CHAPTER IX - OXFORD GRADUATES IN MUSIC, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Summary

In this and the next chapter I have given a chronological list of all those musicians whose names are recorded as having taken degrees in music at Oxford and Cambridge from the year 1463. The list is probably very imperfect, as, down to the beginning of the present century, the registers rarely recorded musical degrees, and in many cases the only means of finding out dates and other particulars has been to consult the Grace-books, which occasionally contain references to these degrees. At Oxford, degrees in music were systematically omitted from the registers between 1763 and 1800, probably because they conferred no membership of the University upon the holder, and were looked upon as outside the regular course of things. The University Calendar of Cambridge, of the latter part of the last and the beginning of the present century, contains no information as to “Proceedings in Music,” and the editor frankly confesses that he can find out nothing definite about them, or the dress to be worn by musical graduates; and down to i860 the names of the few graduates which occur in the Calendar are exceptions to the general rule, which was to omit them altogether. I have naturally derived great assistance from Foster's “Alumni Oxonienses” and from the Cambridge “Catalogus Graduatorum,” which commences with 1659, and for the short biographical notices I am chiefly indebted to Sir George Grove's “Dictionary of Music,” the “Dictionary of National Biography,” and Brown's “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.”