A conservatoire first and foremost provides quality education for the brightest and most dedicated musicians to fulfil roles within the music industry. What society often does not realise is the scope and breadth of practices, teaching, connectivities and future visioning that such an institution provides in both conserving and innovating music cultures and practices. This book unveils the intricate ecological universe the Royal College of Music (RCM) operates in, nourishing and replenishing classical music across its constituent ecosystems, adapting to a rapidly changing performance, recording and consumption landscape whilst making critical decisions that appropriately position the 21st-century conservatoire impactfully within the art music world. What better way to survey and understand this than through the eyes and minds of workers within the RCM?
Divided into three parts, and forefronting the performers, educators, historians, musicologists, composers and music psychologists, each chapter is complemented by an informed ‘outsider’ expert who elicits critical and wider thinking that threads worldwide knowledge, issues, and perspectives. Informative, self-critical, and rarely panegyric, this work brings into focus goals and aims of stakeholders: tripartite lenses of what teachers think they need to do, what students want and the myriad ways in which the conservatory mechanisms support students and future society.
Chapters
Organised across three themes – ‘rethinking conservatoire identities and values’, ‘evolving the teaching and learning of music in conservatoires’ and ‘conservatoires of the future’ – each chapter provides an illuminating overview of these educational and performance facets and the passionate people who drive them.
In section one, Lawson surveys the RCM’s historical evolution, curation of syllabi, the gathering of best performers to work within it, its establishment in England, and its founding vision foregrounding access, advocacy, and excellence. Gandre’s ‘across Atlantic’ exchange juxtaposes this with the seven surviving independent American Conservatories. Hewett, Cole and Zolinsky contend that learning extends beyond music to understanding self within a diverse ecology; Johns and Kelly discuss the need for resilience, competitive markets and the relationships and communities of practice established within and that extended beyond the conservatoire.
Francis, Latarche and Williamon discuss the multifaceted skills today’s musical creatives require to thrive – skills that begin to develop early through the RCM junior programme, realising individual musical potential, study habits, and practices that hallmark such abilities. They evince a realism intersecting the all-too-common demand for excellence amid worldwide underfunding of music education. They argue that beyond the bricks and mortar of the RCM, it is the passionate guidance and wisdom students gain from working together with its teachers that hone life and career music skills. Dworkin’s musical journey from Azerbaijan challenges conservatories to fully represent the multifaceted cultures from which they should draw. Harriss and Harris survey the sustained legacy of regal and philanthropic public support, ensuring cutting-edge connectivity and creativity, but also the wellbeing and eudaimonic products the RCM contributes to the cultural climate of a nation. Madden provides an American philanthropic perspective by articulating a mutually beneficial ecology that can be created between conservatoire and donors. Conservatoires engage astute governance, management and leadership steering strategic direction, with Porter revealing often disconnected perspectives between government concepts to running the RCM and what actually occurs in the musical coalface within its walls.
Teaching and learning are forefronted in part two with Guiaumier, Lester, and Salazar discussing the multiple roles teachers play with young adult learners – the teacher as instructor, role model, professional mentor, personal advisor, and artistic collaborator. They detail the multifaceted role of the performance teacher and the intense weekly engagement they work within. Bloom (re taxonomy) deemed one-to-one learning to be the gold standard of tuition, and although removed from mainstream education and practice, it remains an impactful and enduring facet of conservatoire teaching practice. Self-directed learning and student autonomy are a balanced countenance to teacher-driven impetus, both of which imbue powerful learning that is relational and transformational. It is argued that impactful teaching utilises informed and experienced pedagogic knowledge, modelling not only sound and technique but also expert thinking processes and creative processes, refined goal optimisations and insightfulness and empathy that draw the student into expert levels of thinking, understanding, and action.
Gilbert and Salazar explore the role technology plays in learning, and new artistic possibilities requiring sustained tech engagement that enriches students as digital creatives. Layers of knowledge are unpacked: Pearson discusses RCM’s rich collection of written artefacts and materials, providing informed experience and reflective intelligence; Wistreich and Perkins foreground the performer as researcher, asserting that practice-based research unfolds burgeoning mastery, creative process, and internalised experiences that benefit all music performers. Ryan and Roberts discuss the protean or portfolio element of employment involving performing, teaching, composing, and community work, highlighting the adaptability and creativity musicians have long utilised in their skill set.
Waddell, Hockings and Williamon forefront musicians’ health and wellbeing, where instruction guides physical lifestyle, mental health, hearing, practice, performance optimisation, and career aspiration health. These all come to play within learning at the RCM. Redding’s expertise in dance science provides insightful illuminations borne from integrating science into training, education, and support in the modern conservatorium setting.
RCM buildings represent social, cultural, and historical meaning-making. Lawson and Hull offer a reflexive duality, situating the RCM as the heart and soul of a community that many students call a second home. Yet, beyond its splendid visual features and tactile architecture and heritage, its online interconnectivity allows the RCM to be anywhere in the world at any time. Camlin, Clements, and Perkins expand this idea, articulating public pedagogies that thread conservatoire to society and the public to it. Bartleet’s antipodean-based reflection echoes these thoughts, centreing students’ role as ‘civic ear’ for change, noting the dynamic and evolving conditions and wider social purpose in society conservatoires must uphold.
Ambrose and Thormahlen extend this thinking by prompting diverse and inclusionary ways of being. They offer a critical countenance to performance excellence as a sole aim, examining how delimiting accessibility and inclusion touches on reimagining deep-rooted hierarchies that span gender, race, class, ableism, and educational opportunity. Wilson’s reflections enhance undertandings of this entangled position of the RCM as a gatekeeper of tradition, yet needing to better reflect the pluralistic and diverse society that is modern England.
Perkins, Salazar and Lawson discuss the neoliberal impasse pervading what society deems ‘of value‘ to it, and who ascribes this value. They discuss the adaptive nature with which conservatoires must bravely operate, navigating funding cuts and governmental valuing of ‘jobs-ready high-income’ graduates. Conservatoires can reinvigorate and articulate as change makers, by promoting what their graduates stand for and attain in society.
This book asserts that educational institutions such as the RCM must continue to evolve. Whilst this publication provides deep insights into music training for the best, it also considers how it may break down the barriers – imagined and real – and provide a sense of welcome, belonging and curiosity for greater and more diverse populations.
The authors demonstrate the extraordinary complexity of RCM and conservatoires, as they make sense of their histories, values and relevance in the world and guide their students through essential skills and knowledge, allowing them thrive in the creative economy. Conservatoire communities manoeuvre between tradition and innovation, evolving, adapting, and growing locally and globally. Their work continues to be culturally powerful, and important, shaping our society and how music continues to mark a nation’s heart, soul, and culture.
