John Pike Hullah

HULLAH, John Pike. b. Worcester, 27 June 1812; d. London, 21 February 1884. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music (1833-35). He wrote an opera, The Village Coquettes (1836), to a libretto by Charles Dickens. He studied singing at Paris, and taught many thousands of pupils by the continental ‘fixed-doh’ method, a system that was superseded by John Curwen*’s moveable ‘doh’ method, the popular ‘Tonic Sol-fa’*. For a time, however, his influence was important. As Nicholas Temperley* has pointed out, he was appointed as a teacher of music at the College of St Mark, Chelsea, in 1841 (Temperley, 1979, Volume 1, p. 257). This was the first teachers' training college for the National Schools...