Royal Military School of Music
| Royal Military School of Music | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Active | 1857 – present |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Branch |  British Army |
| Type | Training |
| Role | Teaching music |
The Royal Military School of Music (RMSM) trains musicians for the British Army's fourteen regular bands, as part of the Royal Corps of Army Music. For more than a century and a half, from 1857 until August 2021, the school was based at Kneller Hall in Twickenham.[1]
Today, the Royal Military School of Music has two branches:
- "initial trade training" takes place at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth (at a shared facility with the Royal Marines School of Music);
- "subsequent trade training" takes place at Gibraltar Barracks, Minley.[2]
RMSM is now part of the Royal School of Military Engineering Group.
History
[edit]
The RMSM was established in 1857[3] at the instigation of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, who was Queen Victoria's cousin and commander-in-chief of the army. In 1854, during the Crimean War, he attended a parade in Scutari, Turkey to celebrate the Queen's birthday, when about 20 British Army bands on parade were required to combine in a performance of the national anthem. The custom at this time was for regiments to hire civilian bandmasters, each of whom had free rein in their band's instrumentation and arrangements. With each band playing God Save the Queen simultaneously in different instrumentations, pitches, arrangements and key signatures, the result was an embarrassing and humiliating cacophony.[4] The Duke decided there should be some standardisation in army music, and so formed the RMSM, with Henry Schallehn (who also became the first director of music at the