1 - The Context: Conductors in the British Marketplace (1870–1914)

Summary

It has been cynically remarked, that when a man cannot succeed at anything else, he sets up as a schoolmaster. … It might with nearly as much truth be said that every musician (or rather soi-disant musician), if he can do nothing else, thinks he can at all events conduct. And, to a merely superficial observer, nothing seems simpler than to wave a stick in regular time, and let singers and players follow it. Hence we believe that conductors, as a rule, get far less credit than they deserve with the larger part of their audiences.

‘Conductors and Conducting’, MMR (1872)

With the growing appreciation of orchestral music there has come to the front a new class of virtuoso – the conductor. The time was when a chef d'orchestre was not considered a very important personage; for it was thought in some quarters, and is still thought in some quarters, that a conductor had no right to impose his personality on his orchestra, and that he had only to keep strictly to the indications in the score. … Of one thing we are certain: it never entered the minds of the old generation of musicians that the conductor was destined to take as high a place in the estimation of musical amateurs as any famous violinist, pianist or singer. And yet that is what is happening. During this season we have had quite a procession of conductors, levi, mottl, siegfried wagner, richter and nikisch, and all the orchestral concerts directed by these men have been extremely well attended. The public is actually becoming interested in the different readings different conductors give to the same composition … What does all this mean? Simply that it has dawned on the minds of musical amateurs that each famous conductor has his own individuality and that the temperament of a conductor can be quite as interesting as the temperament of a pianist or of a violinist. In fact the conductor has at last been promoted to the rank of virtuoso.

‘The Conductor as Virtuoso’, Musical Standard (1895)

It was in February 1914 that Adrian Boult (1889–1983) made his first professional appearance as a conductor. By August the nation was at war. Boult's educational path traced the one taken by many of his predecessors, with study both at home and in Germany (in Oxford and Leipzig respectively).