Royal Military School of Music 4.27

The Royal Military School of Music trains musicians for the British Army's twenty-two bands, as part of the Corps of Army Music. The RMSM is based at Kneller Hall, in Twickenham, west London, but the Ministry of Defence has recently indicated that the site will be sold, with the School moving elsewhere.HistoryThe RMSM was established in 1857 at the instigation of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, Queen Victoria's cousin and the commander-in-chief of the army. In 1854, during the Crimean War, he had attended a parade in Scutari, in Turkey, to celebrate the Queen's birthday. The approximately twenty 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 for their bands, each of whom had free rein in both the instrumentation of the band and the arrangements it played. With each band playing God Save the Queen simultaneously in different instrumentations, pitch, arrangement, and key signatures, the result was an embarrassing and humiliating cacophony. The Duke decided that 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 Crystal Palace) as commandant. For several years, in the late 19th century, the commandant was Colonel T. B. Shaw-Hellier, owner of the Hellier Stradivarius.