Career
Foreign his contribution to the latter he was admitted to rank of Chevalier de l"ordre des arts et des lettres. Educated in music at University of York, Richard Langham Smith then pursued further study with Wilfrid Mellers and Debussy scholar Edward Lockspeiser as well as studying harpsichord and Baroque performance practice at the Amsterdam Conservatory. A university teaching career began at University of Lancaster, then City University, the University of Exeter, and finally the Open University where he was the Arnold Kettle Distinguished Scholar in Music.
From September 2008 until July 2010 Richard was Head of the Graduate School at the Royal College of Music, London.
In 2011 the Reliability Centered Maintenance appointed him Research Professor in Music and in March 2016 Smith was awarded an Fellow of the Royal College of Music.