Professor David Wright

BMus, MMus, GTCL, FTCL, ARCM

Professor of the Social History of Music

David Wright initially worked as an organist, training with Dr Philip Marshall at Lincoln Cathedral and with Harry Gabb at Trinity College of Music, before undergraduate and postgraduate (historical musicology) studies at the University of London, Goldsmiths’ College. He then taught at both TCM and Goldsmiths’ until he was appointed a member of Trinity’s senior management in 1994. He moved to the RCM in 1997, where he was Head of Postgraduate Studies and later Reader in the Social History of Music. He has returned to the RCM as a Research Fellow.

He was a convenor of the ‘Music in Britain’ seminar held at London University’s Institute of Historical Research while working informally with the economic and social historian, Cyril Ehrlich, a formative influence on his making the decision to concentrate on researching British music’s social history. Since 2002, he has written on a broad range of subjects, spanning from the culture and economics of John Stainer and Victorian music publishing, to the entity and repertoire identities of the London Sinfonietta. Recently, he completed a history of the RCM (The Royal College of Music and its Contexts: An Artistic and Social History, Cambridge University Press). His account of the ABRSM, (The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music: A Social and Cultural History, Boydell Press) was supported by a British Academy award, and investigated the ways that grade music exams established and helped to define British musical taste. With Nick Kenyon and Jenny Doctor, he co-edited The Proms: a new history (Thames & Hudson), writing the chapter about the Prom seasons of William Glock and Robert Ponsonby.

Selected publications

Wright DCH (2020), The Royal College of Music and its Contexts: An Artistic and Social History, Cambridge University Press [ISBN: 9781-1-107-16338-6].

Wright DCH (2018), Mechanized music and the new market for musical journalism, in MA Colin (ed.) French Renaissance Music and Beyond: Studies in Memory of Frank Dobbins (pp. 677–687), Brepols Publishers [ISBN: 978-2-503-57960-3].

Wright DCH (2016), Novello, John Stainer and commercial opportunities in the nineteenth-century British amateur music market, in C Bashford & R Montemorra Marvin (eds.), The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930 (pp. 60-84), Boydell & Brewer [ISBN: 978-1-78327-065-1].

Wright DCH (2013), The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music: A Social and Cultural History, Boydell & Brewer [ISBN: 978-1-84383-734-3].

Wright DCH (2012), Music and musical performance: histories in disjunction? In C Lawson and R Stowell (eds.) The Cambridge History of Musical Performance (pp. 169-206) [ISBN 9780521896115].

Doctor J, Wright DCH, & Kenyon N (eds.) (2007), The Proms: A New History, Thames and Hudson ISBN: 978-0-500-51352-1. Includes the authored chapter ‘Reinventing the Proms: The Glock and Ponsonby Eras, 1959-85.’

Wright DCH (2005), The London Sinfonietta 1968-2004: a perspective, Twentieth-Century Music, 2 (1), 109-136 [DOI].

Wright DCH (2005), The South Kensington music schools and the development of the British conservatoire in the late nineteenth century, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 130 (2), 236-282 [DOI].

Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff