The South Kensington Music Schools and the Development of the British Conservatoire in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In 1876, the National Training School for Music was established by the Society of Arts as a model of advanced music education after the pattern of leading European conservatoires. But, despite having Arthur Sullivan as Principal, the School failed amidst the rumblings of an academic scandal that dogged George Grove's attempt to establish the new Royal College of Music. The article sets this failure against the successful start of the Royal College and explains how conservatoires, after being in all practical senses virtually an irrelevance to professional concert life, managed to reinvent themselves as vital incubators of British musical talent.

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Notes on contributors

David Wright

David Wright ([email protected]) is Reader in the Centre for Performance History at the Royal College of Music.