FEATURE
I was Glad: the legacy of SIR Hubert Parry October marks 100 years since the death of former RCM Director Sir Hubert Parry. In February, the RCM welcomed author and journalist Dr Simon Heffer to mark the centenary in the annual Crees Lecture. While Parry’s contribution as a composer is now widely recognised, Dr Heffer honoured the equally significant contribution he made as teacher and leader of the College.
Below Drawing of Parry by Sidney Kent, courtesy of RCM collections Opposite Sir Hubert Parry pictured aboard his yacht. Anonymous, taken ‘off Sark’, c 1900. Photo courtesy of RCM collections
In a year of centenaries – the end of WW1 and the beginning of universal suffrage to name just a couple – Parry’s in particular is held dear by the Royal College of Music. The composer led a remarkable life, by anyone’s standards. He received a knighthood from Queen Victoria in 1848, an honorary doctorate from both Cambridge and Oxford, and became a baronet in 1902. Today, he can count Prince Charles among his fans. (In a BBC4 documentary about Parry’s music, HRH said, ‘It gives you tingles up the spine and tears in your eyes’). Indeed, despite beginning his official musical career relatively late (he spent seven years as an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London after graduating) Parry managed to become one of the most appreciated and important composers of his time, often referred to as the nation’s ‘unofficial composer laureate’. Even as a young boy, Parry excelled both musically and intellectually. He was born in 1816 and attended Twyford School and Eton College, where he became the youngest person ever to successfully sit the Oxford Bachelor of Music exam. On 28 October, choirs from both Twyford and Eton will join with RCM musicians to honour their past pupil in a special anniversary evening concert in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall. A study day will also take place at the College, co-organised by the RCM and the University of Southampton, which will examine Parry’s work as Professor and Director, and his legacy throughout the 20th century. Parry first became involved with the College through his friend – and the first ever Director of the RCM – Sir George Grove. After leaving his position at Lloyd’s, Grove appointed Parry as sub-editor of his Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to which he was to contribute more than 200 articles. Later, in 1883, Grove invited
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UPBEAT SUMMER 2018
Parry to become Professor of Musical History at the newly founded RCM. And then, in 1895 and at the height of his fame, Parry succeeded Grove as Director. A man with strong humanitarian convictions and artistic ideals, Parry was also a man of huge ambition – both for his own work and that of the College. In 1915, he told his students that, ‘The Royal College of Music has always been a place with big aims of doing special services to the nation, and it was organised from the start with a view to their attainment’. In February, author and journalist Dr Simon Heffer marked the centenary of the former Director in the College’s annual Crees Lecture. In his address, Dr Heffer remarked that, ‘Parry seems to have grasped from early on that in England the art of music would require institutions to carry it forward if it were ever to be something more than light entertainment’. Parry saw the RCM as one such institution. For the following 35 years, he made it his life’s work to ensure that the conservatoire, and its musicians, were at the forefront of British music. Dr Heffer continued, ‘His teaching, and his inspiration, launched the careers of some of the greatest names in the history of English music. Through them, not only did Parry succeed in putting music at the centre of our national culture to the point where our great composers – most of them his pupils – were household names, but he was godfather to the creation of what perhaps his most celebrated pupil, Ralph Vaughan Williams, called a truly “national music”’. Parry was a talented and influential teacher who vividly communicated to his students not only a passion for music, but also the important role that music plays in British society. Dr Heffer
