Presentation for the 2009 Junior Fellows' Evening at the Royal College of Music, by Katy Hamilton & Nick Wright

1. Junior Fellows’
Showcase 2010
An exhibition of items and record of events organised by
Katy Hamilton (Junior Fellow in Performance Documentation) &
Nick Wright (Junior Fellow in Performance History)

2. When the RCM was founded in 1882, it was part of the vision of its founders –
particularly Sir George Grove – that the College should establish its own
collection of significant documents, manuscripts, iconography and instruments.
These collections are now held by the RCM Library and the Centre for
Performance History (which incorporates the Museum of Instruments and the
Portraits and Performance History Collection).
Nick and Katy are Junior Fellows attached to the CPH, and are involved in
maintaining and researching elements of the collection and sharing their findings
with staff, students and visitors to the College. True to the intentions of the
RCM’s founders, the collections have grown and evolved into a key resource to
enrich and inform the College’s students, as well as being of significant interest
to external researchers.
The opening of the RCM’s Blomfield Building on
Exhibition Road, 1894
The Parry Room Library, c.1933

3. Katy Hamilton
Junior Fellow in Performance
Documentation
Katy is a doctoral student at the RCM,
and has been working as a volunteer
at the Museum since 2007. Initially
engaging with the CPH collections as a
researcher, her position as Junior
Fellow has allowed her to investigate
more closely the history of the
College, and explore the collections of
the Portraits and Performance History
Collection.
Following the PPHC’s move to
Shepherd’s Bush in 2008, Katy is
responsible for cataloguing and
maintaining the RCM’s holdings of
historical concert programmes (around
three quarters of a million
documents), and producing study and
publicity material to make the
collection more accessible to staff,
students and visitors to the College.
This includes working on CPH website
resources, providing portrait captions
for artworks on display around the
RCM, and producing collection
overviews to aid researchers.

4. Nick Wright
Junior Fellow in Performance Practice
Nick was a postgraduate student at the
RCM before taking up his Junior
Fellowship this year. A trumpet player
with a long-standing fascination for
historical instruments, he is using his
Fellowship to focus on measuring,
understanding and performing on
instruments that are no longer in use
but represent different aesthetics and
ideas from modern ones. These include
the keyed bugle – which he will be
playing this evening – the slide
trumpet, cornetto and natural trumpet
(which he is pictured with here).
In addition to carrying out research
using instruments from the Museum, he
also organises coaching sessions for
RCM students with top historical
performers. He also leads tours of the
Museum and has been known to play
the serpent, bass viol and even
hosepipe to inspire younger visitors…!

5. Museum of Instruments
The RCM’s Museum of Instruments houses
an internationally renowned collection of
over 1,000 instruments and accessories
from c.1480 to the present. In addition to
providing public access and guided tours,
the Museum is also a key resource for
students and researchers with interests in
organology, iconography and performance
practice, and hosts a series of educational
events and concerts. Nick and Katy have
both organised and participated in a
number of these events in the last twelve
months.

6. In April 2010, the RCM’s Museum of
Instruments celebrated the 30th
anniversary
of its purpose-built display space. Staff,
students, Junior Department pupils and
Junior Fellows all took part in a concert to
mark the occasion, for which an exhibition
was also organised.
Among the concert items were Nick and
Robin Totterdell (right) playing the Museum’s
pair of natural trumpets (c.1910) used for
the Guildford Assizes. Nick also performed on
an 1813 Astor keyed bugle, accompanied by
Katy playing the Museum’s 1897 Steinway
upright piano (below). All of these
instruments are maintained by the Museum,
and are used for concerts, public
demonstrations and research into instrument
construction and design.

7. Trumpet measuring
workshop, January 2010
Professor Arnold Myers from the
University of Edinburgh joined a group of
RCM staff, two trumpet makers and a
number of young professional players
teach how to accurately measure brass
instruments. This allowed us to compare
the internal profile of trumpets made
over a 200 year period from both private
collections and the RCM Museum of
Instruments. We even began to analyse
this data to understand the acoustic
effect of specific design features.
Having measurements of musical
instruments not only helps to understand
them, but with Computer Aided Design
(CAD) software, measurements can
become plans and potentially playable
copies of often fragile originals.

8. Exploring Nineteenth-Century
Brass Instruments
In November, a group of brass students
spent a day rehearsing Elgar’s Dream
of Gerontius on very unusual original
instruments, borrowed from
collections around the South East.
Following sectionals with a Junior
Fellow, Principal players from the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
tutored the main session in the RCM
Concert Hall.
Each of these brass instruments differs
from its modern form in key, fingering
system, feel and response. In
combination they are less dominant
than a modern brass section while
breaking into an exciting sound much
sooner. The result was well balanced
and in-tune with valuable lessons
learnt for modern orchestral playing.

9. The Leonardo da Vinci Trumpet!
The British Library holds a
collection of sketches by Leonardo
da Vinci made around the year
1500AD called the Codex Arundel.
One page of this includes a sketch
showing a chromatic trumpet
above a drawing of system of keys
worked by buttons. Leonardo
seems to have combined the idea
of finger holes from a recorder,
cornett or shawm with the brass
construction and mouthpiece of a
trumpet.
This exciting new project will be a collaborative effort between engineers,
craftsmen, and academics from a number of institutions. The design has
never been constructed or researched in any detail but the physics of the
instrument appear to be quite correct. In a working form, this design would
pre-date the keyed trumpet built for the Haydn concerto by 300 years.

10. It is rare to find a visual
representation of an instrument
maker: as they tended to be of
middle to low status, most were
not able to afford or did not think
it important to sit for a portrait.
This image is therefore
particularly unusual and valuable.
The sitter is probably Benjamin
Flight junior, who worked with his
father (also Benjamin) as an organ
builder specialising in barrel
organs. The device on the table is
part of a barrel organ mechanism
invented by Flight in the early
1830s. Since the RCM Museum
owns two examples of barrel
organs produced by the Flights, it
is particularly rewarding to be
able to display this image of the
maker alongside his work.
George Dawe: ‘Mr Flight’ (c.1813)
Bringing instruments
and images together

11. Portraits & Performance
History Collection
The PPHC , based at Shepherd’s Bush,
houses the RCM’s extensive paper-based
and iconographic collections related to
all aspects of music-making and concert-
giving. These include over 300 original
portraits and sculptures , around 10,000
prints and photographs, instrument
design catalogues, posters and artist
brochures, personal papers and artist
management records, and roughly three
quarters of a million concert, opera and
ballet programmes.
This is an invaluable resource for
students and researchers, and some parts
of the collection (such as the portraits in
the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall) are
on public display around the College. The
exhibition cases here provide an overview
of some of the types of items the PPHC
holds.
Erich Auerbach: Amaryllis Fleming
(1964)
Sir Gerald Kelly: ‘Ralph Vaughan
Williams’ (1952)

12. Instrument Designs & Designer Instruments…
The Centre for Performance History holds four volumes of photographs of
designs for pianos from the firm of Bechstein. These were presumably given
to potential customers, so that they could select a design best suited to their
interior decorations or musical tastes. By the 1890s Wagner’s music was all
the rage in London, and the 'Rheingold' design was one of the visually most
opulent and most expensive (at £1,000) on offer. In other words, we don’t
simply hold construction plans! Albums such as these draw important
connections between instrument design, popular tastes and commerce.
C. Bechstein : Full Concert Grand “Rheingold” Design

13. Concert Programmes
in Context
The PPHC holds an enormous number
of concert programmes from major
venues in the UK and abroad, and has
recently begun a project in association
with the Wigmore Hall to index all
performances given there from 1901 up
to the present day. Such documents are
vital not only as a record of music
performed but also tracing performers’
careers, important premieres and even
trends in advertising and the artist
publicity.
This programme dates from 1928,
three years after Dame Ethel Smyth’s
final comic opera Entente Cordiale was
given its first performance at the RCM
(in what was also the first broadcast
from the College). In this Wigmore Hall
programme, Smyth includes a note to
her audience: ‘Listeners are specially
invited to applaud whenever they feel
like it.’!

14. Performance Images: Virtuosi at Work
The Austro-Hungarian Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was undoubtedly the most
famous violinist of his generation. In addition to his close friendship and
musical collaborations with Johannes Brahms, Joachim was also the
dedicatee of concertos by Schumann, Bruch and Dvořák, and was also highly-
regarded for his playing of J.S. Bach. Although he spent the greater part of
his life living in Berlin, he made regular visits to England (having first
performed there, on Mendelssohn’s recommendation, when he was just
twelve), and gave many performances in London over the course of his
career.
Johanna Eilert: Joseph Joachim (1903)
Joachim’s pre-eminence
as a soloist and chamber
musician, and his close
collaborations with so
many major composers,
makes it particularly
important to understand
the idiosyncrasies of his
technique. Images such
as this, taken in
combination with the
few extant recordings of
him playing, are crucial
in uncovering how his
performing style differed
from modern practices.

15. Performance images:
Leading the Orchestra
This lithograph of Weber (1786–1826)
depicts him conducting extracts of Der
Freischütz, in his first London concert
on 8 March 1826. The illustration is of
particular value as a record of his
technique, since Weber was one of the
first specialist conductors. Rather than
following the common practice of
leading the orchestra from the
keyboard, he chose to stand with a
roll of manuscript paper as a primitive
baton.
Understanding the origins of modern
conducting techniques is vital for
current conductors, as well as all
players and singers working in a
directed ensemble. Illustrations such
as this, in addition to the PPHC’s
baton collection and performer
recollections, help to shed light on
changing styles and techniques.
John Hayter: ‘Carl Maria von Weber at Covent
Garden Theatre leading his celebrated opera
of Der Freischütz’ (1826)

16. One of the most substantial projects with
which Katy has been involved over the last
year is the launch of a web resource about
the composer William Yeates Hurlstone
(1876-1906), an alumnus and professor of
the RCM.
A pupil of Sir Charles Stanford and Edward
Dannreuther, Hurlstone was the first
recipient of several major composition
prizes in the early 1900s, although much
of his music was unpublished at the time
of his death. The web resource brings
together a biographical sketch of the
composer with recordings of several of his
pieces, made for the RCM’s celebration of
Hurlstone’s centenary in 2006. In addition,
key documents and letters have been
digitized, and Katy has produced a
detailed worklist of Hurlstone’s
compositions. This important resource was
completed thanks to the assistance of the
Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust.
William Yeates Hurlstone
(c.1904/5)
Online resources

17. Bringing the (music) history to life
One of the most effective ways to present the
findings of all kinds of musical research –
documentary study, iconography, and instrument
measuring and other organological work – is to
perform the repertoire in question. This might
mean constructing a programme or including
repertoire drawn from a particular period; or
performing on period or reproduction
instruments; or adopting certain practices or
approaches to the music.
Nick is involved with the RCM Consort of Viols. Recent
performances have taken place in London and Cambridge,
and the ensemble was also involved in a recording project
at Knole House, Kent. The Consort is run in collaboration
with the Historical Performance Department at the RCM,
and also has close connections with the Museum.
In February 2010, Nick and Katy organised a ‘Soirée
Musicale’ in the Museum, to include repertoire connected
with the trumpet player Thomas Harper, and the Sacred
Harmonic Society. This included performances on period
and reproduction brass, woodwind and keyboard
instruments.