WMA Summer School of Music

The First School

The Workers’ Music Association was founded in 1936. Ten years later - not long after the Second World War - the first Summer School was held in Edinburgh. It was the brainchild of the then full-time General Secretary of the WMA, Will Sahnow, who devoted much of his energy and talent to organizing it. Subsequent schools were held in Dover and Shrewsbury. The first Directors of Study were the famous British composer Rutland Boughton and the eminent musicologist Dr. Joseph Lewis.

A Fitting Venue

In 1954, the school found its permanent home at Wortley Hall, a fine mansion in the village of Wortley, not far from Sheffield This was a very fitting venue for the WMA, as some few years previously the Hall had been purchased from the mine-owning Wharncliffe family by the trade union and labour movement, which has since then run it as Labour Home’, using it for education and social purposes. That same year the founder and President of the Workers’ Music Association, Alan Bush, became the school’s Director of Studies and tutor of the conducting and advanced composition courses. He held this position for twenty-one years and retired from it at the age of 75, though still retaining close links with the school.

Publicity for Success

Not long after the untimely death of Will Sahnow in 1951, the organization of the school began to deteriorate. Enrolments dropped through lack of publicity, and by 1959 Wortley Hall was only half full. In 1959, Joan Horrocks, an active member of the WMA since 1941, attended the school for the first time as a student. Inspired by the experience, but seriously concerned at the lack of enrolments, she persuaded her husband John Horrocks (a founder member of the WMA) to take on the organization, with herself as assistant. They mounted a vigorous publicity drive, with special emphasis on the trade union and co-operative movements, encouraging them to send students on scholarship. As a result, the 1960 Summer School was fully booked, and from that time until the present it has had a capacity booking very early in the year. The school is organized on an entirely voluntary basis. It receives grants from the Yorkshire Arts and the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and an award from Awards for All for which it is extremely grateful.

Trade Union and Co-operative Society Support

Some scholarships are granted by trade unions, co-operative societies and social welfare bodies. No other music course in this country makes a point of approaching labour movement organizations for scholarships - this is a unique and most important feature of the WMA Summer School.
Denis Scard, a previous General Secretary of the Musicians’ Union, visited our School on several occasions when he was area organizer, and expressed enthusiasm for our work.

Special- Awards:

In 1965 John Horrocks died from motor neurone disease and his wife, Joan immediately took over as Summer School organizer, assisted by a small committee which has met regularly ever since. In 1966, the WMA Executive Committee decided to provide a John Horrocks Memorial Scholarship to be awarded annually to an amateur musician who, like John, was also active in the labour movement. Wortley Hall’s management committee also gave three free places in appreciation of the friendly ties which John established between the WMA and Wortley Hall during the five years he had organized the school.

Since 1975, a Valentine Alcock Scholarship has also been awarded in memory of a young student of that name who attended the school for several years. This is donated by Valentine’s family to a child of a one-parent family (as Valentine had been) who could not otherwise afford to attend the school.

SOME MEMORABLE EVENTS OVER THE YEARS

The School on Film
Some years ago two documentaries about the School were made by the National Coal Board film unit, one of which was shown on the normal cinema circuit. The outstanding film produced for the Arts Council by the late Anna Ambrose, entitled Alan Bush - A Life (celebrating the composer’s 80th birthday in 1980) contained several sequences shot during the Summer School, and included an interview with the organizer. This film was shown at the National Film Theatre in London, and later on Channel 4 Television. In 1987, BBC Northern TV took shots of classes in session to include in a series about activity holidays in the North of England. This was later shown on national television.

Songs of Peace and Freedom
The Summer School Choir has given first performances of several works specially commissioned for the School, including Alan Bush’s Mandela Speaking and Africa is my Name (both sung in the presence of members of the African National Congress), The Turning World by the late Bernard Stevens and, in 1987, White Dove of Peace by the Derbyshire composer Les Emmans. One of our most exciting first performances was that of Freedom Song by Mikis Theodorakis, which was smuggled out of a Greek jail and sent to Alan Bush.

Links with Musicians
For the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the School, eminent musicians from this country and abroad sent greetings, including our vice-presidents Benjamin Britten, John Ireland, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Bert Lloyd, Humphrey Lyttleton, Elizabeth Maconchy, Peter Pears, Pete Seeger, Ronald Stevenson and Paul Tortelier.