Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Conventions
- Introduction: The Context for a History
- I THE BACKGROUND
- 1 Music Exams and Victorian Society
- 2 Competing for Candidates: TCL, ABRSM and the Society of Arts
- II THE BOARD ESTABLISHED, 1889–1920
- III THE INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE, 1920–83
- IV THE BOARD REVIVED, 1983–2009
- Appendix 1 Speech and Drama Examinations
- Appendix 2 ABRSM Personalia, 1889–2010
- Select Bibliography
- Index
1 - Music Exams and Victorian Society
from I - THE BACKGROUND
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Dedication
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Conventions
- Introduction: The Context for a History
- I THE BACKGROUND
- 1 Music Exams and Victorian Society
- 2 Competing for Candidates: TCL, ABRSM and the Society of Arts
- II THE BOARD ESTABLISHED, 1889–1920
- III THE INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE, 1920–83
- IV THE BOARD REVIVED, 1983–2009
- Appendix 1 Speech and Drama Examinations
- Appendix 2 ABRSM Personalia, 1889–2010
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The context
THE system of grade and diploma music exams that is now so familiar to us is a product of the attitudes and social circumstances of Victorian society. To explain the origin of these exams and why they proliferated so rapidly into something of an industry requires a broad social history perspective. These exams are part of a fascinating context that sees music teaching mutate from an occupation that many considered evidence of low social standing, into the middle-class respectability of a ‘profession’. And because graded exams established standardized assessments of musical attainment, they were significant in changing music education from something of an ad hoc pursuit into a more systematic and educationally significant process. Because grade exams also enabled musical progress to be measured and defined as clearly and unambiguously as achievements in school-based subjects, they secured more general acceptance of music as a discipline within the conventions of the wider education system.
At first it may not seem obvious that larger historical and social processes should have played much of a part in shaping our music exam culture. But this chapter argues that contemporary social and economic factors were just as formative in making late nineteenth-century Britain such an opportune time to invent the musical exam system as was the astonishing transformation and efflorescence of its musical life. Music exams and a vital musical culture were each legacies of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. But for a long time we have been conditioned against taking a positive view of the musical life of this period.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of MusicA Social and Cultural History, pp. 19 - 41Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013