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Key Workers: Toward an Occupational History of the Private Music Teacher in England and Wales, c.1861–c.1921

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2020

Dave Russell
Dave Russell*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, Halifax, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
*
*Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

Making particular use of material drawn from the Census of England and Wales, this article confirms that music teaching was above all an urban activity, increasingly dominated by women, albeit with some local variation, and that the highest provision of teaching was invariably in middle-class areas. Seaside resorts and suburbia were especially prominent market locations by the early twentieth century, with the south-east particularly favoured. The often-derided part-time teacher is shown to have been a key figure in working-class communities. While teachers showed little interest in formal professionalization, it is argued that they were probably better paid than has been assumed and were able at least to maintain a social position within the lower-middle and skilled working classes that most were born into. Although women's careers were frequently short, for a growing minority, music teaching was a serious career option. It is suggested that teachers met contemporary needs rather more effectively than some have claimed.

Keywords

womenpianocensusurbansocial classprofession
Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 47 , 2016 , pp. 145 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century. A Social History (Oxford, 1985). Other valuable titles from this point include Paula Gillett, Musical Women in England, 1870–1914 (London, 2000); Deborah Rohr, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850. A Profession of Artisans (Cambridge, 2001); David J. Golby, Instrumental Teaching in Nineteenth Century Britain (Farnham, 2004); David C. H. Wright, The Associated Board of the Royal Colleges of Music. A Social and Cultural History (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2013).

2 Wright, Associated Board, 19.

3 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 104; Gillett, Musical Women, 207; Golby, Instrumental Teaching, 268.

4 Some private class teaching began at the end of the period. Stanley Turnbull, The Business of Music Teaching (London, 1938), 34–40.

5 Eric Mackerness, The Social History of English Music (London, 1964), 233; ‘Louisa Fanny Pyne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 45 (Oxford, 2004). For Bodda, obituary in Musical Times, April 1892, 219; Kelly's Directory of Durham, 1902, 902–3.

6 P.S. Morrish, ‘Percy Alfred Scholes (1877–1958): Music Critic, Educator and encyclopaedist’, Transactions of the Thoresby Society, 2nd series, 13 (2003), 53–4.

7 Music Student, January 1921, 217; Halifax Daily Courier and Guardian, 25 March 1948.

8 Obituary, Halifax Daily Courier and Guardian, 2 January 1924.

9 Marie Kent, ‘The Piano-Industry Workforce in mid-Victorian England: a Study of the 1881 Census’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 46 (2015), 95–158.

10 All electronic census data have been taken from census schedules provided by Ancestry at www.ancestry.co.uk.

11 ‘Music master’ and ‘music mistress’ were the official terms used in occupational tables. Practitioners usually chose the term ‘music teacher’ or ‘teacher of music’, with a minority, largely but not exclusively male, preferring ‘professor of music’. ‘Musician’, in its turn, gathered together many different categories including ‘singers’, ‘pianists’ and ‘violinists’. Census of England and Wales [CEW] 1921, ‘Classification of occupations’, His Majesty's Stationery Office [HMSO] (1924), 82–3.

12 For a full analysis of problems and possibilities, Edward Higgs, Making Sense of the Census Revisited (London, 2005). Kent, ‘piano-industry workforce’, is helpful throughout on the kind of specific practicalities encountered by scholars in the musical field.

13 Family members and friends provided another (presumably largely unpaid) source of tuition.

14 CEW, 1921, ‘Occupational Tables’, (HMSO, 1924), Tables, 3 and 4, pp. 50, 101.

15 D. A. Reid, ‘Playing and Praying’, The Cambridge History of Urban Britain, vol. 3, 1840–1950, ed. Martin Daunton (Cambridge, 2000), iii. 745–807.

16 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 118–19; See, for example, Musical Times, March 1912, 148–9, October 1912, 151–2, for results lists for the proprietary London and Victoria Colleges.

17 Ehrlich, Musical Profession, 51–75; Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano, a History (London, 1976), 91, 97–107.

18 Their populations were 99,000, 90,000, 103,000 and 178,000 respectively.

19 Elizabeth Roberts, Women's Work 1840–1940 (Basingstoke, 1988), 29–36.

20 Kelly's Directory of the West Riding (1908), 909–11.

21 Dave Russell, Popular Music in England, 1840–1914. A Social History (2nd edn, Manchester, 1997), 205–71.

22 CEW 1861, Summary tables, tables xxx and xxxi, pp. lxxx, xc. Nineteen percent of those returned as ‘musicians’, however, were European-born; ‘Tables of the Ages, Civil Condition, Occupations and Birthplaces of the People, division 1, London’, tables 16 and 17, 46, 54.

23 For a perceptive study of a Dutch-born teacher, composer and musician living in the town, Andrew M. Wilkinson, ‘Hermann Francois Charles Van Dyk: a Critical Review of the Life of a Professional Musician Working in a Northern Town’ (MA Northern Studies dissertation, Leeds Metropolitan University, 2009).

24 Rohr, British Musicians, 22–3. This figure is based on the two samples outlined below.

25 The sources used were Kelly's Directory of Birmingham, [Kelly's] 1913, Kelly's Bristol, 1914, Kelly's Cornwall, 1910, Kelly's Durham, 1902, Kelly's North and East Riding, 1909, Kelly's South Wales, 1910, Kelly's Sussex, 1911, Kelly's West Riding, 1908, Reeves Musical Directory, 1902 (London, 1902). Reeves has been used mainly to gather information on London and the south-east.

26 This size of sample allows for a confidence level of 95% with a degree of error of ± 5%. This is felt to be sufficiently accurate to produce a strong indication of social backgrounds. In the sample 282 were women, 98 men.

27 Rohr, British Musicians, 30.

28 ‘Registration districts’ were the administrative units utilized for census purposes. The city's metropolitan boroughs were not established until 1899.

29 Rohr, British Musicians, 31–9.

30 The six best ratios, in descending order, were to be found in Hampstead, St Marylebone, Lewisham, Paddington, Kensington and Stoke Newington, the poorest, in ascending order, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Bermondsey, Southwark, Finsbury and Stepney.

31 CEW 1921, ‘County Report, London’, 26.

32 CEW, 1861. Population Tables, vol. ii, ‘Ages, Conditions, Occupations and Birthplaces of the People’. The information utilized here is derived from the individual county reports gathered in this volume under the headings ‘Occupations of Males aged 20 years and upwards – in Districts’ and ‘Occupations of Females aged 20 years and upwards – in Districts’. These are usually, although not always, numbered as Tables 19 and 20 respectively.

33 Rohr, British Musicians, 30. See also Ehrlich, Music Profession, 19–26, for provincial provision before 1850.

34 ‘Urban areas with more than 20,000 population’ was now the official term employed. ‘County Reports’, information located for each county in Table 16, ‘Occupation by Sex of Persons aged 12 years and over’. Twenty thousand remains the minimum population base for consideration, but the number of teachers required has now been set at 20.

35 Although see Wright, Associated, 29. The 1921 census took place in June as opposed to the normal month of April and thus conflated resident musicians with the many seasonal performers. However, it is unlikely that the changed date had any impact on the recording of teachers, who were largely permanent residents.

36 John K. Walton, The English Seaside Resort. A Social History, 1750–1914 (Leicester, 1983), 75 and John K. Walton, The British Seaside. Holidays and resorts in the twentieth century (Manchester, 2000), 143, 149–50.

37 Walton, English Seaside Resort, 98–100, 97.

38 The five were Hanwell, Southgate, Hendon, Ealing and Woodford.

39 Its population was 190,000.

40 Such communities also generally housed smaller than average communities of musicians, thus restricting another possible form of teaching by full-time musical practitioners.

41 Many of the communities of this type were ‘urban districts’, effectively clusters of smaller towns and villages.

42 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 52.

43 The ‘industrial midlands’ is defined as comprising the counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, the ‘north’ Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. Given the lack of formal definitions, this is a personal choice. Data drawn from CEW 1861, 1891, 1921, ‘County Reports’.

44 CEW 1921, ‘County Report, London’, 2.

45 John D. Vose, The Lancashire Caruso (Blackpool, 1982); Reginald Nettel, Music in the Five Towns (Oxford, 1944); Gareth Williams, Valleys of Song. Music and Society in Wales, 1840–1914 (Cardiff, 1998).

46 Elizabeth Roberts, ‘Working-Class Barrow and Lancaster, 1890–1930′ (Lancaster: Centre for North-Western Regional Studies, occasional paper no. 2, 1976), 52; Ehrlich, Piano, 98–104, 171–2.

47 Wright, Associated Board, 52.

48 Halifax Guardian, 12, 19 October 1912.

49 Michael Latchford, Walter Widdop. The Great Yorkshire Tenor (Letchworth, 2012), 18–27, 57–8.

50 Fisher, The Musical Profession (London, 1888), 171–2. Fisher's book was based on questionnaire responses from what he claimed to be ‘a thoroughly representative body of men and women’.

51 Samuel Midgley, My Seventy Years Musical Memories (1860–1930) (London, [1935?]), 61.

52 Golby, Instrumental Teaching, 90.

53 John Burnett, ed., Destiny Obscure (London, 1994), 188–92.

54 Musical Opinion and Music Trade Review, October 1891, 28.

55 Walter Carroll, Account of Income and Expenditure, 1902–1913, Carroll/WC/7, Royal Northern College of Music Archive. See also, Howitt, Walter and his Daughters, 36. Correspondence teaching, made ever easier by improvements in postal and rail services, flourished at this time and was particularly well- suited to theory tuition.

56 Rohr, British Musicians, 92; Fisher, Musical Profession, 24; Gillett, Musical Women, 9–10.

57 Rohr, British Musicians, 137; J.F.C. Harrison, The Early Victorians (London, 1973), 131.

58 Halifax Courier, interview with Madame Emily Crowther, 6 June 1983.

59 Carroll, Account of Income and Expenditure; Howitt, Walter and his Daughters, 32–5, 45, 60.

60 Bradford Daily Argus, 9 November 1910.

61 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 193.

62 Music Student, June 1921, 544.

63 Music Student, May 1921, 494. Ehrlich draws less positive conclusions from this source. Music Profession, 193. John Stevenson, British Society, 1914–45 (Harmondsworth, 1984), 119–24; Ross Mckibbin, Classes and Cultures. England, 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), 114–19.

64 Golby, Instrumental Teaching, 85.

65 Kelly's Durham, 1902, Robinsons Halifax and District Directory, 1905–6 (Leeds, 1905).

66 CEW, 1921, Occupation Tables, Table 4, 101; Roberts, Women's Work, 45.

67 For Carlton and Aaron, Kelly's Directory of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, 1921, 681; 1933 edition, 843.

68 Monthly Journal, September 1889, quoted in Ehrlich, Music Profession, 131.Percy Scholes, Mirror of Music, 2 (London and Oxford, 1947), 726–7.

69 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 131.

70 Robinson's Halifax Directory, 1905–6; Kelly's Sussex, 1911, Kelly's Cornwall, 1910, Kelly's Durham, 1902.

71 Kay Pearson, Life in Hull – From then till now (Hull, 1979), 16, 31–4, 76; Bradford Heritage Recording Unit [BHRU], Bradford Central Library, A0190/k-01, 16–17. Both individuals continued to teach in adulthood.

72 John Benson, The Penny Capitalists. A Study of Nineteenth-Century Entrepreneurs (Dublin, 1983).

73 Pearson, Life in Hull, 16.

74 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 126–36; Edmund Bohan, The ISM: The First Hundred Years (London, 1982).

75 Midgley, Memories, 78.

76 Ehrlich, Music Profession, 127.

77 Wright, Associated Board, 55–7.

78 Wright, Associated Board, ix–102 and also his ‘The Music Exams of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 1859–1919′, in Paul Rodmell, ed., Music and Institutions in Nineteenth Century Britain (Farnham, 2012), 161–80.

79 Wright, Associated Board, 55–9; for a contemporary view, Fisher, Musical Profession, 230–67.

80 Musical Opinion, March 1902, 436.

81 Anon, Musical Examinations (Dubious, and Imitation Degrees) (London: Musical News, 3rd ed., [1907?]).

82 Musical Opinion, Sept. 1892, 599–60.

83 Truth, 5 October 1902, quoted in Anon, Musical Examinations, 139.

84 A campaign by Percy Scholes in the Music Student finally ended this publishing practice in 1921. Music Student, August 1921, 629.

85 The 1921 census recorded 192 ‘employers’ amongst music teachers.

86 Rohr, British Musicians, 180.

87 ISM Memorandum and Register of Members, 1907, 18, 57–8; Wright, Associated, 10, 140–3.

88 Anon, Musical Examinations, 72.

89 J. Raymond Tobin, ‘The Music Teacher’, in Robert Elkin, ed., A Career in Music (London, 1950), 159.

90 CEW, 1921, ‘Occupational Tables’, Tables, 3 and 4, 50, 101; Music Student, Oct. 1920, 40; Musical News and Herald, 4 Feb. 1922.

91 Although see Howitt, Walter and his Daughters, 79–82.

92 Cost may have been a factor for some directories (although most did not charge), but only a marginal one. It will have also been a factor influencing membership of the ISM and other bodies.

93 Based on analysis of ISM Memorandum and Registry of Members, 1914. Ehrlich, Music Profession, 133, takes a slightly more positive view of these qualifications.

94 Anon, Musical Examinations, 212–13.

95 Wright, Associated Board, 33, 114. Also 21, 26.

96 Halifax Guardian, 29 August 1946. He was also accompanist for the Blackpool Music Festival for 20 years (and a cinema pianist in the 1920s).

97 BHRU, A0190/k-01, 19.

98 BHRU, A0190/k-01, 16. Golby, Instrumental Teaching, 7–8, 9, 23.

99 Musical News, 14 November 1896, quoted in Anon, Musical Examinations, 4; Musical Times, March 1912.