University city in England.
The presence of the great monastery of Ely, 24 km to the north, led to meetings betweeen the Ely monks and wandering scholars from Oxford University and Cambridge University, the second English university grew from their teaching and preaching. The first Cambridge college, Peterhouse, was founded in 1284 by Hugh of Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Music was included among medieval subjects at Peterhouse but it was probably studied only as a theoretical, not a practical, art. Of the early collegiate foundations, the most important from the musical point of view was King’s (1441), linked with the school at Eton; both were founded by King Henry VI, and King’s College was provided with a choir of 24 ‘singing men and boys’.
The world’s first music degrees are recorded as having been conferred at Cambridge in 1463/4; Thomas Saintwix (St Just) received the MusD and Henry Abyngdon (Abington) was awarded both the MusB and the MusD. These earliest degrees seem to have been in the nature of honorary degrees bestowed on distinguished scholars or musicians, but before long an ‘exercise’ in the form of one or more original compositions was required of candidates, although they were not expected to reside in the university. Thus Robert Fayrfax gained the MusD in 1501 and Christopher Tye the MusB in 1536. The English Reformation did little harm to the university from the musical point of view; many academic musicians retained their appointments, King’s College Chapel (fig.1) and its choir still took a leading part in Cambridge music and music degrees continued to be conferred. Tye proceeded to MusD in 1546; later Cambridge music graduates included Robert White (MusB 1561), William Blitheman (MusB 1586), John Dowland (MusB before 1597), Thomas Ravenscroft (MusB 1607) and John Hilton (MusB 1626). Orlando Gibbons (MusB 1605) belonged to a musical family closely connected with King’s College Chapel. The Cambridge Waits (town band) were also in existence by this time, but they never seem to have attained the celebrity of the Norwich Waits.
During the Civil War Cambridge became the military headquarters of the parliamentary forces, but King’s College Chapel escaped serious damage, even the splendid stained-glass windows being preserved. But the organ (built between 1605 and 1606 by the famous organ builder Thomas Dallam) was dismantled and the choral service was discontinued by government edict. Yet in the middle of the Commonwealth period, Cromwell, as Lord Protector, ordered the university authorities to confer the MusB on his household musician Benjamin Rogers, admonishing them to see that he merited such an award professionally. At the Restoration (1660) choral services were resumed in the college chapels and the organs restored. In 1684 Cambridge acquired its first professor of music in the person of Nicholas Staggins, Master of the King’s Band of Musick. Charles II had followed Cromwell’s example and laid a royal injunction on the university to create Staggins MusD and the authorities, almost in revenge, elected Staggins public professor of music, without a salary. The professorship they founded has continued to the present, the list of holders of the chair being as follows: Nicholas Staggins (1684–1700), Thomas Tudway (1705–26), Maurice Greene (1730–55), John Randall (1755–99), Charles Hague (1799–1821), J. Clarke-Whitfeld (1821–36), T.A. Walmisley (1836–56), W.S. Bennett (1856–75), G.A. Macfarren (1875–87), C.V. Stanford (1887–1924), Charles Wood (1924–6), E.J. Dent (1926–41), Patrick Hadley (1946–62), Thurston Dart (1962–4), Robin Orr (1965–76), Alexander Goehr (1976–99) and Roger Parker (1999–).
During the late 17th century and the early 18th various concert-giving organizations grew up in the colleges and also in the large rooms of the local inns, in particular the Red Lion and the Black Bear (fig.2). Professional musicians who made Cambridge their centre for teaching and concert-giving included J.F. Ranish (flautist and oboist), F.E. Fisher (violinist), Antonio Manini (violinist) who ran several seasons of subscription concerts in the 1780s, and Pieter Hellendaal, the eminent Dutch violinist, organist and composer, who was organist of Peterhouse in the second half of the 18th century. Maurice Greene’s friend and pupil William Boyce composed a fine ode for the installation of the Duke of Newcastle as chancellor of the university in 1749 and performed this and his doctoral exercise (an anthem) and other works in a kind of Boyce festival in the following commencement week. At university ceremonies of this period so-called music speeches were delivered, but they had little to do with music. There was no formal academic tuition in music, nor were there any proper examinations. The unsalaried and often non-resident professor was occasionally asked to examine an ‘exercise’ for some candidate for the MusB or MusD degrees, otherwise his duties were practically non-existent. In the second half of the 18th century John Randall and his successor in the professorship, Charles Hague, were resident, but they gave no formal lectures. A certain amount of music publishing was undertaken by the local music sellers, such as John Wynne, but it never assumed large proportions. Robert Smith, Master of Trinity College, published his notable book on harmonics in Cambridge in 1749. Richard, Viscount Fitzwilliam, a well-known Cambridge amateur of music, bequeathed his music (which included autographs of Handel and other famous composers and the celebrated Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, as well as his books, pictures etc.) to the university, thus founding the world-famous Fitzwilliam Museum. Fitzwilliam was one of the instigators of the Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey (1784) and the fashion for festivals was soon followed in Cambridge as in most cities in Britain.
During the 19th century music lectures, sporadic at first, gradually became established and better organized. By the end of the century candidates for music degrees were required to reside in the university, instead of being allowed to study externally. Practical music-making was given new stimulus by the Peterhouse Music Society (founded 1843), which became known as the Cambridge University Musical Society (CUMS) in 1844. William Sterndale Bennett greatly enhanced the status of the professorship, and his successor G.A. Macfarren was well respected as a teaching and examining professor, rather than as a mere figurehead. The next professor, C.V. Stanford, was a man of great energy, organist first of Queens’ College, then of Trinity, and conductor of the CUMS chorus. In July 1893 (the CUMS jubilee) he persuaded Boito, Saint-Saëns, Bruch and Tchaikovsky to accept honorary degrees and to conduct their works with the CUMS chorus and orchestra in the Guildhall; among the guests at the celebratory banquet was Vaughan Williams, then an undergraduate at Trinity College (MusB 1894, MusD 1901). Stanford, always an irascible man, had many differences with the university, particularly on matters of salary, which ended by his refusing to live in Cambridge; he is said to have visited Cambridge by train, given his supervisions in the railway hotel and returned immediately to London, without setting foot in the town itself. His successor as Trinity College organist, the gifted Alan Gray (MusD 1899), was Vaughan Williams’s organ teacher. New regulations for music studies enhanced the value of Cambridge degrees, and attracted some gifted students including the doyen of Cambridge musicologists Edward J. Dent (MusB 1899), C.B. Rootham (MusD 1910, later music director of St John’s College) and Bliss (MusB 1913). Among recipients of honorary degrees were Sullivan (1891), Dvořák (1891), Grieg (1894), Dohnányi (1899) and Elgar (1900).
The Cambridge Philharmonic Society catered for the town’s amateur and professional performers, as it still does. The Cambridge University Musical Club (CUMC), founded in 1899, has been since its foundation the focus of the small-scale musical activities of the university amateurs, though in the 1960s the club began giving large-scale concerts as well.
Just after World War I a number of gifted music students returned to Cambridge to complete their studies; among them was Boris Ord who in 1929 succeeded A.H. Mann, the noted organist, choir-trainer and Handel scholar, as director of King’s College Chapel Choir. Other musicians of this generation included H.S. Middleton, P.A.S. Hadley, later precentor of Gonville and Caius College and professor of music, P.F. Radcliffe and Robin Orr, also holder of the Cambridge chair.
Cambridge became distinguished in the 1920s and 1930s for its stage productions of Mozart, Purcell and Handel. Die Zauberflöte had been produced under Dent’s and Rootham’s auspices in 1911. Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was planned for 1914 but delayed until 1920 (and revived in 1931). There followed, under Rootham’s and later Ord’s baton, Semele (1925), King Arthur (1928), Samson (1932), Jephtha (1934), Saul (1937), The Tempest (1938) and Idomeneo (1939). Another important theatrical venture was the triennial production of the Greek Play Committee, begun in 1882, for which the music was always newly composed. The music for The Wasps (1909) by Vaughan Williams is the best known, but other notable scores were Hadley’s Antigone, Leigh’s Frogs, and Orr’s Oedipus at Colonus. Other outstanding Cambridge productions of this period were Vaughan Williams’s folk ballet Old King Cole (1923, Trinity College) and The Poisoned Kiss (1936, Arts Theatre). At this time the music faculty acquired a new home with a small concert hall in Downing Place and was able to accommodate CUMS and CUMC, and the celebrated Thursday concerts of chamber music.
After World War II the University approved new regulations (1947–8) for the study of music as a first degree (BA with honours in music), and the MusB became a postgraduate degree, often leading to PhD studies. The faculty staff included H.C.C. Moule, H.S. Middleton, P.A. Tranchell and Thurston Dart, later professor. Among honorary MusD recipients of postwar years are Boulez, Britten, Carter, Gerhard (who was long resident in Cambridge), Ligeti, Lutosławski, Walton, Bliss and Tippett. The last two received honorary degrees on the celebration of the quincentenary of Cambridge music degrees (1964). In the 1960s the practice developed of appointing composers-in-residence in the various colleges; among these have been Nicholas Maw, Roger Smalley and Judith Weir.
In the 1980s and 90s the faculty admitted about 50 undergraduates a year. In 1977 the Music School moved to a new building designed by Sir Leslie Martin, with a fine concert hall, lecture rooms, practice and teaching facilities and a much enlarged Pendlebury Library.
The larger-scale music-making in the university continues to be organized by CUMS, with a large chorus, two symphony orchestras and a wind orchestra, conducted by a musical director (successively Boris Ord, David Willcocks, Philip Ledger and Stephen Cleobury) assisted by undergraduate conductors selected by competition (including, among others, David Atherton, Andrew Davis, John Eliot Gardner and Roger Norrington). The society has given first or early performances of music by Benjamin (Ringed by the Flat Horizon), Britten (Cantata academica), Goehr (Behold the Sun and The Death of Moses) and Holloway. CUMC founded a chamber orchestra in the 1960s which is usually conducted by visiting professional conductors. The University Opera Group and its successor, the University Opera Society, have given many notable performances, including works by Britten, Cimarosa, Copland, Liebermann, Monteverdi, Orff and Stravinsky.
The standard of music-making in individual colleges varies with successive generations of undergraduates, but its continuity is assured by the structure of college life: nearly all the 24 undergraduate colleges have chapels, offer organ scholarships and maintain chapel choirs, and some also offer choral scholarships (though choristers do not necessarily study music); all have their own or joint music societies. Other smaller university societies depend on the enterprise of individuals, and they rise and fall accordingly. Some become well established (the Classical Guitar Society, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society); others have shorter lives (the Britten Society, the Decadent Music Union, the In Nomine Singers, the Purcell Society, the Susato Consort and many others).
Special festivals have been a frequent feature of musical life. Between 1920 and 1960 there were several, usually of British or English music, including a Handel Festival in 1935. From 1962 to the late 1980s the City Council sponsored an annual festival. In recent years there have been festivals commemorating Mozart (1991), Elgar (1995) and Schubert (1997). In the field of popular music the Cambridge Folk Festival (founded 1962) has become highly regarded.
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CHARLES CUDWORTH/RICHARD M. ANDREWES