Junior Fellows’ Showcase 2010

An exhibition of items and record of events organised by Katy Hamilton (Junior Fellow in Performance Documentation) & Nick Wright (Junior Fellow in Performance History)

When the RCM was founded in 1882, it was part of the vision of its founders – particularly Sir George Grove – that the College should establish its own collection of significant documents, manuscripts, iconography and instruments. These collections are now held by the RCM Library and the Centre for Performance History (which incorporates the Museum of Instruments and the Portraits and Performance History Collection). Nick and Katy are Junior Fellows attached to the CPH, and are involved in maintaining and researching elements of the collection and sharing their findings with staff, students and visitors to the College. True to the intentions of the RCM’s founders, the collections have grown and evolved into a key resource to enrich and inform the College’s students, as well as being of significant interest to external researchers.

The opening of the RCM’s Blomfield Building on Exhibition Road, 1894

The Parry Room Library, c.1933

Katy HamiltonJunior Fellow in Performance

Documentation

Katy is a doctoral student at the RCM, and has been working as a volunteer at the Museum since 2007. Initially engaging with the CPH collections as a researcher, her position as Junior Fellow has allowed her to investigate more closely the history of the College, and explore the collections of the Portraits and Performance History Collection.Following the PPHC’s move to Shepherd’s Bush in 2008, Katy is responsible for cataloguing and maintaining the RCM’s holdings of historical concert programmes (around three quarters of a million documents), and producing study and publicity material to make the collection more accessible to staff, students and visitors to the College. This includes working on CPH website resources, providing portrait captions for artworks on display around the RCM, and producing collection overviews to aid researchers.

Nick WrightJunior Fellow in Performance Practice

Nick was a postgraduate student at the RCM before taking up his Junior Fellowship this year. A trumpet player with a long-standing fascination for historical instruments, he is using his Fellowship to focus on measuring, understanding and performing on instruments that are no longer in use but represent different aesthetics and ideas from modern ones. These include the keyed bugle – which he will be playing this evening – the slide trumpet, cornetto and natural trumpet (which he is pictured with here). In addition to carrying out research using instruments from the Museum, he also organises coaching sessions for RCM students with top historical performers. He also leads tours of the Museum and has been known to play the serpent, bass viol and even hosepipe to inspire younger visitors…!

Museum of InstrumentsThe RCM’s Museum of Instruments houses an internationally renowned collection of over 1,000 instruments and accessories from c.1480 to the present. In addition to providing public access and guided tours, the Museum is also a key resource for students and researchers with interests in organology, iconography and performance practice, and hosts a series of educational events and concerts. Nick and Katy have both organised and participated in a number of these events in the last twelve months.

In April 2010, the RCM’s Museum of Instruments celebrated the 30th anniversary of its purpose-built display space. Staff, students, Junior Department pupils and Junior Fellows all took part in a concert to mark the occasion, for which an exhibition was also organised. Among the concert items were Nick and Robin Totterdell (right) playing the Museum’s pair of natural trumpets (c.1910) used for the Guildford Assizes. Nick also performed on an 1813 Astor keyed bugle, accompanied by Katy playing the Museum’s 1897 Steinway upright piano (below). All of these instruments are maintained by the Museum, and are used for concerts, public demonstrations and research into instrument construction and design.

Trumpet measuring workshop, January 2010

Professor Arnold Myers from the University of Edinburgh joined a group of RCM staff, two trumpet makers and a number of young professional players teach how to accurately measure brass instruments. This allowed us to compare the internal profile of trumpets made over a 200 year period from both private collections and the RCM Museum of Instruments. We even began to analyse this data to understand the acoustic effect of specific design features. Having measurements of musical instruments not only helps to understand them, but with Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, measurements can become plans and potentially playable copies of often fragile originals.

Exploring Nineteenth-Century Brass Instruments

In November, a group of brass students spent a day rehearsing Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius on very unusual original instruments, borrowed from collections around the South East. Following sectionals with a Junior Fellow, Principal players from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment tutored the main session in the RCM Concert Hall. Each of these brass instruments differs from its modern form in key, fingering system, feel and response. In combination they are less dominant than a modern brass section while breaking into an exciting sound much sooner. The result was well balanced and in-tune with valuable lessons learnt for modern orchestral playing.

The Leonardo da Vinci Trumpet!

The British Library holds a collection of sketches by Leonardo da Vinci made around the year 1500AD called the Codex Arundel. One page of this includes a sketch showing a chromatic trumpet above a drawing of system of keys worked by buttons. Leonardo seems to have combined the idea of finger holes from a recorder, cornett or shawm with the brass construction and mouthpiece of a trumpet.This exciting new project will be a collaborative effort between engineers, craftsmen, and academics from a number of institutions. The design has never been constructed or researched in any detail but the physics of the instrument appear to be quite correct. In a working form, this design would pre-date the keyed trumpet built for the Haydn concerto by 300 years.

It is rare to find a visual representation of an instrument maker: as they tended to be of middle to low status, most were not able to afford or did not think it important to sit for a portrait. This image is therefore particularly unusual and valuable. The sitter is probably Benjamin Flight junior, who worked with his father (also Benjamin) as an organ builder specialising in barrel organs. The device on the table is part of a barrel organ mechanism invented by Flight in the early 1830s. Since the RCM Museum owns two examples of barrel organs produced by the Flights, it is particularly rewarding to be able to display this image of the maker alongside his work. George Dawe: ‘Mr Flight’ (c.1813)

Bringing instruments and images together

Portraits & Performance History Collection

The PPHC , based at Shepherd’s Bush, houses the RCM’s extensive paper-based and iconographic collections related to all aspects of music-making and concert-giving. These include over 300 original portraits and sculptures , around 10,000 prints and photographs, instrument design catalogues, posters and artist brochures, personal papers and artist management records, and roughly three quarters of a million concert, opera and ballet programmes.This is an invaluable resource for students and researchers, and some parts of the collection (such as the portraits in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall) are on public display around the College. The exhibition cases here provide an overview of some of the types of items the PPHC holds.

Erich Auerbach: Amaryllis Fleming (1964)

Sir Gerald Kelly: ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams’ (1952)

Instrument Designs & Designer Instruments… The Centre for Performance History holds four volumes of photographs of designs for pianos from the firm of Bechstein. These were presumably given to potential customers, so that they could select a design best suited to their interior decorations or musical tastes. By the 1890s Wagner’s music was all the rage in London, and the 'Rheingold' design was one of the visually most opulent and most expensive (at £1,000) on offer. In other words, we don’t simply hold construction plans! Albums such as these draw important connections between instrument design, popular tastes and commerce.

C. Bechstein : Full Concert Grand “Rheingold” Design

Concert Programmes in Context

The PPHC holds an enormous number of concert programmes from major venues in the UK and abroad, and has recently begun a project in association with the Wigmore Hall to index all performances given there from 1901 up to the present day. Such documents are vital not only as a record of music performed but also tracing performers’ careers, important premieres and even trends in advertising and the artist publicity. This programme dates from 1928, three years after Dame Ethel Smyth’s final comic opera Entente Cordiale was given its first performance at the RCM (in what was also the first broadcast from the College). In this Wigmore Hall programme, Smyth includes a note to her audience: ‘Listeners are specially invited to applaud whenever they feel like it.’!

Performance Images: Virtuosi at WorkThe Austro-Hungarian Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was undoubtedly the most famous violinist of his generation. In addition to his close friendship and musical collaborations with Johannes Brahms, Joachim was also the dedicatee of concertos by Schumann, Bruch and Dvořák, and was also highly-regarded for his playing of J.S. Bach. Although he spent the greater part of his life living in Berlin, he made regular visits to England (having first performed there, on Mendelssohn’s recommendation, when he was just twelve), and gave many performances in London over the course of his career.

Johanna Eilert: Joseph Joachim (1903)

Joachim’s pre-eminence as a soloist and chamber musician, and his close collaborations with so many major composers, makes it particularly important to understand the idiosyncrasies of his technique. Images such as this, taken in combination with the few extant recordings of him playing, are crucial in uncovering how his performing style differed from modern practices.

Performance images: Leading the Orchestra

This lithograph of Weber (1786–1826) depicts him conducting extracts of Der Freischütz, in his first London concert on 8 March 1826. The illustration is of particular value as a record of his technique, since Weber was one of the first specialist conductors. Rather than following the common practice of leading the orchestra from the keyboard, he chose to stand with a roll of manuscript paper as a primitive baton. Understanding the origins of modern conducting techniques is vital for current conductors, as well as all players and singers working in a directed ensemble. Illustrations such as this, in addition to the PPHC’s baton collection and performer recollections, help to shed light on changing styles and techniques.

John Hayter: ‘Carl Maria von Weber at Covent Garden Theatre leading his celebrated opera of Der Freischütz’

(1826)

One of the most substantial projects with which Katy has been involved over the last year is the launch of a web resource about the composer William Yeates Hurlstone (1876-1906), an alumnus and professor of the RCM.A pupil of Sir Charles Stanford and Edward Dannreuther, Hurlstone was the first recipient of several major composition prizes in the early 1900s, although much of his music was unpublished at the time of his death. The web resource brings together a biographical sketch of the composer with recordings of several of his pieces, made for the RCM’s celebration of Hurlstone’s centenary in 2006. In addition, key documents and letters have been digitized, and Katy has produced a detailed worklist of Hurlstone’s compositions. This important resource was completed thanks to the assistance of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust.

William Yeates Hurlstone (c.1904/5)

Online resources

Bringing the (music) history to lifeOne of the most effective ways to present the findings of all kinds of musical research – documentary study, iconography, and instrument measuring and other organological work – is to perform the repertoire in question. This might mean constructing a programme or including repertoire drawn from a particular period; or performing on period or reproduction instruments; or adopting certain practices or approaches to the music.

Nick is involved with the RCM Consort of Viols. Recent performances have taken place in London and Cambridge, and the ensemble was also involved in a recording project at Knole House, Kent. The Consort is run in collaboration with the Historical Performance Department at the RCM, and also has close connections with the Museum.In February 2010, Nick and Katy organised a ‘Soirée Musicale’ in the Museum, to include repertoire connected with the trumpet player Thomas Harper, and the Sacred Harmonic Society. This included performances on period and reproduction brass, woodwind and keyboard instruments.