Our History
In 2009, Nordoff Robbins celebrates fifty years of transforming lives through music. This page looks back over the remarkable history of the charity, beginning with the pioneering work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins at the end of the 1950s.
1958: Paul Nordoff (1909-77), an American composer and pianist, visited Sunfield Children’s Home in Worcestershire, a Steiner School for disabled children, during a tour of Europe. Here he met Clive Robbins (b 1927), then a teacher at the school.
1959: Dr Nordoff returned to Sunfield a year later to explore the therapeutic potential of music on disabled children. He collaborated with Clive Robbins who shared his passionate desire to reach isolated and disturbed children through music. Together they developed an investigative approach based on musical improvisation. A combination of experimentation and meticulous observation led to initial formulations of a pioneering new music therapy approach.
1960: Nordoff and Robbins left Sunfield and undertook a tour of Steiner Schools across Europe to demonstrate their new work. They then settled in the USA for six years where they refined and crystallised the approach.
1967: Nordoff and Robbins returned to Europe and based themselves in Scandinavia. They taught, wrote and continued the work itself. Interest steadily grew, leading to several publications and a TV documentary in Norway (1972).
1968: Sybil Beresford-Peirse qualified as a music therapist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama after completing a brand new training course in music therapy led by Juliette Alvin. She encountered and was gripped by the work of Nordoff and Robbins through their first book, Music Therapy for Handicapped Children (1965), and travelled to meet them in Philadelphia. Whilst working as a music therapist in London she organised teaching engagements for Nordoff and Robbins.
1970: A music therapy service was established at Goldie Leigh Hospital in south London, provided first by Julienne Cartwright and from 1971 by Sybil Beresford-Peirse. Sybil retained close contact with Nordoff and Robbins through letters and visits.
1972: The Music Therapy Charity (est. 1968) agreed to raise funds to enable Sybil Beresford-Peirse to establish a Nordoff Robbins training programme at Goldie Leigh Hospital.
1973: Julienne Cartwright moved to Scotland and began to establish the foundations of what would eventually become and independent charity, Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland.
1974: Following the delivery of a successful two-month training programme in Oslo in 1973, Nordoff and Robbins came to London to teach the first training programme at Goldie Leigh Hospital, beginning in January 1974 and lasting six months. Fifteen students graduated successfully.
1975: A full one-year training programme began at Goldie Hospital in September, running annually thereafter. Lady Bradford, a governor of The Music Therapy Charity, approached Andrew Miller, a young concert promoter in the rock music industry to ask for help in developing a solid financial basis for Nordoff Robbins practice and training.
1976: Andrew Miller established the Junior Fundraising Committee (of The Music Therapy Charity) with a number of music industry colleagues including Willie Robertson, Sam Alder, Nancy Jarratt and Dave Dee. They organised the inaugural Silver Clef Lunch in June, offering the award to The Who, and raising £12,000 to enable the Nordoff Robbins training to continue. The Lunch became a major event in the music industry calendar and has enjoyed the industry’s support down to the present day.
1977: Paul Nordoff died in January; Sybil Beresford-Peirse assumed responsibility for the training programme at Goldie Leigh. Clive Robbins based himself in the USA, forming a professional partnership with his second wife, Carol Robbins, also a music therapist. (From 1983 to 1990 the Robbinses lived and worked in Australia, before returning to America to establish the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University in 1990.) Nordoff and Robbins’ landmark text, Creative Music Therapy, was published.
1978: The Nordoff Robbins training moved from Goldie Leigh to Roehampton Institute of Higher Education in order to gain academic recognition.
1980: The Junior Fundraising Committee of The Music Therapy Charity split from its parent organisation, becoming incorporated as a newly registered charity (no. 280960), Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy.
1982: The charity established its first Centre in Leighton Place, Kentish Town, with Sybil Beresford-Peirse as Director. This became the new home of the training programme which from 1983 has been validated by City University London. HRH The Duchess of Gloucester opened the Centre on 3 June 1982.
1990: By this year, 121 music therapists had successfully qualified from the Nordoff Robbins training in London since its inception in 1974. The Centre at Leighton Place continued to be funded almost entirely through the work of the Nordoff-Robbins Fundraising Committee. A number of therapists had by now extended the approach (originally developed with disabled children) outside the Centre to encompass a range of client groups of all ages. A search was also on for a new, larger Centre since the charity had outgrown the premises at Leighton Place. To fund this expansion, the Fundraising Committee organised an historic day-long rock concert at Knebworth Park on 30 June, bringing together most of the Silver Clef Award winners (including Status Quo, Genesis, Elton John, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd). The concert was televised worldwide and is remembered to this day as a legendary event in the history of rock.
1991: The new Nordoff Robbins Centre at Lissenden Gardens was opened by HRH The Duchess of York on 25 September, converted from a disused power station beside Hampstead Heath. Pauline Etkin succeeded Sybil Beresford-Peirse as Director.
1995: The original one-year diploma training in music therapy was succeeded by a two-year Master of Music Therapy degree programme, still validated by City University, and the first of its kind in the UK. In Scotland the first Nordoff Robbins Unit was established at St Joseph’s Hospital, Rosewell as a community-based service. Gary Ansdell published Music for Life: Aspects of Creative Music Therapy with Adult Clients – a landmark text reflecting the expansion of the Nordoff Robbins work into a wide range of clinical areas.
1996: The Nordoff Robbins International Trust was formed to preserve the name and reputation of Nordoff Robbins and to hold the worldwide intellectual property assets of the work of Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins. Nordoff Robbins organisations and training programmes had by now been established abroad in the USA, Germany, and Australia, with Nordoff Robbins trained therapists additionally working and educating in many other countries.
1999: Music therapy in the UK became a registered profession, regulated by the Health Professions Council.
2002: Nordoff-Robbins began a programme of UK-wide expansion with the gradual establishment and growth of regional services in different parts of the country in collaboration with organisations in Arts, Health, Education and Social Care sectors. The Centre at Lissenden Gardens became the charity’s National Headquarters. The same year the Research Department was set up to develop music therapy as a professional practice and an academic discipline, establishing the charity’s tripartite mandate to provide services, education and research in music therapy. In Scotland a Nordoff-Robbins diploma training programme was established at Moray House (part of Edinburgh University) in association with Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland: this later converted to a Master’s degree training (2005) and moved to Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh (2007).
2005: The charity celebrated its 30th birthday, acknowledging the generosity of all its supporters and particularly thirty years of support from within the music industry with the inception of the Silver Clef Lunch in 1976.
2006: The Nordoff Robbins MPhil/PhD research degree programme was launched in partnership with City University.
2007: Nordoff Robbins’ Board of Governors initiated a Constitutional and Organisational Review (prompted by the Charities Act of 2006) resulting in a redrafting of the charity’s Objects (2008) and in the establishment of a new management structure (also 2008): Pauline Etkin became Chief Executive Officer with a Senior Management Team comprised of the Directors of the five departments of the charity – Music Therapy Services, Education, Research, Fundraising and Finance.
2008: Nordoff-Robbins launched an innovative new part-time training programme in Manchester, MA in Music Therapy (Community Music Therapy / Nordoff Robbins) hosted by the Royal Northern College of Music and validated by City University London.
2009: Nordoff Robbins celebrates fifty years of music therapy since Paul Nordoff and Clive Robbins began their work in 1959. The largest charitable provider of music therapy in the UK, Nordoff-Robbins offers over 40,000 sessions per year, working in collaboration with 70 organisations in Arts, Education, Health and Social Care sectors, with an annual turnover of nearly £3 million per year. The celebration is marked by the launch of a new logo and look for the organisation, its name being shortened to 'Nordoff Robbins'.
Further Reading
Every Note Counts: The Story of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy
Every Note Counts: The Story of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy was written by the charity's Communications Manager, Fraser Simpson, published in January 2008 by James & James Publishers Ltd (a member of Third Millenium Information Group). Richly illustrated in a high quality production, this 120-page book recounts the development of Nordoff Robbins music therapy over its first half century. It pays tribute to those for whom music as therapy has been a life-enhancing and healing experience, and those who in so many different ways have contributed to the development of the charity and its work. Priced attractively at £10.00 & p+p, the book may be purchased from the Nordoff Robbins London Centre (contact Donald Wetherick) or online from the publisher's website.
"The book is fantastic! Amazing! What a testament to us all, and to all the children, adolescents and adults who brought their souls into our lives to inspire us and teach us! And what a paean of praise for the music industry! Well done!" Clive Robbins