What are British music education values? What emotions are evoked by the mention of ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) grade eight piano or grade five theory? For anyone interested in the topic of values and moved by personal history at the mention of instrumental, vocal and theory examinations, this lucid, perceptive and elegant commentary on the history of ABRSM is essential and delightful reading. Like the memories of childhood – the preparation, the atmosphere of the examination room, the mark sheets and the framed certificates – this book traces policy and practice, influence and indicators, tensions and tactics, rather than the music itself. The pieces played or sung are long since forgotten. This book makes but fleeting reference to the musical content of examinations. It tells a tale of power and purpose, recounting, and accounting for, musical attitudes held by many in music education in the UK. Each generation of music educators will consider in this social history how their early musical experiences were shaped by the stance and strengths of ABRSM specific to that era. Reading the book should challenge music teachers to consider to what extent this childhood assessment has informed the values conveyed to their own pupils.
Several triangles sound throughout the lively text. Overall, the book puts ABRSM policy and practice into the broader musical and music educational context, discussing periods when the ABRSM took the lead in, reacted to or ignored external factors. Then there is the interaction between the ABRSM, their examiners and private music teachers. This book also explores connections between the administration of the Royal Schools of Music, ABRSM examiners and money. It considers setting, maintaining standards and establishing consensus. The background to the recounted changes, some wrought through expediency, often are remarkably similar to contemporary quandaries.
Classical musical history is normally documented through composers and their creations. Here, however, a brand of classical music assessment is scrutinised within the ebb and flow of broader musical needs, from providing suitable students for the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) and Royal College of Music (RCM), through validating and professionalising the work of private instrumental and vocal teachers, to influencing government policy on music education.
Other themes permeating this chronological account are the shifts in balance between theory and practical examinations, the influence of independent and state schools, commercial and philanthropic interest and the interplay between British and overseas demands. There is also the brand-specific divide between examinations up to grade five and the upper grades.
After an energetic preface summarising the main themes that emerge in this chronological study, Wright describes the inception of the ABRSM. The RAM and the RCM, rival music conservatoires in London, set up the ABRSM in 1889, as a ‘symbiosis of educational purpose and entrepreneurial enterprise’ (p. 1) befitting the Victorian Empire. Western classical music, performed and heard live, was both hugely popular and also held in the highest of regard. During the overall period described in this book (up to 2010), that has altered. Western classical music is now a strand of music where any piece or style can be accessed immediately electronically. The ABRSM set out to examine students in a quite small segment of this classical genre – solo performance in piano, organ, voice and some strings, with a compulsory theoretical, largely notational, element – and was slow to expand this successful offer. The instruments examined were those played by the Victorian middle classes for pleasure and worship.
The first examiners were professors at the two colleges, augmenting their meagre salaries. The purpose of the regional examinations was to recruit students for the colleges. Indirectly this monitored instrumental teachers and ‘the Board's syllabuses did indeed bring about a greater conformity in repertoire and associated high art musical values across the country’ (p. 113).
Predominantly young ladies demonstrated their accomplishments upon the piano, an emphasis that only changed with the burgeoning of free instrumental teaching in UK state schools in the 1960s. (Wright refers to male dominance in the operation of the ABRSM, with, for example, women examiners not engaged until 1956.) By setting examination fees higher than those of the rival Trinity College and Society of Arts at the outset, the colleges indicated a certain social class of candidature was expected. Contributory factors that eased the administration of the first examinations are mentioned, such as the creation of the railway network and the reliability of the postal system.
The examinations did raise standards of teaching, whilst the fees kept the two Royal Schools afloat. Information about the examinations was widely distributed through the ever-growing number of music shops. Examination successes were celebrated in the local press with certificate presentations by royalty and leading musicians. That the examinations were taken Empire-wide strengthened the link to the mother country for British colonies.
The author notes that by 1921, when aural tests were introduced, the present-day examination format was largely in place. During the First World War there was a shortage of examiners and so some non-conservatoire staff, usually Directors of Music at public schools or cathedral organists, were appointed for examining lower grades. Some examiners undertook long overseas tours. Wright's attractive prose is enlivened with specific incidents: for example, he mentions that Thomas Dunhill was given a year's leave of absence from Eton and RCM to examine abroad.
In the straitened financial times of the late 1920s, Wright notes that the examiners’ annual lunch became just afternoon tea; there was also a decline in live music making as radio and the gramophone grew in popularity. The ABRSM brand, however, remained strong. With one in three instrumental teachers in the 1930s using their examinations, ABRSM was indirectly engaged in teacher training, which was overtly pursued at the end of the century. From 1918, the ABRSM extended its influence on music making by establishing a publishing wing. The ABRSM's publishing emphasis has been in piano repertoire, particularly in didactic editions of standard repertoire. Wright, however, considers that with the rise of the BBC, with its musical innovation, power in British music shifted from the conservatoires, and therefore ABRSM, to the broadcaster.
During the austerity of the Second World War, music played a large part in boosting public morale and the ABRSM capitalised upon this. Examinations continued at home and overseas and sales of publications increased. After the war, Manchester College and the Scottish Academy gained Royal status and joined the ABRSM. From 1949 grade five theory became a prerequisite for higher practical grades and there was also a surge in examination entries: ABRSM shied away by raising fees!
Wright tells how in the 1950s the ABRSM stuck to its pre-war approach whilst the BBC's Third Programme became adventurous. ‘The sense of an anachronistic disjuncture between music in education and music elsewhere grew stronger’ (p. 144). New pieces selected for piano examinations still had predominantly pastoral titles and were diatonic. The focus of the ABRSM remained strong but narrow: 93 per cent of ABRSM's practical examinations in 1950 were for piano (p. 148).
Wright recounts how the ABRSM eventually followed external changes. In 1967 it expanded its examinations to include guitar and more orchestral and brass band instruments, as free instrumental lessons became available in UK state schools. As the number of brass bands decreased, the ABRSM's new examinations could provide the progression previously learnt by osmosis within mixed ability bands. Allied to this Wright also notes fascinating detail such as the standardisation of brass instrument pitch, enabling piano accompaniment.
Change, though, sometimes came painstakingly slowly. Despite the creation of a recorder syllabus in 1972, the first examinations were not held until 1986, partly because the ABRSM was worried that there would be too great a demand. The ABRSM withstood shaky years where the finances were precarious, supporting one-to-one private instrumental tuition without having to consider the wider issues particularly in regard to class music in the new comprehensive schools.
In 1980 Ronald Smith was appointed to lead a restructured ABRSM. Wright sees this as a turning point. He calls the final era covered here, 1983 to 2009, ‘The Board Revived’ (p. 169) ‘in striking contrast to the lethargic and routine body it had become’ (p.171). Smith had been a Local Education Authority music adviser: he came ‘with a consumer's familiarity of ABRSM's shortcomings’ (p. 183). The ABRSM extended beyond the business of examining and related publishing. It produced reports about instrumental teaching. It started formally training teachers. Under Smith's successor, Richard Morris, it engaged with the politics of UK music education.
In contrast to the initial aim of recruiting students for RAM and RCM, by 2009 grades six to eight represented only 12% of the total grade entry in UK and Ireland (p. 174). From nurturing Victorian values throughout the Empire, the ABRSM now has worldwide reach, expanding rapidly in China, for example.
Whilst the author correctly asserts that his book takes ‘an agnostic stance about the educational benefits – or otherwise – of these exams on the individual’ (p. 51), the influence over both music education and the music profession is considerable. A course of one-to-one tuition extending over approximately eight years of a young person's life, regularly and rigorously tested by external professionals, in examinations that have changed little for one hundred years shows ‘durability’ (p. 255) not found elsewhere in British education. This book, in the gentlest of ways, tells a proud story of music education values.
