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Music at Clifton

Arthur Peppil, Clifton's first Director of Music, was appointed in 1896. For the preceeding 32 years the teaching of music had been in the hands of Mr Trimnell, who gave lessons in a house in Clifton Fields (the Albert Road). The principal force in the musical education of Cliftonians in those early days was a housemaster, E.M. Oakeley, whose brother was Composer of Music to Queen Victoria and Professor of Music at Edinburgh University. Oakeley was described in the Cliftonian at the time of his retirement in 1886 as "the faithful guardian and the unwearied exponent of classical music in the School." In 1868 he had started Sunday evening organ recitals in Chapel, and these attracted voluntary audiences of about a hundred. Together with T.E. Brown he had compiled Clifton's first School Hymn Book in 1872.

There had been an Annual Concert from very early days, and the Choral Society was sufficiently well established by 1874 for it to give the "Father Willis" organ to Big School. In 1879 the tenor Harry Plunket Greene made his first appearance at a school concert - as a boy soprano. Clifton's famous school song, "The Best School of All", was written by Henry Newbolt in 1899 initially as "The Old Cliftonian Song", and was later set to music by Sir Hubert Parry "for Harry Plunket Greene, Arthur Peppin and the Clifton boys".

Nevertheless, when Canon Glazebrook appointed Peppin the first Director of Music, he told him that "music has no footing in the School, and that he must make a niche for it." In 1897 the Music School was built in Guthrie Road. Extended in 1962, on first completion it contained 17 practice rooms, a rehearsal room and the Director's room. It was now that the most familiar landmarks of Clifton's musical year were established, and when Peppin moved to Rugby in 1915, R.O. Beachcroft (father of a future Clifton housemaster) consolidated his predecessor's work. One of Peppin's pupils and his eventual successor as Director of Music, Douglas Fox, wrote:

The most nationally famous of Clifton's Directors of Music was Sir William McKie, who held the post briefly from 1926 to 1931. (His anthem "We wait for thy loving kindness" was sung at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in 1986.) It was during his time at Clifton that the congregational setting of Stanford's B flat Te Deum was introduced: it has been sung ever since. But the figure who, above all, dominated Clifton music was Douglas Fox, the first boy to be elected to a music scholarship at Clifton. He was denied the chance of a career as a recitalist, or cathedral organist, when he lost his right arm in action while serving with the Gloucesters. He nevertheless taught himself to play the organ with left hand and pedals and, after some years as director of music at Bradfield, came back to Clifton in 1931. He was described by one of his Clifton colleagues as having "the mind of a scholar and something of the waywardness of genius". His greatest contribution was inspiring the music scholars, while demanding of all boys the very highest standards.

In his 27 years at Clifton, more than 50 boys were elected to music scholarships at Oxford or Cambridge. Among them was David Willcocks (now Sir David Willcocks), who succeeded another Cliftonian, Boris Ord, as Director of Music at King's College, Cambridge and who, as Principal of the Royal College of Music, was responsible for organising the music at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981. Douglas Fox was a conserver rather than an innovator, but he was nevertheless a legend in his own lifetime and died only in 1978. Thanks to the talented directors who have followed him, and with the generous encouragement of Dr J.H. Britton, a former Chairman of Council and President of the College, Clifton's musical traditions have been upheld and developed.

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