Archive item of the month – November 2020
Benjamin Britten (Lowestoft 22 November, 1913 – Aldeburgh 4 December, 1976): composer, conductor and pianist.
Thanksgiving for music and musicians is traditionally held on the church’s feast day of St Cecilia (22 November), the patron saint of music. The earliest known British celebration of an overtly musical occasion or Cecilian festival was held in 1683 by the “Musical Society”. The Musical Society held services at St Bride’s church in Fleet Street, during which an anthem with orchestral accompaniment and a sermon in praise of music was performed; when these occasions moved to Stationers’ Hall, an ode was especially composed for the occasions with texts by celebrated poets such as John Dryden, William Congreve and Alexander Pope. These festivals took place in several of the provincial cathedral towns, and in Edinburgh the concert hall was to be named after St Cecilia.
Read More»Archive item of the month – October 2020
George Thomas Smart
(London 10 May, 1776 – London 23 February 1876): organist, conductor and composer.
Oil painting of George Smart by an unknown artist; donated to the RSM by Charles Hodgson (1798-1873, RSM Member A314) in 1873 or earlier.
Read More»Archive item of the month – September 2020
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (London 15 August 1875 – London 1 September 1912)
Two early songs by the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a violin student at the Royal College of Music (RCM) from 1890, starting composition lessons with Charles Villiers Stanford in 1892 and receiving an open scholarship in the following year. His studies ended at the RCM in 1897 and his contemporaries had included other famous composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Frank Bridge and William Hurlstone.
Archive item of the month – August 2020
Alfred Mellon
(London 7 April, 1820 – London 27 March 1867, RSM Member A469): violinist, conductor and composer.
Plaster bust (1862) of Alfred Mellon by George James Somerton Miller (d.1876).
Read More»Archive item of the month – July 2020
Music Festivals in Britain
The eighteenth century saw the foundation of many private and public music societies. In the earlier part of the century, the majority of commercial aspects of public performances were primarily the result of theatre seasons, with the Lenten oratorio season for non-staged performances (with texts of religious content) drawing the biggest potential audiences. In 1715, the cathedral choirs of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester established the “Music Meeting” which became the Three Choirs Festival. Music festivals began across England, including Salisbury (1740), Birmingham (1768), and Norwich (1788). However, the real catalyst for the further expansion of this new commercial and/or philanthropic genre was the “Handel Commemoration” in London in 1784. This festival of Handel’s music was on a scale not seen before, and was reported across the country and beyond through many newspaper advertisements and accounts. In the following year, Charles Burney’s An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey and the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th; and June the 3d, and 5th, 1784, in Commemoration of Handel was “Printed for the Benefit of the Musical Fund” (or “Fund for Decay’d Musicians” as The Royal Society of Musicians was then known). Burney’s lavishly produced Account was published in London, a smaller one in Dublin and in a German translation by Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1743-1820) printed in Berlin in the same year (Nachricht von George Friedrich Händel’s Lebensumständen, und der ihm zu London im Mai und Jun. 1784 angestellten Gedächtnissfeyer / Karl Burney, aus dem Englischen übersetzt vom Johann Joachim Eschenburg).
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