6 - The Jubilee of the MMA (1952)

Summary

Musical Times, vol. 93 no. 1312 (June 1952), pp. 252–3

Rather as the review delivered to the Musical Association by Louis N. Parker in 1894 summarised the early stages of the development of music in public schools, so the much briefer survey written by George Dyson to celebrate the jubilee of the Music Masters' Association in 1952 outlined the fortunes of the movement during the second stage of its growth. Both men based their statements on their own experience; but where Parker's career was centred in one school, Sherborne, Dyson had worked at Osborne (1908), Marlborough (1911), Rugby (1914), Wellington (1921), and Winchester (1924), before becoming Director of the Royal College of Music in 1938. [BR]

This year is the Jubilee of the Music Masters' Association, a representative body of musical school masters which began as an informal group fifty years ago and now, with the parallel list of music mistresses, forms that wing of the Incorporated Society of Musicians which covers the whole profession of music in schools. The remarkable expansion and progress of music in education in our century has been largely due to the work and influence of that small group of men who were first in the field.

But behind their pioneer work lies the deeper question as to how and why music ever entered our educational system in so unique a fashion.