The Music Profession in Britain 1780-1920: New Perspectives on Status and Identity
The Open University in London, Camden, 14 September 2015
The idea of the music profession plays an important part in research into music’s cultural and social history, perhaps nowhere more so than the flourishing area of research into music in nineteenth-century Britain. Yet the profession, its meaning and its history remain as difficult to define in the twenty-first century as in the nineteenth. Cyril Ehrlich’s seminal 1985 book The Music Profession in Britain Since the Eighteenth Century: A Social History continues to occupy a central role in tracing the history of the profession, contributing a wealth of case studies and data. As Ehrlich’s work reaches its thirtieth anniversary in 2015, this day conference is intended to draw together strands of research which cast new light on the history of the music profession. The scope and historical time-frame are set broadly, in order to capture a wide variety of perspectives and draw together scholars with different backgrounds and expertise.
We warmly encourage proposals for 20-minute papers on topics of music history related to the theme of the conference.
Potential themes may include (but are not limited to):
– Professional institutions and organisations
– Professionals and amateurs
– Career paths and portfolios
– Gender, class and professional status
Abstracts of no more than 200 words, together with a short biography of no more than 100 words and details of AV requirements, should be submitted as a single email attachment to rosemary.golding@open.ac.uk by 5.00pm on Wednesday 15 July.
From March 2nd to 6th, the Essay program on BBC Radio 3 will air a series on Unsung Heroines of Classical Music, and on 8 March the entire day has an exciting full day of women’s music: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/international-womens-day-r3
As part of this celebration of International Women’s Day, NABMSA member Phyllis Weliver will be presenting a 15-minute essay, “Classical Music’s Unsung Heroines: Mary Gladstone”, on BBC Radio 3 at 10:45 Greenwich Mean Time/5:45 Eastern Time on Thursday, March 5, 2015. Listen live (or later as a podcast): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x3hl
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded NABMSA member Phyllis Weliver a Fellowship for her project, Mary Gladstone and the Victorian Salon, 1876-1883. She will begin her 12-month fellowship on January 1, 2015. Congratulations to Dr. Weliver!
Congratulations to NABMSA president Candace Bailey! Her project “Music and the Performance of Women’s Culture in the South, 1840-1870″ has been selected for a NEH Award for Faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This award provides support for twelve months research and writing, similar to the more familiar NEH Fellowship in the Humanities.
“Nettle Tea and a Trunk Full of Documents” by Christina Bashford (below) was first published in January 2008 on the Boydell and Brewer blog, following the publication of her monograph, The Pursuit of High Culture: John Ella and Chamber Music in Victorian London. I thank her for suggesting this article for the NABMSA blog’s new series “Stories from the Archives” and for allowing NABMSA to re-post the story. If you have archival stories of your own that you would like to share, please send them my way.
M Meinhart
Meanwhile John Ravell became thrilled that I was pursuing this line of research, the more so when I told him I had decided to write a definitive biography of Ella once my PhD was completed. A book on Ella had been something he had always wanted to see – the true recognition of Ella’s importance – but he had latterly come to realize he would never write it himself. Now, nearly twenty years later the Ella papers are safely housed in Oxford University libraries and I have finally finished the book I promised John Ravell such a long while ago. Unfortunately, Mr Ravell has not lived to see the completed product. I regret that intensely, because it would have given him great pleasure to see John Ella’s significance recognized on the bookshelf. For like John Ella, John Ravell was a quite exceptional and visionary man.