Bedford School was established in pre-Reformation days and there is evidence of a school from the eleventh century. The school was founded and maintained by Newnham Priory, a monastic house on the outskirts of Bedford, and when the monastery was dissolved during the Reformation the school closed with it. Arrangements to refound the school were put into action with the assistance of New College, Oxford, and in 1548 the Mayor of Bedford appointed Edmund Greene, a New College man, to be Master and the school was again up and running. New College is still involved in the school’s governance and...

While music had chiefly been centred on the Chapel under the Old Foundation of Dulwich College, when the school moved south beyond Dulwich Village to the New Buildings in 1869 its musical activity naturally moved with it and a thriving tradition was built up under a succession of inspiring music masters, few of whom were full-time specialists. Under James Brabham, appointed College Organist in the 1870s, the college became noted for its singing, with glee and madrigal concerts, while at the same time he made his mark locally by conducting the Dulwich Choral Society. The first full-time music master was...

When King Henry VI founded the sister colleges of Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, he intended that those who made music and worshipped in the Chapel should be at the very core of college life. From its founding in 1440, Eton had a choir of singing boys and men recruited locally, and an organist too; the archive can produce repair bills to the organ dating back to 1490! With the sacking of the monasteries, the survival of Eton Chapel’s choral repertoire, in the form of what is now known as the Eton Choir Book, was a sheer fluke, now affording...

Like many schools, Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk, has been fortunate to experience some fine educators over the course of its existence. Through the strengths of their beliefs, the broad scope of their activities, and their desire to make music known, understood, and enjoyed by all, the music masters and mistresses at Gresham’s have enriched the lives of many students, parents, colleagues, and friends of the school. During the twentieth century the school has had its fair share of talented pupils pass across the Parade Ground, but it is the ethos of ‘bringing out the best in every child’ that...

Writing a chapter on the St Paul’s Schools, that is St Paul’s School (SPS), St Paul’s Girls’ School (SPGS), and the boys’ prep school Colet Court, I had to think long and hard how to create something that provides an overview of music in these schools, bearing in mind my experience of a mere twenty-one years at the helm of SPS music department. Inevitably this chapter is a personal take on the subject, incomplete for those hoping for a potted history, but I trust not too inaccurate in the facts and opinions put forward.

It is always a temptation in...

Uppingham School began the second half of the twentieth century blessed with a fine musical legacy.¹ Eighty years of sustained endeavour by two remarkable men, Paul David (for forty-three years) and Robert Sterndale Bennett (for thirty-seven years), gave Douglas Guest a firm foundation on which to build in his five dynamic years at Uppingham before he left to go to Salisbury Cathedral as Organist and Master of the Choristers in 1950. Among Guest’s innovations were the establishment of music scholarships and the founding of the Paul David Society and of the Uppingham and District Concert Club. In addition, he appointed...

Worksop College was founded as St Cuthbert’s College in 1890 by Canon Nathaniel Woodard (1811–91). Priest and educational visionary, Woodard instituted the Woodard Corporation in 1848 after becoming aware that, while the Church provided schooling for poor families, the education of the ‘trade classes’ was seriously neglected. He sought to provide a ‘good and complete education for the middle classes at such a charge as will make it available for the most of them’.¹ Having studied at Oxford, Woodard found himself strongly drawn to the growing Tractarian Movement and maintained Anglo-Catholic sympathies throughout his life; at the heart of...

In 1838 ‘five little girls sat on five wooden benches, specially made for them, at the Opening Meeting of the School and Home for Missionaries’ Daughters … in the charming village of Walthamstow, five miles from London.’ Later, in the 1850s, former scholars of Walthamstow Hall would recall their appreciation of a Miss Hale for her ‘amiable and consistent conduct’. For seven years from 1842 Miss Hale had acted as music teacher, and it is known that she concentrated on singing because it was impossible to cope with the demands for learning piano. Indeed, singing must surely have been the...

Since the 1950s, pre-preparatory schools (usually called pre-prep) have sprung up in many areas of the UK. Some of these schools are ‘stand-alone’ schools, having no direct affiliation with another institution, while others are part of a pre-existing preparatory school. Almost all these schools are co-educational. In the example below, the Nursery Year is for children of three years old and the Reception Year for children of four, while Years 1, 2 and 3 are for children of five, six and seven respectively. Children in the seven-plus age group proceed to a Preparatory School for their Year 4 education.

A...

Prep school music-making varies according to the size of the school, and also depends on the value placed on music by the Head. School music departments often have to compete with a thriving sports department, and there can be inevitable clashes between sports fixtures and music events. This illuminates the need for good relations between the two departments. The New Beacon has enjoyed a long tradition of excellence in both music and sport, and has had the good fortune of being supported by past and present headmasters who have held a strong belief in encouraging enjoyment and excellence in both...

In May 2011, members of the MMA convened in Cambridge for an annual conference organised by the schools of St John’s College and King’s College, two of the country’s leading choir schools. Delegate music teachers were thrilled, though not surprised, by the fine choral singing in the college chapels. But the real discovery for many was the very high standard of enthusiastic school music demonstrated in the joint concert in the University Concert Hall. Those of us working in choir schools were delighted to bask in their reflected glory, seeing parallels in our own departments. But it was not always...

Sir George Dyson’s final sentence in his 1952 retrospective contribution to the 50th Jubilee Meeting of the Music Masters’ Association (reproduced above, pp. 104–8), suggested that, ‘If in the next fifty years we can maintain the progress of the past two generations, the future of our music will be more than secure, it will be one of the highlights of our civilisation.’ He would surely have been delighted by the transformation of musical opportunities and standards in what are now known as Independent Schools, and amazed by the exceptional quality of the independent specialist music schools that emerged over...

Independent schools are, by name and nature, independent both from the state and from each other. However, during the 1960s many schools called for greater communication with each other, particularly between junior (preparatory) schools and senior (public) schools. It fell to A. R. Donald Wright, Headmaster of Shrewsbury, when Chairman of the Headmasters’ Conference (HMC), to make the first move. Donald Wright had as his near neighbour, in terms of northern English schools, Roger W. Ellis, Headmaster of Rossall School between 1967 and 1972 (when he moved to become Master of Marlborough College). Ellis was an imaginative teacher who was...

At the end of the twentieth century the wide-ranging activities in independent school music departments, as we have seen from the preceding chapters, can only be described as a success story. Concert programmes, showing not only ambitious choices of music but with performance standards only dreamt of fifty years before continued to grace the lives of independent schools year after year. Some schools, such as the various King’s schools of Henry VIII foundation, those of Edward VI foundation, Harpur Trust schools, the Whitgift schools, Alleyn’s foundation schools in Dulwich, and other groups, united at times when large forces from these...