Royal College of Music

“ We, however, hope everything from music schools though we have nothing to offer our composers or our singers when, in a theoretical sort of way, they have once been formed. The money wasted in establishing the Royal College of Music might have been usefully spent in founding a permanent lyrical theatre for which our young composers might have worked, on whose boards our young vocalists might have sung. Thus only, by practice in presence of the public, can composers and singers perfect themselves in their difficult art. ”

“ He is Professor of Singing at the Royal College of Music, at the Guildhall School, the Watford School, and various other institutions. He is also director and conductor of the Bath Philharmonic Society, to which he has devoted an immensity of time, money, and ability. ”

“ A nice time music teachers will have when ten hours' work a day will give them an income of 30s. a week! But what, if not music teachers, are the pupils of our four leading musical academies to become? The Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music, and Dr. Wylde's London Academy of Music must send out annually some thousand or two well-taught musicians who have nothing to turn to but teaching. ”

“ I hope thus, through the instrumentality of the Royal College, to raise the standard of music throughout the United Kingdom and to create a central influence which may be beneficially exercised over all music-teaching bodies who recognise the advantage of a common system of examination. ”

“ Hullah, for the Education Department, show the great interest with which the subject is regarded by those who have it in their power to exert a lasting influence upon the time to come. Lastly, a more hopeful sign of life than any we have mentioned is to be found in the proposal for a Royal College of Music. Discussed, then dropped, resumed, dropped again, but always advancing a little nearer to maturity, the scheme has now, for some considerable time, attracted the attention of lovers of Art, who are thoroughly in earnest in their devotion to its interests ”

“ England has the composers already; all she wants is a general centre, such as a Royal College of Music, to which they may resort for mutual aid and common inspiration.
"Such are the aims, not mean nor ignoble aims, proposed for the College which we open to-day. It remains for you, gentlemen of the council, to be careful that the aims are fully realised. A young institution requires fostering care and constant supervision. You must not relax your efforts, no pains must be spared to gain fresh support and obtain the establishment of new scholarships. We want much ”

“ I wish to express my own personal hope that the Royal College will not be a mere teaching institution, but will become a centre for groups of affiliated colleges, the members of which will, with the Council of the Royal College, form a musical senate, to which all questions of importance relating to music and musicians may be referred for determination. ”

“ You who are musicians must desire to improve your art, and such will be the object of the Royal College. You who are only lovers of music must wish well to a plan which provides for all classes of Her Majesty's subjects a pleasure which you yourselves enjoy so keenly. To those who are deaf to music, as practical men I would say thus much—to raise the people, you must purify their emotions and cultivate their imaginations. ”

“ Beyond and above all this I trust, as I stated on a previous occasion, that the College will become the recognised centre and head of the musical world in this country. It has been a reproach to England that, with her vast resources, her large benevolence, her eagerness to instruct all classes of society in other branches of knowledge, one thing has hitherto been wanting—a national institution for music. Yet music is in the best sense the most popular of all arts. ”

“ Each of these scholars who returns to his native place furnished with the highest instruction in music will form a centre from which good musical education will spread around; while those who obtain musical engagements elsewhere will stimulate and encourage by their success the cultivation of music in the places whence they have come. Surely, then, it is not too much to expect that many years will not pass away before our College has so popularised music as to place England on a par with those countries on the Continent which have acquired the distinction of being called musical people. ”

“ No one felt this more strongly than the Prince Consort, but the opportunity of carrying out his ideas did not arise in his lifetime. The Royal Academy of Music, founded in 1822, and incorporated in 1830, did good service in its limited [Pg 392] way, for training its pupils and awarding a few scholarships; but some institution was needed, with larger expansiveness, and capable of diffusing the love and the practice of music more widely among the people. ”

“ I wish to establish an institution having a wider basis and a more extended influence than any existing school or college of music in this country. It will teach music of the highest class; it will have a foundation for the education, and in some cases for the free maintenance, of scholars who have obtained by merit the right to such privileges. But it will do more than this. It will be to England what the Berlin Conservatoire is to Germany, what the Paris Conservatoire is to France, or the Vienna Conservatoire to Austria—the recognised centre and head of the musical world. ”

“ I do not mean to say that we intend to exclude paying pupils. To adopt such a course would be to deprive musical ability in the upper classes of any means of access to the college, and would stamp it with a narrow and contracted character, which is above all to be avoided in a national institution intended to include in its corporate character all classes throughout the United Kingdom. What I seek to create is an institution bearing the same relation to the art of music as that which our great public schools—Eton and Winchester, for example—bear to general education. ”

“ In this way the public schools have become foreshadowings of the conservatories and the university schools of music. In time the weak spot in our higher musical curricula, the course in 'musical appreciation' which so many idlers follow as a 'royal road' to a musical education (although it is found in none of the Royal Conservatories of Europe) , will have no excuse for being retained, for our high school pupils will already possess it in sufficient measure to pursue with zest the hard technical courses the mastery of which is necessary to the making of a real musician. ”

“ Great as is the value of such fine stimulating influences—the visits of distinguished players, singers, composers, and conductors, and performances of master works by musical societies,—they are not enough to leaven the mass of the people without systematic educational endeavour. Reference has been made to the founding of the Royal Academy of Music. ”

“ There is one sort of art that requires not only a very rigorous and exhaustive training, but also an early commencement, and that is music, at once the most isolated and the most universal of arts. Exceptional gifts in the direction of music will have appeared in the schooling stage, and it is quite conceivable that the college phase for those who are destined for a musical career should have as its backbone a “grind” in the theory and practice of music, with languages and general culture relegated to a Section ii. ”

“ Sixty years ago, since which time we are supposed to have made progress in musical as in other matters, the Royal Academy of Music, which has produced so many excellent singers, instrumentalists, and composers, was intimately connected with the King's Theatre. Its students sang in the Opera chorus, and every fortnight gave performances of their own, at which leading vocalists, choristers, and orchestra were exclusively from the Academy. ”

“ It was less than twenty years ago that a prominent musical journal printed the very moderate statement that "the youth who is graduated at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, Cornell, or Columbia has not even a smattering of music beyond the music of the college glee and mandolin club ”

“ It is impossible that the colleges should remain indifferent to these tendencies in the preparatory schools, for their duty and their advantage are found in coöperating with them. The opportunity has been most clearly seen by those colleges which have established departments for the training of supervisors of public school music. Such service comes eminently within the rôle of the college, for a disciplined understanding, a liberal culture, an acquaintance with subjects once unrecognized as related to music teaching, are coming to be demanded in the music supervisor. ”

“ Song occupied a prominent place in the curriculum of the schools of the middle ages and it probably exercised a greater refining influence upon the nation than is commonly realised. The abolition of the schools of song was not the least disastrous of the effects of the Reformation in this country, and it is of considerable significance that the recent Royal Commission into University Education in Wales recommends [Pg 73] that steps should be taken for the greater encouragement of the study of music, not only within the university itself but also in the schools of the Principality. ”

“ The proper study of Music includes so many of the regular public school studies, and so much of the elements of higher education, as Psychology, Biology, Sociology, Physics, Economics, Social Legislation, History, Languages, Literature, Physical Training, Self-Control, to say nothing of the mathematical studies included in such branches as orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, etc., that a model musical college would furnish an education and culture, far more beneficial to individuals and the group, than is offered by some of the present systems of education. ”

“ It is possible, however, that the colleges may be willing to agree to a compromise, making a distinction between the teachers of the history and criticism of music and those engaged in the departments of musical theory and performance. Certainly no man should be given a college position who is not in sympathy with the largest purposes of the institution and able to contribute to their realization; but it must be remembered that broad intelligence and elevated character [Pg 469] are to be found outside the ranks of college alumni, and are not guaranteed by a college diploma. ”

“ The whole argument, then, is reduced to this: that with all the scientific aspects of the art with respect to material, structure, psychological action, historical origins and developments and relations, of which the college, as an institution of exact learning, may take cognizance, music must be accepted and taught just because it is beautiful and promotes the joy of life, and the development of the higher sense of beauty and the spiritual quickening that issues therefrom must be the final reason for its use. ”

“ A further object, and one most material, is sought to be attained by including in our college persons who do not intend to make music their profession. To advance music as an art in its highest aspects, resort must be had to those who possess the best opportunities for general mental culture. The most highly educated classes are those who have the greatest power of disseminating the influence of art throughout the country. ”

“ It is only fair to the musical profession to say that its members are as eager to meet these requirements as the colleges are to make them. If music still holds an inferior place in many colleges, both in fact and in esteem, the fault lies in no small measure in the ignorance on the part of trustees, presidents, and faculties of the nature of music, its demands, its social values, and its mission in the de [Pg 472] velopment of civilization. ”

“ A school of music was established in 1875, its pupils being drawn chiefly from the special students, who lacked preparation for the regular college studies and so were limited to the so-called 'accomplishments' of music and drawing, with a smattering of literature. As it became increasingly evident that the emphasis in the school of music was on performance—the development of highly specialized skill—and that the predominating interests in the college were intellectual rather than vocational, the school was seen to be out of place. ”

“ Rubinstein was the first director. The building at present occupied by the school was formerly the Grand Theatre and is very completely furnished for the purposes of the Conservatory, having two concert halls, museums, library, class rooms, chapel, etc. Among the graduates of the institution are Tchaikovsky, Glazounoff, Balakireff, Arensky, Liadow, Gabrilowitsch, Sapellnikoff and Felix Blumenfeld.
Musical Education in England is well cared for, principally by the strong schools in London, of which there are four that call for particular notice. The Royal Academy of Music is the oldest ”

“ In 1896-7 the school was converted into a regular department of the college, the curriculum in music being made mainly theoretical, the courses being harmony, counterpoint, musical form, history of [Pg 265] music, and free composition. The director since 1897 has been Hamilton C. Macdougall. There are eight other professors in the department faculty, and students number over two hundred. In 1907 Billings Hall was erected for the use of the department. While practice in music has been subordinated to theory, it has been retained and even improved since the school became the department. ”