Royal Academy of Music appoints UK’s first endowed chair of historical performance

The Royal Academy of Music has announced the creation of the Becket Chair of Historical Performance. Funded by The Martin Smith Foundation, the chair is the first of its kind at a UK conservatoire and will be held by the academy’s head of historical performance, Professor Margaret Faultless.

The chair will facilitate the growth of the academy’s historical performance department as well as enhancing access and understanding for its Becket Collection of period instruments, collected by musician Elise Granbery Becket and donated to the academy by Sir Martin Smith’s wife, Lady Smith, in 2012.

Professor Faultless comments: ‘The creation of the Becket Chair of Historical Performance is a significant moment for the Academy, and one that will resonate for years to come across the historical performance profession. This Chair will enable the delights of period instrument playing, and inspired approaches to music-making, to be shared with even more students who will, in turn, take these experiences into the wider profession.’

Started in 1998 in partnership with the academy’s curator of instruments, the collection comprises a complete orchestra of 25 Classical-period British stringed instruments and a Baroque ensemble of 13 stringed instruments. The collection supports the exploration and restoration of historical musical repertoires and their performance practices among academy students, with graduates who have benefitted from its instruments now members of major UK period ensembles.

A specialist in historical performance practice, Professor Faultless has for over twelve years Margaret led the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and since 1989 has been a co-leader of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Faultless was made a Professor of the University of London in 2018.

The Becket Chair is the fifth fully funded chair at the Academy since it became the first UK conservatoire to create roles of this kind. Academy principal Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood CBE said: ‘The vision of Sir Martin and Lady Smith in securing the future of historically informed performance through the establishment of the Becket Chair is not only generous but reflects the ambition of the Academy to future-proof the skills, disciplines and artistry of period performance in its curriculum… Funded chairs allow us to cement the values which have defined our work since 1822, and make them durable for our third century’.