Oxeia. Sign used in pairs, or paired with the teleia, in Byzantine Ekphonetic notation. Oxeiai diplai

4. Music-making in the university and city.

He loved moche to here the Harpe,

And Chaucer's Nicholas, the poor ‘Clerk of Oxenford’, possessed (according to The Miller's Tale) a psaltery,

On which he made a nightes melodye
So swetely that all the chamber rang:
And Angelus ad virginem he sang.

In 1381 three harp makers were documented in Oxford; various musical instruments, including harps and lutes, appeared among 15th- and 16th-century inventories of goods of university members. Music as social recreation formed part of early college custom, whereby members of the colleges sang songs around the fire in hall after supper on festivals and special occasions. During the period of the Reformation, secular entertainments may have provided extra employment for the members of the choral establishments, whose liturgical activity had been curtailed. Richard Edwards's play with music Palaemon and Arcyte was performed for the royal visit to Oxford in 1566. During the Civil War, Charles I made Oxford his military headquarters from 1642, setting up his court at Christ Church and remaining until the city eventually surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in June 1646. At his Oxford court the King was served by such talented musicians as the lutenist John Wilson and the organist George Jeffreys. For the period of the Civil War and Interregnum, when the choral tradition was disrupted and organs destroyed or displaced, evidence suggests that Oxford flourished as a centre of musical activity, as documented by Anthony à Wood. Wood joined various musical societies in the 1650s, such as the music meetings of William Ellis (formerly organist of St John's College) at which both professional musicians and university graduates, including John Wilson and Edward Lowe, gathered regularly to play chamber music. Although Ellis's meetings lapsed after the Restoration, when the professionals left to return to their posts, a new focus for weekly music meetings was created by Narcissus Marsh at Exeter College (as fellow from 1658) and then at St Alban Hall (where he was principal from 1673). Henry Aldrich (Dean of Christ Church, 1689–1710) ‘had concerts and rehearsals at his apartments weekly’ (Burney).

In the late 17th century and the early 18th Oxford musical societies continued to flourish, attracting members of considerable musical and social distinction, such as Daniel Purcell (organist of Magdalen College, 1688–95) and James Brydges, later 1st Duke of Chandos. By the mid-18th century their performing activities and resources had outgrown their meeting-places in taverns and college rooms, and a subscription scheme was launched to finance a new venue. The Holywell Music Room (opened 1748), the earliest purpose-built public concert room in Europe, seating up to about 250, provided a permanent location for Oxford concerts (see illustration). Its acoustics make it ideally suitable for chamber music and for small choirs and orchestras. In the 18th century and the early 19th it was associated with a series of subscription concerts drawing together university and city under the auspices of the Musical Society, which maintained its own orchestra (the Holywell Band). The programmes typically presented a miscellany of vocal and instrumental items and featured both local and visiting performers. The Music Room was also the venue for performances of Handel oratorios: from 1754 it was customary to perform Messiah at least once annually (it received its first Oxford performance under William Hayes in 1749, for the opening of the Radcliffe Library). ‘Benefit concerts’ were performed periodically during the year at both the Music Room and the Town Hall (built 1751).

The Sheldonian Theatre, designed by Christopher Wren and built between 1664 and 1667 with seating for about 2000, was from early in its history associated with musical performances in connection with university ceremonial. For the original Encaenia (dedication of the building) in 1669 (the annual commemoration of this event became connected with the bestowal of honorary degrees) an organ was borrowed from Gloucester Hall, forerunner of Worcester College. In 1671 the Sheldonian acquired its own ‘Father Smith’ organ (periodically replaced since); among the benefactions of Lord Crewe (Rector of Lincoln College from 1668, Bishop of Oxford from 1671, d 1721) to the university was an endowment for organ playing at Encaenia. The university's degree ceremonies (the ‘Act’) traditionally featured incidental music: during the period 1669–1710, when the Act (which had been transferred from the university church of St Mary to the Sheldonian Theatre) flourished, composers who contributed Act-Music included Locke and Blow. It was for the 1733 revival of the Oxford Act that the Vice-Chancellor invited Handel: in a series of performances at St Mary's, the Sheldonian Theatre and Christ Church, over a period of several days, Oxford audiences heard Athalia (its première) and other oratorios and shorter works by Handel under the composer's direction, and possibly his first public performances of organ concertos. During the later 18th century it became customary to mark the annual degree ceremonial and commemorative events with a three-day festival featuring a series of ‘grand concerts’. In 1791 the ‘three grand concerts in the Theatre’ were distinguished by the presence of Joseph Haydn, who received the (then uncommon) award of the honorary DMus and ‘expressed himself very handsomely … on the manner in which his Overture [i.e. Symphony no.92, the ‘Oxford’] was performed’.

19th- and early 20th-century concert life in Oxford was characterized by the growth of numerous college, university and civic musical societies. ‘Dr [Charles] Corfe's Motett and Madrigal Society’ (founded 1847) was perceived as providing the future clergymen trained by the university with useful skills in reading music and singing at sight. Institutions of lasting significance to Oxford's musical life that were established during this period included the Oxford Harmonic Society (an amateur choral society founded in 1921), the Oxford SO (founded 1902), the Oxford Chamber Music Society (founded in 1898 as the Oxford Ladies’ Musical Society), the Subscription Concerts (from 1920), and the Oxford Silver Band (founded in 1887 as the Headington Temperance Band). Among university societies which have survived are the Oxford University Musical Club and Union, formed in 1916 from an amalgamation of the Oxford University Musical Club (founded by Charles Harford Lloyd in 1872), and the Oxford University Musical Union (founded by J.H. Mee in 1884) and renamed in 1983 the Oxford University Musical Society. The Balliol Concerts (founded by John Farmer in 1885) have now passed their 1500th concert. Local patrons of music included the Deneke sisters, Helena and Margaret (choirmaster of Lady Margaret Hall), who were associated with Ernest Walker (organist and director of music at Balliol from 1901) and P.V.M. Benecke (fellow of Magdalen from 1891 and grandson of Mendelssohn).

The Oxford Bach Choir, continuing to unite ‘town and gown’, was founded by Basil Harwood in 1896. In 1905 it incorporated the Oxford Choral and Philharmonic Society, itself an amalgamation (1890) of the Oxford Choral Society founded by Crotch in 1819 and the Oxford Philharmonic Society founded by Stainer in 1865. Under Hugh Allen's conductorship (1901–26) the Oxford Bach Choir gave performances not only of large-scale choral works of Bach but also of works by contemporary British composers, culminating in the première of Vaughan Williams's Sancta civitas in 1926. The choir under Allen fostered a special connection with the music of Parry.

The Oxford University Opera Club was formed in 1926 following a production of Monteverdi's Orfeo ‘by members of the University and Friends' in 1925. It gave annual productions from 1926 to 1934, resuming in 1947. Under Westrup's conductorship (1947–62) it presented works ranging from A. Scarlatti's Il Mitridate Eupatore (1961) to Wellesz's Incognita (1951), many of them in their British premières. The Oxford University Orchestra grew out of the orchestra formed, from 1947, for the Opera Club performances: it was constituted as an independent concert orchestra in 1954. University-based choral activity was expanded by László Heltay's founding of the Kodaly Choir (1957) and the Schola Cantorum of Oxford (1960), originally the Collegium Musicum Oxoniense. The Oxford Pro Musica was formed in 1965 as a small professional orchestra. Principal concert venues are still the Holywell Music Room (restored to primarily musical use in 1901 after a hiatus), the Sheldonian Theatre and the Town Hall (rebuilt 1893–7), as well as the cathedral, the university church and numerous college chapels and halls. Touring opera and ballet companies regularly appear at the Apollo (formerly the New) Theatre, which opened in 1836. Local customs include the celebration of May morning with singing by the choristers from the top of Magdalen College tower and folk-dancing by Morris dancers. Morris dancing is an old tradition in Oxfordshire: it was Cecil Sharp's meeting with William Kimber and his team at Headington in 1899 that led eventually to the foundation of the English Folk Dance Society in 1911. In the 18th century J.B. Malchair, leader of the Holywell Band, collected local folksongs and dances, including the tune known as ‘Magpie Lane’, from which the modern performing group of that name is derived.

A series of festivals, conferences and exhibitions has marked Oxford's commemoration of musical anniversaries (of Haydn in 1932 and 1991, the latter for the bicentenary of his Oxford visit; of Bach and Handel in 1935; of Parry in 1948; of Wellesz in 1985) and of the Heather Professorship (1926 and 1976). The English Bach Festival was originally formed in Oxford in 1963; an annual ‘Handel in Oxford’ festival was founded in 1985; and an annual Oxford Contemporary Music Festival began in 1994.

5. Academic tradition.

When William Heather endowed the professorship of music at Oxford in 1626, he acknowledged the dichotomy of theory and practice by providing for the appointment of a choragus (by the 18th century called ‘professor’) to hold weekly music practices in term-time, and a lecturer in the science of music (the latter post fell into disuse in the course of the 17th century, although it was absorbed into the music lecture or ‘music speech’ delivered as part of the university Act). In the 19th century the duties and posts of professor and choragus became separated (from 1848) as they still are today, and a new post of coryphaeus was added (1856), but later allowed to lapse. The Heather professorship has been held since its foundation by Richard Nicholson (1626–39), Arthur Phillips (1639–56), John Wilson (1656–61), Edward Lowe (1661–82), Richard Goodson sr (1682–1718), Richard Goodson jr (1718–41), William Hayes (1741–77), his son Philip Hayes (1777–97), William Crotch (1797–1847), Henry Rowley Bishop (1848–55), F.A. Gore Ouseley (1855–89), John Stainer (1889–99), C. Hubert H. Parry (1900–08), Walter Parratt (1908–18), Hugh Percy Allen (1918–46), Jack Westrup (1947–71), Joseph Kerman (1972–4), Denis Arnold (1975–86), Brian Trowell (1988–96) and Reinhard Strohm (from 1996). Until the mid-19th century the professorship was usually held concurrently with one or more college organistships, and frequently also with the post of university organist at St Mary's. Oxford musical graduates in the 18th and 19th centuries were most characteristically church and cathedral organists, among them William Croft (DMus 1713), John Stanley (BMus 1729), Charles Burney (DMus 1769) and Samuel Sebastian Wesley (BMus and DMus 1839).

During the 19th century the trend towards increasing involvement in musical scholarship was reflected in the work of the professors. In the 18th century Philip Hayes's termly ‘lectures’ consisted of performances, usually of choral works, in the Music School. Crotch's Oxford lectures (1800–04) encompassed a series of scholarly investigations. The ‘opening’ of the new organ in the Sheldonian Theatre in 1877 was marked by Ouseley's lecture on ‘The History and Construction of the Organ’. Stainer (with W.H. Hadow) strove to provide systematic instruction in music history. Among publications in music history and theory produced from Oxford at this period were Ouseley's edition of the translation of Naumann's History of Music, Ouseley's treatises on harmony and counterpoint, Stainer's Dufay and his Contemporaries and Early Bodleian Music, and the Oxford History of Music (1901–5). The academic content of the music degrees gathered increasing weight during the same period. Ouseley's reforms (initiated in 1856) added a written examination to the statutory requirements. Until then the degrees were awarded solely on the basis of the ‘exercise’ in composition submitted for the professor's approval. (The public performance of the BMus exercise was abolished in 1870, and of the DMus exercise in 1891.) Those who took the Oxford examinations under the new conditions during the late 19th century and the early 20th included Donald Francis Tovey, Leopold Stokowski, Edmund Fellowes and Adrian Boult. The first two women who in 1892 ‘distinguished themselves by taking the degree’ (of BMus) would have been unable to receive it formally; it was not until 1920 that the university began conferring degrees on women.

In 1911 a new Board of Studies in Music was formed to regulate the degrees, which were still open to external candidates. Residence requirements eventually came into force after 1918. In 1944 the modern Faculty of Music was instituted, with premises in Holywell Street (next to the Music Room, with which it has been traditionally linked) until 1981, when it moved to the Linacre College building in St Aldate's. The Honour School of Music was set up in 1950: Westrup, together with colleagues such as Frank Harrison (from 1952), Frederick Sternfeld (from 1956) and Egon Wellesz, presided over the teaching and examining of a new BA syllabus requiring a wider knowledge of musical scholarship. Postgraduate research degrees in music were instituted; the BMus now became a postgraduate degree in composition, the DMus being awarded to composers more advanced in their careers. From 1879 the honorary DMus has been regularly awarded; early recipients included Sullivan (1879), Elgar (1905), Grieg (1906) and Vaughan Williams (1919, on the 250th anniversary of the Sheldonian Theatre), while more recent performers and composers honoured have included Janet Baker (1975), Alfred Brendel (1983), Andrés Segovia (1972) and Michael Tippett (1967). Composers on the faculty have included Egon Wellesz, Edmund Rubbra, Kenneth Leighton and Robert Sherlaw Johnson. Other 20th-century composers who have resided or studied in Oxford include Lennox Berkeley, George Butterworth, Geoffrey Bush, Gordon Crosse, Bill Hopkins, Joseph Horovitz, Nicola LeFanu, Stephen Oliver, Nigel Osborne and William Walton.

6. Libraries and collections.

World-famous collections of manuscript and printed music (incorporating the old Music School collection) are held by the Bodleian Library, which is one of the national deposit libraries. Foremost for music among the college libraries is that of Christ Church (to which Aldrich's and Goodson sr's collections were bequeathed). The Music Faculty Library is one of the most substantial university music libraries in the country, comprising a wide-ranging collection of books, scores and periodicals as well as recorded music and rare reference materials. The Faculty of Music also houses a fine collection of musicians' portraits, dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries and originally built up as part of the Music School collections. Important collections of musical instruments are housed in the Music Faculty's Bate Collection of Historical Instruments, the Ashmolean Museum (the Hill collection of string instruments) and the Pitt-Rivers Museum (mainly ethnic instruments).

Oxford

7. Printing and publishing.

Books on music were printed at Oxford from the late 16th century; printed music appeared from 1659 with John Wilson's Cheerful Ayres or Ballads. The Oxford University Press (housed at first in the Sheldonian Theatre from 1669, although the origins of printing in Oxford go back much further) is one of the leading publishers of music and music books.

Oxford

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publications of the Oxford Historical Society (Oxford, 1884–)

P.C. Buck, J.H. Mee and F.C. Woods, eds.: Ten Years of University Music in Oxford … 1884–1894 (Oxford, 1894)

C.F. Abdy Williams: A Short Historical Account of the Degrees in Music at Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1894)

E.S. Kemp and J.H. Mee, eds.: Ten More Years, 1894–1904, of University Music in Oxford (London, 1904)

J.H. Mee: The Oldest Music Room in Europe (London, 1911)

S. Gibson: Statuta Antiqua Universitatis Oxoniensis (Oxford, 1931)

R. Hughes: ‘Haydn at Oxford’, ML, xx (1939), 242–9

The Oxford Madrigal Society 1936–45 (Oxford, 1945)

C. Bailey: A Short History of the Oxford Bach Choir (Oxford, 1948)

R. Ponsonby and R. Kent: The Oxford University Opera Club: a Short History, 1925–1950 (Oxford, 1950)

R. Fasnacht: A History of the City of Oxford (Oxford, 1954)

H.E. Salter and M.D. Lobel, eds.: The University of Oxford (London, 1954)

The Oxford Madrigal Society 1946–1955 (Oxford, 1955)

D.J. Reid: ‘Some Festival Programmes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 2: Cambridge and Oxford’, RMARC, no.6 (1966), 3–21

F. Howes: Oxford Concerts: a Jubilee Record (Oxford, 1969)

V.H.H. Green: A History of Oxford University (London, 1974)

E.W. White: ‘A Note on Opera at Oxford’, Essays on Opera and English Music in Honour of Sir Jack Westrup, ed. F.W. Sternfeld, N. Fortune and E. Olleson (Oxford, 1975), 168–76

J. Buxton and P. Williams, ed.: New College Oxford: 1379–1979 (Oxford, 1979), esp. 267–92

A. Crossley, ed.: The City of Oxford, Victoria History of the County of Oxford, iv (Oxford, 1979)

D. Burrows: ‘Sources for Oxford Handel Performances in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’, ML, lxi (1980), 177–85

R. Pacey: The Organs of Oxford (Oxford, 1980)

S. Wollenberg: ‘Music in 18th-Century Oxford’, PRMA, cviii (1981–2), 69–99

J. Bergsagel: ‘Music in Oxford in Holberg's Time’, Hvad fatter gjør … essays tilegnet Erik Dal [Dad's always right … essays dedicated to Erik Dal], ed. H. Glahn and others (Herning, 1982), 34–61

The History of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1984–): i: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. J.I. Catto (1984); ii: Late Medieval Oxford, ed. J.I. Catto and R. Evans (1992); iii: The Collegiate University, ed. J. McConica (1986); v: The Eighteenth Century, ed. L.S. Sutherland and L.G. Mitchell (1986); viii: The Twentieth Century, ed. B. Harrison (1994)

A. Burns and R. Wilson: The Balliol Concerts: a Centenary History (Oxford, 1985)

R. Judge: ‘May Morning and Magdalen College, Oxford’, Folklore, xcvii (1986), 15–40

S. Wollenberg: ‘Music in Oxford in the Time of Dorothy L. Sayers’, Dorothy L. Sayers Society Seminar [Oxford 1993] (Hurstpierpoint, 1994), 19–30

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