When the Academy opened in 1822, it was “for the maintenance and general instruction in music of a certain number of pupils,' not exceeding at present forty males and forty females.” The general idea was that these young musicians would be able to “enter into competition with, and rival the natives of other countries, and to provide for themselves the means of an honourable and comfortable livelihood.”
In the event, on 8 March 1822 ten girls and ten boys were admitted as the foundation students. These young people ranged in age from 10 to 15 – it is a common error in histories to believe that the Academy was always for an older generation. Unlike its rival over in Paris, however, which was there for musicians on the verge of the profession already, the Academy wanted to get in early in the educational journey. It wasn’t until well into the twentieth century that the average age rose to what it is now, i.e. tertiary age.
There are several histories of the Academy. Frederick Corder wrote the first one in celebration of the centenary, in 1922. He sets out in some tortuous detail all the meetings and ruminations leading to the opening, then finally gets to the whole point of the exercise, the students themselves, listing those first lucky twenty:
Corder, with a startling lack of imagination and social comprehension, goes on to say,
“The order in which these names are placed is according to the number of votes they obtained, and therefore according to their apparent talent at the time, for they were elected purely on their merits, Nearly all the boys distinguished themselves in after life, but not one of the girls, a fact for which I offer no explanation. ”
It would not be until the late 1830s that the female students began to make themselves more known on the platforms and publishing houses of the country, with the advent of the generation that included such names as Kate Loder, Clara Macirone and Charlotte Sainton-Dolby. It might well be noted that this generation of female students had recourse to the same teachers as the boys did, although still not quite the same range of subjects. This is not so much an indictment of the teachers the first girls had, who were perfectly well skilled in both music and education, but a reflection of the explicit assumption that girls learned music for a different purpose, one that did not include a professional career beyond the livelihood stipulated in the Academy’s first set of regulations.
Silvano Arieti’s fantastically-named book Creativity: The Magic Synthesis has a chapter dedicated to the kinds of factors that help foster creativity in artists, and the ways in which the society around them can help rather than hinder. He has a list of nine suggestions, ranging from bluntly pointing out that people not only need the tools of their trade, but a financial independence that allows them to purchase these as and when needed, to highlighting the need, in some form or another, of recognition of achievement. In amongst these factors, he points to what he calls the “interaction of significant persons” – in other words, the need for excellent teaching, mentors, collaborative projects, and all the other * of a creative community. No one creates in a vacuum, even the artist alone in an attic garret, shuffling papers off into a forgotten drawer. Allowing female students access to the same community as the males were was the first step towards allowing them entry to that community. I am reminded of Carl Friedrich Zelter’s Liedertafel in 1820s Berlin, when the men sat around a table and sang, while the women sat in an outer circle, listening. As Wilhelm Bornemann’s 1851 history described it:
“In the legends of the Round Table of the British King Arthur, or Artus [...] Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife, also appeared with her women. Not at the actual Round Table, but nearby in a window nook, the great noblewoman waited, keeping watch over the happy affairs of the knights and bards.”
In the community but not of it…
A look at the difference in the timetable for girls and boys is also telling – several crucial differences immediately spring out. For a start, there is less practice time for the girls, right from the beginning of the day, when boys rise half an hour earlier to fit practice around prayers and breakfast. Girls don’t get to their instruments until 9 o’clock. They also lose half a day on Wednesday. The other most obvious discrepancy is simply the sheer diversity of the boys’ exposure to musical sound – of course, there is not a whisper of a brass or woodwind instrument in the girls’ timetable. Its really not hard to see that despite those lofty words at the beginning, the Academy saw a feminine “livelihood” as rather less fraught with possibility than the masculine equivalent (and to some degree, vice versa - who could say if there were boys who longed to follow in the footsteps of harpist Nicholas-Charles Bochsa, to all evidence an inspiring teacher?).
I am also quite fascinated at the thought of “tuning taught” – I wonder what this entailed?
The foundations being laid here, however, shouldn’t be underestimated. By the time we arrive at the latter part of the century, things are becoming different, and female students were at the forefront of public Academy life, especially in the number of composers having their works performed in the Academy’s concerts. Remember Liszt’s first piano “recital”, performed in London’s leading concert venue, the Hanover Square Rooms, just around the corner from the Academy’s first site in Tenterden Street? That was the venue for many of the RAM events, and thus the site of many premieres of works by female students. How this translated into the wider music culture is a different question, of course with a much larger pool of factors, not to mention the immeasurably complex question of reception.
In February’s blog entry, we will look at some of the next generation of women who had a RAM education behind them. The mid-nineteenth century London music scene was awash with ex-RAM students - singers, pianists, teacher, composers, including one who was shipwrecked, rescued, and continued on a world tour as though it were all in a day’s work. See you all next month!