Music in education
rudiments of music and the reading of music as well as how to play
the instrument.
Other people were consulted : local music teachers, distinguished
musicians in London, enthusiastic amateurs with a little money to
spare for a good cause, and the official county education authorities. As
a result, the first rural music school was launched. At the end of the first
year about forty people from two or three villages met in Hitchin to
celebrate the founding of the school and to play together simple music
specially written for them. There was a village choir, too, and a group
of experienced amateurs. Three years later, about a hundred people met
in Hitchin Town Hall and played music under Sir Adrian Boult, the
BBC Music Director. Six years later, rural music schools had been
started in three other counties and a central federation had been formed.
These schools were now getting substantial grants from their county
education authorities. Ten years later the war broke out, the rural
music schools’ work was recognized to be ‘in the national interest’
and went on without a break. Twenty-one years later there were rural
music schools in nine counties, some &6,000 a year was being received
from county authorities, and the central organization (the Rural Music
Schools Association) was supported by the Ministry of Education and
the Arts Council of Great Britain. A very successful concert was given
in the Albert Hall, London, in the presence of H. M. Queen Elizabeth,
the Queen Mother, for which a concerto for strings was specially
written by Dr. Vaughan Williams, 0. M. In 1953 the nine rural music
schools between them had 9,500 students taking weekly lessons indi-
vidually or in classes. The curricula include the playing of string and
wind instruments and piano, singing and ensemble work of all kinds;
and hundreds of professional and amateur concerts, adjudications and
other events are organized every year to stimulate the students’interest.
There is not room in a short article to describe the organization of
the rural music schools in detail. The following points of principle
may perhaps help the reader to picture it for himself:
The school must be under the direction of a musician, who is answer-
able to a board of governors. All staff must have recognized musical
diplomas and be paid either as full-time teachers on a salary or, if
working only part time, by the hour. Lessons are given not only in
the centre, where there are offices and music library, etc., of the school,
but in surrounding towns and villages as required. The students may
be of any age from, say, 6 to 80; they pay fees for their lessons--unless
the local authority pays for them-but these do not cover the total
cost of the service, and bursaries are given to those who cannot afford