NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

Renaissance. His teaching staff were no less impressive and included Dr William
Gillies Whittaker, respected English choral conductor, pedagogue, composer and
founder of the Bach Choir (1915) as well as Carl Fuchs, ‘Cello Professor at the
Royal Manchester College of Music. The organisation was typical of any English
School of Music with choral, orchestral, operatic and chamber music
departments and it prepared students for the examinations of the Associated
Board of the R.A.M and R.C.M., and also for the degrees of A.R.C.M. and
L.R.C.M. One of Bainton’s first steps as Principal, at some financial risk to
himself, was to move his school to larger premises at 72 Jesmond Road on the
corner of Victoria Square. In 1937 it moved nearby to an even larger building but
the occupation was to be short-lived. Neither of these premises exist today, the
former was demolished to make way for the motorway and on the site of the
latter now stands Jesmond Metro Station.
Bainton was to be connected with the Conservatoire for more than 30 years, a
period not without incident. In 1914 whilst he was en-route for Bayreuth he was
interned in a camp in Ruhleben, where he was to remain for the duration of the
war. In his absence his wife ran the Conservatoire and even continued the
chamber concerts. His time in the prison camp turned out to be a period of great
creative and practical musical activity, not only for Bainton, himself, who was
placed in charge of all the music at the camp, but also for a number of other
musicians interned there, including amongst others Carl Fuchs (Principal cellist
of the Halle Orchestra) and Edward Clark, a colleague from Newcastle who had
been studying with Schoenberg in Berlin. Bainton formed his own Madrigal
Group, known as the Magpies, played occasional concertos and supervised the
taking of degree examinations in the camp, which the Germans sent to London to
be assessed! After the war, in poor health, Bainton returned to Newcastle, via
Amsterdam, where he conducted two concerts of English music with either the
Concertgebouw or the Amsterdam-Mengelberg Orchestra (opinions vary) and
resumed normal life as Principal of the Newcastle Conservatoire. In 1930,
however, he began touring extensively, visiting India, Canada and Australia,
where he obviously made an impression on the governing body of the New South
Wales Conservatorium at Sydney and they offered him a directorship, which he
accepted in 1934.
It is said that Bainton left behind an organization which had contributed
considerably to the musical life of Newcastle and district. He had at one time a
panel of outstanding teachers, all prominent names in the history of music in the
North East and some of whom went on to achieve wider recognition such as
W.G.Whittaker, a native of Newcastle, who left the Conservatoire in 1929 to
become the 1 st Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow and
Principal of the Royal Academy of Music in Glasgow. Carl Fuchs, whom I have
already mentioned; principal cellist with the Halle Orchestra and Professor of
music in Manchester, who also taught in Huddersfield and after a day in
Newcastle would teach half a day in York on his way home. Some few others by
name were A.M.Wall, (violin), Dr Hutchinson, William Ellis (St Nicholas’
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