The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music: A Social and Cultural History by David C. H. Wright (review)

David Wright's book on the social and cultural history of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) is the first serious independent study to be published and will coincide with the Board's 125th anniversary in 2014. It marks a natural development in Wright's publication record, which, in addition to this, his first book, comprises a number of articles, book chapters and reviews on the social and cultural history of London's music scene from the late-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Wright has an engaging prose style: it is colorful, witty and adroit; earlier publications illustrate a mastery that enables him to make the most mundane facts palatable.

An apologist for the methodology of the economic and social historian, Cyril Ehrlich (1925-2004), Wright is a revisionist whose opposition to what he describes as "musicology's long-favored ['life and works'] approach" to writing about composers and music history is well-documented. His chief criticism is that the "life and works" format "requires from its author a degree of anaesthetic sympathy for the creative subject's output" (David C. H. Wright, "Situating Stainer," The Musical Times 149, no. 1903 [Summer 2008]: 99-100). He claims that the shift in discussing music in its social context has led to a more authentic result in the way musicologists write about music and its history. While it may be desirable to eradicate sentimentalism (and inaccuracy) from musicological methodologies, it does not follow that modern musicologists invariably conform to Wright's analysis. The publication of social and cultural music histories where musical analysis is relegated to a footnote or, worse still, where it is eradicated altogether because the social historian is ill-equipped to form a view, is no more desirable. The musicologist and Handel scholar Winton Dean seems to settle the point: "there is a case for a sociological study of music, but it must be written by a musician and not a sociologist . . . the unimaginative application of scientific or quasi-scientific method to an enquiry touching even the fringes of a living art invariably produces a tedious or ludicrous result"—an admonishment that Ehrlich states "no social scientist can afford to ignore." (Cyril Ehrlich, "Economic History and Music," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 103 [1976-1977]: 188).

The concept of writing a history of an examination board, however well-respected, might seem to be an act of folly, for institutions such as these are rarely the objects of the kind of loyalty or affection enjoyed by an alma mater. From a practical point of view, there would seem to be a very limited market for such studies, which if published, have a tendency to gather dust on library shelves; however, the Associated Board, as a subject, has the potential to be something of an exception: "Better known by its acronym as the ABRSM, [it] has influenced the musical lives and tastes of millions of people since it conducted its first exams in 1890" (p. ix). Founded by the Royal College of Music (RCM) and the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in 1889, the ABRSM has since become a household name in the United Kingdom and in ninety countries across the world, as the gold standard in graded practical and theoretical music exams.

Wright's history is an overview of the Board's work between 1889 and 2009, set out in twelve chapters. A period of some 120 years is covered in 255 pages; consequently, little room is left to tease out the more stubborn nuggets of information concerning the establishment of the Board while an imperative "to respect confidentiality with respect to any 'live' commercial, strategic or institutional information" undermines the perspective of the last three chapters (p. ix). As a result, readers are taken on a whistle-stop tour...