Bernarr Rainbow on Music: Memoirs and Selected Writings

Bernarr Rainbow on Music: Memoirs and Selected Writings is the third major volume produced under the aegis of the Bernarr Rainbow Trust in the series edited by Peter Dickinson.

In the last year of his life, Rainbow was urged to write an account of his achievements and experiences. This personal memoir, introduced by Charles Plummeridge, is a lively and fascinating tour through the life of a pioneer in the study of music education.

Rainbow grew up in suburban London, holding various posts as a church organist while still a schoolboy. He attended Trinity College of Music part-time while working in the Map Branch of HM Land Registry and spent four years in the army serving in North Africa and Italy. He entered the musical profession as Organist and Choirmaster at All Saints Parish Church, High Wycombe, and went on to take posts as Director of Music at the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea, and Kingston Polytechnic.

He was made an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College of Music in 1995 and in the following year established the annual Bernarr Rainbow Awards for school teachers. These are now administered by the Institute of Education, University of London, through the Bernarr Rainbow Trust, a registered charity that also supports other initiatives in music education such as the Bernarr Rainbow Lectures.

Rainbow's memoir is followed by his life of the tonic sol-fa propagandist John Curwen, whom Rainbow honoured by founding the Curwen Institute in 1972.

Rainbow's interests extended far beyond music education into church music and music in society, and this is shown in a selection of his articles, introduced by Gordon Cox. Invariably readable, frequently amusing, these writings enhance the profile of an extraordinary man.

Bernarr Rainbow (1914-98) has made a unique contribution to the study of the history of music education with his pioneering books, all now available from Boydell & Brewer: The Land without Music: Music Education in England 1800-1860 and its Continental Antecedents (1967, reprinted 1997); The Choral Revival in the Anglican Church 1839-72 (1970, reprinted 2001); John Curwen: a Short Critical Biography (1980, reprinted here); Music in Educational Thought and Practice: A Survey from 800BC (1989, 2nd edition with further chapters by Gordon Cox, a Foreword from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and a biographical introduction by Peter Dickinson, Boydell 2007); Music and the English Public School (ed. 1990, new enlarged edition in progress); Four Centuries of Music Teaching Manuals 1518-1932, with an introduction by Gordon Cox (Boydell, 2009); and now Bernarr Rainbow on Music: Memoirs and Selected Writings, with introductions by Gordon Cox and Charles Plummeridge (Boydell, 2010). The twenty-one titles, now published, of his Classic Texts in Music Education and the contents of Four Centuries are listed at the end of this book.