Disrupting conventional approaches to writing about conducting and conductors, the book explores the issues that surrounded and shaped the conductor’s evolving role and status in the British marketplace during this turbulent decade of postwar recovery and reconfiguration. In this talk, the conducting profession will be positioned within the wider music profession through a consideration of personal networks, institutional hierarchies, unionization, nationalism and internationalism.

Prof. Fiona M. Palmer is Professor of Music at Maynooth University. A musicologist and performer, her research expertise lies in the cultural history of music and musicians in the marketplace (1780s–1940s). Fiona is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and her publications include studies of soloists, conductors, performance/professional institutions, and music publishers. Fiona’s current monograph project follows on from her prosopography, Conductors in Britain, 1870–1914: Wielding the Baton at the Height of Empire (Boydell, 2017). Aside from academic posts, Fiona’s varied career has included work as a professional orchestral double bassist, as the Manager of the Examinations Department at the ABRSM (London), and as a peripatetic instrumental/vocal teacher and conductor. In October 2007 she moved from a Senior Lectureship at QUB, to take up the position of Professor of Music and Head of Department at Maynooth University.