The academy provides undergraduate and postgraduate training across instrumental performance, composition, jazz, musical theatre and opera, and recruits musicians from around the world, with a student community representing more than 50 nationalities. It is committed to lifelong learning, from Junior Academy, which trains musicians up to the age of 18, through Open Academy community music projects, to performances and educational events for all ages.[6]
The academy faced closure in 1866; this was part of the reason for the founding of the Royal College of Music in neighbouring South Kensington. The academy's history took a turn for the better when its recently appointed Principal (and former pupil) William Sterndale Bennett took on the chairmanship of the academy's board of directors and established its finances and reputation on a new footing.[10]
The academy's first building was in Tenterden Street, Hanover Square.[11]Arnold Bax recalled it as an architectural rabbit warren. "The three eighteenth-century houses which the institution comprised were departitioned, one conjectured, with fearsome violence. Wherefore else the need for those torturous tunnellings, that labyrinthine intricacy of passages, the cul-de-sacs, and follies? It took the average new student about a month to get his or her bearings."[12] In 1911 the institution moved to the current premises, designed by Sir Ernest George[13] (which include the 450-seat Duke's Hall),[11] built at a cost of £51,000 on the site of an orphanage.[14] In 1976 the academy acquired the houses situated on the north side and built between them a new opera theatre donated by the philanthropist Sir Jack Lyons and named after him and two new recital spaces, a recording studio, an electronic music studio, several practice rooms and office space.[15]
The academy again expanded its facilities in the late 1990s, with the addition of 1–5 York Gate, designed by John Nash in 1822,[16] to house the new museum, a musical theatre studio and several teaching and practice rooms. To link the main building and 1–5 York Gate a new underground passage and the underground barrel-vaulted 150-seat David Josefowitz recital hall were built on the courtyard between the mentioned structures.[17]
The Royal Academy of Music offers training from infant level (Junior Academy), with the senior Academy awarding the LRAM diploma, BMus and higher degrees to PhD/ DMus.[19] The former degree GRSM, equivalent to a university honours degree and taken by some students, was phased out in the 1990s. All undergraduates now take the University of London degree of BMus.
A violin lesson in 1944
Most academy students are classical performers: strings, piano, vocal studies including opera, brass, woodwind, conducting and choral conducting, composition, percussion, harp, organ, accordion, guitar. There are also departments for historical performance, musical theatre performance and jazz.
The academy collaborates with other conservatoires worldwide, including participating in the SOCRATES student and staff exchange programme. In 1991, the academy introduced a fully accredited degree in performance studies, and in September 1999, it became a full constituent college of the University of London, in both cases becoming the first UK conservatoire to do so.[20]
The academy has students from over 50 countries, following diverse programmes including instrumental performance, conducting, composition, jazz, musical theatre, historical performance, and opera. The academy has an established relationship with King's College London, particularly the Department of Music, whose students receive instrumental tuition at the academy. In return, many students at the academy take a range of humanities choices at King's, and its extended academic musicological curriculum.
The Junior Academy, for pupils under the age of 18, meets every Saturday.
Soon after violinist Yehudi Menuhin's death, the Royal Academy of Music acquired his personal archive, which includes sheet music marked up for performance, correspondence, news articles and photographs relating to Menuhin, autograph musical manuscripts, and several portraits of Paganini.[25]
Harriet Cohen bequeathed a large collection of paintings, some photographs and her gold bracelet to the academy, with a request that the room in which the paintings were to be housed was named the "Arnold Bax Room". Noted for her performances of Bach and modern English music, she was a friend and advocate of Arnold Bax and also premièred Vaughan Williams' Piano Concerto—a work dedicated to her—in 1933. In 1886, Franz Liszt performed at the academy to celebrate the creation of the Franz Liszt Scholarship[26] and in 1843 Mendelssohn was made an honorary member of the academy.
In February–March 2006, an academy festival celebrated the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who first visited London 175 years earlier in 1831. The festival included a recital by academy professor Maxim Vengerov, who performed on Il Cannone Guarnerius, Paganini's favourite violin.[32] Academy instrumentalists and musical theatre students have also performed in a series of concerts with the academy alumnus Sir Elton John.[33]
The academy's public museum is situated in the York Gate building, which is connected to the academy's building via a basement link. The museum houses the academy's collections, including a major collection of Cremonese stringed instruments dated between 1650 and 1740, a selection of historical English pianos from 1790 to 1850, from the famous Mobbs Collection, original manuscripts by Purcell, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Sullivan and Vaughan Williams, musical memorabilia and other exhibits.[35]
The Royal Academy of Music publishes every year a list of persons who have been selected to be awarded one of the Royal Academy's honorary awards. These awards are for alumni who have distinguished themselves within the music profession (Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, FRAM), distinguished musicians who are not alumni (Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, Hon RAM), alumni who have made a significant contribution to the music profession (Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, ARAM) and to people who are not alumni but have offered important services to the institution (Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, Hon ARAM). Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music (Hon FRAM) is awarded by the Governing Body of the academy. As a full member of the University of London, the academy can nominate people to the University of Londonhonorary doctorate (Hon DMus).[41]
Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin,, was an American-born British violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the great violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.
Claudio Arrau León was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century.
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performance, composition, conducting, music theory and history, and has trained some of the most important figures in international music life. The RCM also undertakes research, with particular strengths in performance practice and performance science.
Evgeny Igorevich Kissin is a Russian-born concert pianist and composer. He became a British citizen in 2002 and an Israeli citizen in 2013. He first came to international fame as a child prodigy. He has a wide repertoire and is especially known for his interpretations of the works of the Romantic era, particularly those of Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Modest Mussorgsky and Ludwig van Beethoven. He is commonly viewed as a great successor of the Russian piano school because of the depth, lyricism and poetic quality of his interpretations.
Maxim Alexandrovich Vengerov is a Soviet-born Israeli violinist, violist, and conductor. Classic FM has called him "one of the greatest violinists in the world".
Leslie John Howard is an Australian pianist, musicologist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings. He has been described by The Guardian as "a master of a tradition of pianism in serious danger of dying out".
The Royal Academy of Music Museum is a museum of musical instruments and artefacts and a research centre of the Royal Academy of Music in London.
John Maver is an Australian pianist and composer.
Frederick Corder was an English composer and music teacher.
Peter Donohoe CBE is an English classical pianist.
Valerie Tryon, is an English classical pianist. Since 1971 she has resided in Canada, but continues to pursue an international performing and recording career, and spends a part of each year in her native Britain. Among her specialisms is the music of Franz Liszt, of which she has made a number of celebrated recordings. Currently 'Artist-in-Residence' at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Tryon is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, accompanist and adjudicator.
György Pauk is a Hungarian violinist, chamber musician and music pedagogue.
Philip Fowke is an English pianist.
George-Emmanuel Lazaridis is a Greek classical pianist, composer and mentor.
Skaila Kanga is a harpist and Professor Emerita of Harp at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After winning a Junior Exhibition to the Royal Academy of Music for piano, she switched to harp studies at age 17. She studied with Tina Bonifacio, Sir Thomas Beecham's harpist in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Wu Qian is a Chinese classical pianist.
Ashley Wass is a British classical pianist and director of music at the Yehudi Menuhin School.
Maria Theresa Mathilda Tilly Fleischmann was an Irish pianist, organist, pedagogue and writer of German descent.
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