions (London, 1933); Francis Michael Longstreth Thompson, Chartered Surveyors: The Growth of a Profession (London, 1968).Google Scholar

66 Ehrlich, The Music Profession, 116–20. Ehrlich offers a pithy account of the examination enterprises of Trinity College, London, and the Associated Board of the RAM and the RCM in relation to the accumulative effect of the examination industry on the music profession.Google Scholar

67 Carr-Saunders and Wilson, The Professions.Google Scholar

68 The Associated Board advertised 54 local centres in its 1890 report, and by 1900 the number of these centres had grown to 122. During this decade, the Board also opened centres in Australasia, South Africa, Canada and Gibraltar.Google Scholar

69 ‘By adopting the standards and Syllabus used in Great Britain throughout the Colonies, we shall unify the system of musical examination which is current in the Old Country, in all parts of the Empire.’ This is taken from a pro forma letter above the name of the Secretary to the Associated Board, Samuel Aitken, contained in the 1897 Colonial Examinations’ Syllabus and intended for Associated Board representatives to send out to local teachers.Google Scholar

70 David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire (London, 2002), xix.Google Scholar

71 This scheme was approved at a meeting of the RAM's Committee of Management on 1 December 1880. RAM Minutes of Management, May 1877–June 1884, 195–9.Google Scholar

72 Mackenzie, Alexander C., A Musician's Narrative (London, 1927), 166.Google Scholar

73 Meeting on 3 May 1889, reported by Grove to the meeting of the RCM Executive Committee on 16 May 1889. RCM Archives, Minute Book: Executive and Finance Committee 2, May 1886–May 1889, 285–6.Google Scholar

74 First Annual Report of the Associated Board, 1890.Google Scholar

75 Eleventh Annual Report of the Associated Board, 1900.Google Scholar

76 Twenty-First Annual Report of the Associated Board, 1910.Google Scholar

77 This was the sentiment of the pro forma letter included with the 1897 Colonial Examinations' Syllabus.Google Scholar

78 Mackenzie, A Musician's Narrative, 166; George Grove, Memorial, dated 15 May 1891, stating the RCM's opposition to the proposed Parliamentary Bills for the organization and registration of teachers, sent to Sir William Hart Dyke, Chairman of the Education Select Committee. Grove argued that by its work the Associated Board had demonstrated ‘that a much surer way of testing teachers is to examine their pupils’. RCM Archives, Minute Book: Council, May 1883–February 1894, text inserted opposite p. 171.Google Scholar

79 Grove's speech to the Third Annual Dinner of the Associated Board, 14 July 1892; Grove's speech to the Fifth Annual Dinner of the Associated Board, 16 July 1894. RCM Archives, Annual Reports of the Associated Board.Google Scholar

80 Minute Book of the Executive Committee, 22 May 1884, RCM Archives 0013/1.Google Scholar

81 Cole, H. H., ‘Memorandum on the Building’: NTSM/CM, 31 March 1874, RCM Archives 001/1, 7. The NTSM building was the home of the Royal College of Organists from 1904 until 1991.Google Scholar

82 Elizabeth Bonython and Anthony Burton, The Great Exhibitor: The Life and Work of Henry Cole (London, 2003), 273.Google Scholar

83 ‘Royal College of Music’, Musical Times (June 1883), 309–10.Google Scholar

84 Phillips, ‘The Leipzig Conservatory’, 94–9.Google Scholar

85 RCM General Regulations, 1883.Google Scholar

86 Manuel Garcia in evidence, First Report, Appendix, vi.Google Scholar

87 The benefit of scholarship tuition as a means of ensuring longer periods of study is also noted by Janet Ritterman, ‘The Royal College of Music, 1883–1899: Pianists and their Contribution to the Forming of a National Conservatoire’, Musical Life in Europe (1770–1914): Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges, ed. Michael Fend and Michel Noiray, i (forthcoming, Berlin, 2005), 351–73. I am grateful for sight of a draft version of this article. However, I would argue that there would have been a stronger temptation for orchestral instrumentalists to abandon their studies as soon as they began to secure work, which is why I place such emphasis on the maintenance aspect.Google Scholar

88 See Wright, ‘Grove's Role’, 236.Google Scholar

89 In his Annual Reports on the state of the College, Grove emphasized the success of RCM students in securing prestigious church and teaching appointments, something it was not possible to report on for orchestral players and singers.Google Scholar

90 The account of why the Music Advisory Committee was established and the fractious relationship between its members and the BBC's Music Department is detailed in Jennifer Doctor, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922–1936 (Cambridge, 1999).Google Scholar

91 The members – Grove himself, Ernst Pauer, Hubert Parry and Charles Morley (Honorary Secretary to the College) – decided to seek scholars in flute, clarinet, bassoon and horn, and to require candidates to come directly to the College for audition (rather than to select them through local recommendation). This was reported to the meeting of the Executive Committee on 8 October 1885 (RCM Archives 0013/1).Google Scholar

92 Henry Holmes's significant musical reputation was eclipsed by the scandal of his departure from the RCM. A pupil of Spohr, he shared with Stanford the title and role of Conductor of the Orchestra until his dismissal on 11 December 1893. In letters to his confidante, Edith Oldham, a former student of the College, Grove tells of his concern that Holmes, a radical free thinker, was talking to his students about socialism and atheism (10 December 1893, RCM MS 6864/358); and of Holmes's dismissal for improper behaviour with female students (17 December 1893, RCM MS 6864/359). After this scandal, Holmes moved abroad. He made an unsuccessful attempt to re-establish his London career in 1896, following which he left Britain permanently. E. Godfrey Brown, a former College student who played in the orchestra in its early days, recalled that Holmes took the orchestral class on Tuesdays and Stanford on Fridays. From Brown we learn that the young Henry Wood (later conductor of the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts), though not a College student, attended most of Holmes's rehearsals, ‘all aglow with keenness and with scores and a note book’. Some years later, Wood himself confirmed to Brown that he gained his early knowledge of conducting from Holmes (letter to Sir George Dyson from E. Godfrey Brown, RCM 1890–4, dated 7 January 1949; RCM MS 6938c). I am most grateful to Peter Horton for drawing my attention to this source and sharing his information on Holmes.)Google Scholar

93 The Leipzig Conservatoire (founded in 1843) did not establish an orchestral class until 1881. A report on the Hauptprüfung held in April 1847 noted that in the performance of Cherubini's Overture to Der Wasserträger (Les deux journées), ‘The strings, with the exception of the violoncello and contrabass, were played by students; the wind parts were realized on two pianos by Messrs Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Moscheles’ (Phillips, ‘The Leipzig Conservatory’, 155, 120).Google Scholar

94 Jeremy Dibble, Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician (Oxford, 2002), 101–2.Google Scholar

95 Grove had been Secretary to the Crystal Palace Company (1852–73) and had supported Manns's development of the Saturday concerts, and he continued his support as a regular contributor of detailed programme notes. A list of works by non-British composers given their British premières at the Crystal Palace Saturday concerts is given as Appendix 3a in Musgrave, The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace, 222–6. Although located in the south-east suburbs of London, and reached by special train from Victoria, the centrality of these Sydenham concerts for London's – indeed Britain's – musical life can not be overestimated. Testimony of their importance to Elgar is contained in Jerrold Northrop Moore, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life (Oxford, 1984), 79 and 99; see also Hermann Klein, Thirty Years of Musical Life in London (London, 1903), 56–7. For an interesting comparison of Sir Michael Costa and Manns that draws out Manns's more modern approach to conducting, see Musgrave, Michael, ‘Changing Values in Nineteenth-Century Performance: The Work of Michael Costa and August Manns’, Music and British Culture, 1875–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. Christina Bashford and Leanne Langley (Oxford, 2000), 169–91.Google Scholar

96 For a comprehensive account of the Société, see D. Kern Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–1967 (Berkeley, 2004); see also John Ella's assessment: ‘For unity of style, taste and feeling, the result of national schools, we have nothing in London to compare with the first class orchestra of Paris, and, for the same reason, those of Vienna’ (John Ella, ‘Professor Ella's Lecture on Spohr's “Jessonda”‘, Orchestra, new series, 19 (February 1876), 202). Similarly, most members of the Vienna Philharmonic had been trained in that city's conservatoire.Google Scholar

97 RCM Magazine, 1/1 (Christmas Term 1904), 25.Google Scholar

98 Report of the Council to the Fifth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (24 July 1888), 11–12; at this time the College's official year end was 30 April, the academic year beginning with the summer term and concluding with the annual exams at the close of the Easter term, a pattern that paralleled Leipzig.Google Scholar

99 Ibid., 13; for details see below, note 112.Google Scholar

100 Report of the Council to the Ninth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (14 July 1892), 35.Google Scholar

101 Report of the Council to the Seventh Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (9 July 1890), 8, 24, 30; Report of the Council to the Eighth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (20 July 1891), 28.Google Scholar

102 George Bernard Shaw, The World (23 December 1891); Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism, ed. Dan H. Laurence, The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw, 3 vols. (London, 1981), i, 499–500.Google Scholar

103 Shaw, The Star (12 July 1889); Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, i, 698.Google Scholar

104 Shaw, The World (23 July 1890); Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 129–30.Google Scholar

105 Shaw, ‘Royal Collegians’, The World (25 March 1891); Shaw's Music, ed. Laurence, ii, 297–8.Google Scholar

106 In his Fourth Annual Report (for 1886–7), Grove informs that ‘The orchestra has made a gratifying advance during the year. Not only has it acquired a bassoon, clarinet, and flute among the scholars, but much progress has been made in reading and accompanying.‘ Report of the Council to the Fourth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (15 July 1888), 19. Grove means that these were new scholar entrants; a flute and clarinet had been among the initial scholar intake.Google Scholar

107 Reported in The Overture (October 1892).Google Scholar

108 See above, note 102.Google Scholar

109 The recruitment of brass instruments (particularly trumpet and trombone) remained difficult in the early days of the College because of the well-established traditions of Kneller Hall and brass-band training. A trumpet scholarship was awarded to one Oscar Thomas in 1889. Gustav Holst appears as the single college trombonist (with two external players) in the first British performance of Delibes's Le roi l'a dit on 13 December 1894, the first time a trombonist is marked as being a College member. (I am grateful to Peter Horton for his help with this.) A further complication for recruiting wind and brass instruments was that as late as 1918 it was the College's policy to restrict such scholarships to males, even though the RAM had made an award to a woman in 1901: see Gillett, Paula, Musical Women in England, 1870–1914 (Basingstoke, 2000), 197.Google Scholar

110 Report of the Council to the Ninth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (14 July 1892), 35. In his first report as Director (for 1895), Parry was to remark that ‘great attention is payed to this [the woodwind class] in the Royal College, with very satisfactory results; as players of wind instruments from the Royal College are to be met in most of the best orchestras and theatre bands, and they are generally among the best and most trustworthy performers in them’. Report of the Council to the Twelfth Annual General Meeting of the Corporation (8 July 1895), 2.Google Scholar

111 Contained in a special report (marked ‘Private and Confidential‘) to the Finance Committee, 12 February 1895.Google Scholar

112 Appearing on two successive days with the RCM orchestral class, Joachim played through the Beethoven and the Brahms Violin Concertos. Astonishingly, the Beethoven followed a run-through of the same composer's Triple Concerto with Robert Haussmann (cello) and Fanny Davies (piano). Joachim's satisfaction with that event was reported by Grove to Edith Oldham (letter dated 2 March [1888], RCM MS 6864/88).Google Scholar

113 From March 1887, College concerts were transferred from the Royal Albert Hall's West Theatre to the concert hall of the newly built Alexandra House.Google Scholar

114 In the academic year 1891/2, for example, Adolphus C. White was paid was £72 plus additional, separate fees for the summer St James's Hall concert (£9 3s.) and for playing in the autumn-term opera (£16 15s. 6d.). Professors' Fees, account books, RCM Archives 0081/3, 421–3.Google Scholar

115 Because the printed programmes of the public concerts of this period have not survived, and those for the College orchestral concerts do not list personnel, it is not possible to offer a comprehensive or definitive account of the attendance of professional players. Unfortunately, records of the orchestral class itself do not remain. The argument put forward here is based on evidence from the earliest extant Professors' Fees account books and from the programmes of the public opera performances which, as College publications, are bound into the volumes of College programmes held in the Centre for Performance History. Professional stiffeners for the orchestral class do not appear in the Professors' Fees books unless they were professors or engaged as deputies by professors and recorded as such, probably because they were paid directly by the professor concerned who then invoiced the College accordingly.Google Scholar

116 Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 9. One of the articles in the government decree of 1828 which established the Société cites ‘the good impression’ given by professors joining with their ‘disciples’ in concert performances (ibid., 142).Google Scholar

117 As evidenced, for example, in the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, First Report (1866); Grove visited the Conservatoire ‘to inspect methods of teaching’ in 1884 (Charles L. Graves, The Life and Letters of Sir George Grove, C.B., London, 1903, 365).Google Scholar

118 See above, note 102.Google Scholar

119 Some £624 in 1888, £602 in 1889 and £562 in 1890 (RAM Archives, Minutes of the Board of Directors, 1879–92, accounts presented at the meetings of 30 March 1889 and 15 March 1891); from the Minutes of Committee, Vol. 2, June 1884–April 1892, we know the fees paid around this time: for playing second clarinet, Chas Godfrey Jr was to be paid 7s. on Tuesdays and 3s. 6d. on Fridays (meeting of 2 May 1888), A. P. Vivian was elected Professor of Flute at the rate of 7s. an hour and to play in the orchestra on Tuesdays at 15s. each practice (meeting of 6 June 1888); Professors [G.] Horton (oboe) and [A. P.] Vivian (flute), who played in the RAM's (public) orchestral concerts, had their fees raised to 2 guineas (meeting 29 June 1889). There was obviously no restriction on professors working at both the RCM and the RAM; George Horton, with other RCM professors engaged by Grove, such as Adolphus C. White (double bass), Henry Lazarus, William Wotton (bassoon) and Thomas Harper (trumpet), also taught at the RAM.Google Scholar

120 Something of this situation is captured by William Weber, ‘Concert Programmes in the 1880s’, Music and British Culture, ed. Bashford and Langley, 299–320. Certainly at the RCM the purpose of the concert holds the key to the repertoire and programme patterning. By their nature, many conservatoire concerts are intended as student platforms and the programming is likely to be miscellaneous, as is reflected in many of the regular RCM ‘Pupils’ Concerts'. But, as Appendix 2 suggests, the ethos of the College is strongly captured by the in-house series of chamber and orchestral concerts which were clearly intended to serve a didactic purpose. This ethos remains evident in the public (Prince's Hall and St James's Hall) concerts, which, because they performed more of a showcase function, had to accommodate a more diverse repertoire.Google Scholar

121 In census returns, the number of females categorizing themselves as ‘musicians and teachers’ rises from 900 in 1841; to 7,000 in 1871; to 11,400 in 1881; and to 19,100 in 1891 (taken from Ehrlich, The Music Profession, Table 1, p. 235).Google Scholar

122 Music in England 1885–1920: As Recounted in Hazell's Annual, ed. Lewis Foreman (London, 1994), 52.Google Scholar

123 A particularly clear and helpful discussion of these issues is McVeigh and Ehrlich, ‘The Modernisation of London Concert Life’. Leanne Langley's ongoing work into the early history of the Queen's Hall and the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts has been another essential source of information.Google Scholar

124 The annual government grant to the RCM (and similarly the RAM) remained at £500 until 1943, when it was raised to £8,500; it was further increased to £16,500 in 1949 (The Arts Enquiry, Music, London: Political and Economic Planning, 1949, 184). The Department for Education and Science rationalized the position for the RCM, RAM and Trinity College of Music with new arrangements for the provision of a ‘deficiency grant’ from 1974. Full HEI funding support followed after that (Review of the London Music Conservatoires (The ‘Gowrie’ Committee), The Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC), 1990, paragraph 3.3).Google Scholar

125 The issue of student numbers was again being hotly contested in the 1960s, when paragraph 38 of the 1965 Gilmour Jenkins report Making Musicians recommended that the RCM and RAM should reduce their numbers to 400 students each in order to raise standards and reduce pressure on accommodation for teaching and practising. The 1978 Gulbenkian report Training Musicians noted that at that date the RCM student population remained the same at 673 students, and that there was currently a planned reduction at the RAM from 753 to 650 students: ‘The Principals of the main London colleges made it clear to us that they do not see the need for such reductions’ (Training Musicians: A Report to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on the Training of Professional Musicians, London, 1978, paragraphs 104–5).Google Scholar

126 Ibid., paragraph 105.Google Scholar