Page 116 - Weiss, Jernej, ur. 2020. Konservatoriji: profesionalizacija in specializacija glasbenega dela ▪︎ The conservatories: professionalisation and specialisation of musical activity. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 4
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konservator iji: profesionalizacija in specializacija glasbenega dela

fessors, nothing material could be done for Irish Music.”22 Shortly thereafter
it was decided to create the position of Headmaster and Professor of Irish
Music

who would have full control of the Professors and Curriculum and
whose duty it would be to incorporate in the syllabus of the various
departments an education National in tone.23

The headmaster’s annual salary was to be £400, yet the School did not have
that kind of money. The solution was an “Irish Traditional Music Fund”
which by June 1919 had collected an endowment of £1000 via public appeals
so that the salary could be guaranteed for two years. Meanwhile the profes-
sors had learned of the development and peppered the Committee with ap-
peals like the following one in which they were

begging the committee to secure to them in any arrangement which
may be made, that neither their status as Professors which they
have hitherto enjoyed nor their authority over their classes and the
direction of their work will be affected.24

The reaction to this indicates a total breakdown of the relationship between
Committee and teaching staff: The minutes tersely state that the letter was
moved to be marked as “read” before the next item on the agenda is ad-
dressed. Two weeks later the Committee voted down by 9:2 a professorial
application for a salary increase of 20 %. Next, two factions on the commit-
tee emerged which started fighting about every detail of the process, reflect-
ed in numerous attempts to reword motions, postpone votes, and change
minutes – on one occasion several members left a meeting halfway through
in protest. This was most likely about one side’s attempt to rig the game
in order to make sure that the person they preferred was appointed, i.e.
Carl Hardebeck, a composer and arranger of Irish music then based in Bel-
fast. This topic appears to have been known all over Cork, as the Commit-
tee meeting on 2 July 1919 discussed a letter in which the Cork branch of
the “Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers” association protest-
ed against the appointment of “a German” to the position;25 this was before
the applicants for the position were officially known even to the Commit-

22 Minute Books of Committee, Meeting on 3 June 1918, Ref. VEC/SM/A/04, 55.
23 Minute Books of Committee, Meeting on 13 June 1918, Ref. VEC/SM/A/04, 56.
24 Minute Books of Committee, Meeting on 17 October 1918, Ref. VEC/SM/A/04, 63–

64.
25 Minute Books of Committee, Meeting on 2 July 1919, Ref. VEC/SM/A/04, 94.

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