From Prussia with Love: Music at Uppingham School,1853–1908

Abstract

Music played little part in the education of British children before 1853 when Edward Thring was appointed headmaster of Uppingham Grammar School in the English Midlands. Thring created an innovative holistic curriculum for the two dozen boys of this rural boarding school and he appointed a musician as the third addition to his staff to form a teaching faculty of five; by the time of Thring’s death in 1887 and a school roll now three hundred, the full-time music team numbered six. Almost all came from Prussia: early appointments stayed only a year or two but later ones, including Paul David—"Music and Choir Master”—made Uppingham their permanent home. Over the course of four decades, David—a member of the Mendelssohn and Schumann circle, and friend of Brahms and Sterndale Bennett—raised music to a high level of distinction and a broad level of participation beyond all other schools and, through his lifelong friendship with Josef Joachim, he attracted many celebrated musicians to perform to and play alongside his boys. None of this, however, would have happened but for a chance meeting in Rome in 1852.