Archive Item of the Month – Sept 2021
Carl Friedrich Abel (Cöthen, 22 December 1723 – London, 20 June 1787, Member EM001)
Christian Ferdinand Abel, father of Carl Friedrich, was a violinist and viol player at the court of Prince Leopold I of Anthalt-Cöthen (1694-1728) at the time that Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was appointed Kapellmeister in 1717. Abel senior must have been good friends with J.S. Bach as the composer was godfather to Abel’s first child. On his father’s death in 1737, it is likely that the earlier connections with the Bach family were used as Carl Friedrich went to Leipzig and studied with J.S. Bach. Charles Burney (1726-1814, EM053), who knew Abel, wrote
“Abel’s musical science in harmony, modulation, fugue, and canon, which he had acquired under his great master Sebastian Bach, and taste under Hasse … had made him so complete a musician, that he soon became the umpire in all musical controversy, and was consulted in difficult and knotty points as an infallible oracle” (Charles Burney, A General History of Music, from the earliest ages to the present period (London: printed for the Author, 1789), vol.4, p.679).
Read More»Archive Item of the Month – August 2021
Henry Wood (1869-1944) and the Promenade Concerts.
Programme for Saturday 5 October 1929, Queen’s Hall, London, thirty-fifth season of Promenade Concerts. Donated, with a letter from Wood of 5 October 1938, by Rowland Dyson (RSM Member 00760) in July 1989.
The British musical summertime would not be complete without the excitement and scope of the BBC Proms. It draws together performers from across the world for programmes and performances of music. It is a festival experience with a wonderful sense of comradeship in the audience as well as with the performers.
Read More»Archive Item of the Month – July 2021
A letter from Christian Kramer (d.1834) addressed to C. Hamilton, of 19 Wardour Street.
This letter touches on several areas of musicological interest including provenance and the ownership of manuscripts, printing, publishing and editorial history, as well as the professional and personal connections between individuals.
Kramer was a performer, composer and arranger who had studied with the composer Peter von Winter (1754-1825), of whom the RSM holds an autograph of a March. A concert in the Argyll Rooms for William Hawes (1785-1846, Member A222) on Friday 30 April 1824 reveals that the programme opened with the overture from Handel’s Occasional Oratorio with “additional accompaniments” by C. Kramer. At the time of this letter, Kramer was also Master of the King’s Musick (1829-1834), spanning the reigns of two monarchs, namely George IV for whom he also led the private band, and William IV. We could therefore assume some authority on the discussions relating to the manuscripts in the Royal Collection.
Read More»Archive Item of Month – June 2021
New Musical Fund
The Royal Society of Musicians (RSM) was set up as an institution to help its Members and their dependents in moments of need. From its inception in 1738, the Society welcomed Members irrespective of their place of birth or faith and was therefore representative of the music profession in London of the eighteenth century; there were many Members from Italy, the German states and elsewhere, and many of them would have been of Catholic faith. Catholics were viewed with suspicion in Britain in this period before the Papists Act of 1778, which allowed them to own property, and before the influx of Catholics following the French Revolution. Female musicians, on the other hand, were excluded from joining the Society. In 1840, a time when Britain had a female monarch, the Royal Society of Female Musicians (RSFM) was founded; they amalgamated with the RSM in 1866, much to the benefit of the RSM as the RSFM’s funds over their twenty-six years of existence had hardly been used.
Read More»Archive Item of the Month – May 2021
Sons of the Clergy Festivals
The Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy (www.clergysupport.org.uk) was founded in 1655 to provide support for the Anglican clergy, widows, children and orphans of those clergy, either serving or retired. From the time of the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1649, a good deal of the clergy lost their livings and those loyal to the monarchy were displaced. The founders of the charity were either merchants in the City of London or priests, and the latter were all sons of clergymen. In 1678, the charity was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II in which the administration of the charity was to be run by a Court of Assistants comprising a President, Vice-President, three Treasurers and up to forty-two Assistants; when the Society of Musicians was founded six decades later its Deed of Trust outlined a “Court of Assistants” comprising fifty people.
Read More»Archive Item of the Month – April 2021
Igor Stravinsky (Oranienbaum, 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – New York, 6 April 1971), composer
Typed letter from the flautist and dulcimer player John Herbert Leach (1931-2014, Member 00815) to the composer Igor Stravinsky regarding an arrangement of Polka, the third of his Trois pièces faciles; annotated by the composer and returned to Leach, dated 22 December 1964.
Archive Item of the Month – March 2021
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (1786-1826)
Pencil drawing of Weber by an anonymous artist; [1826]. Presented to the RSM in 1908.
Read More»Archive Item of the Month – February 2021
Giuseppe Verdi (Roncole, 9 October 1813 – Milan, 27 January 1901)
On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the death of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, a brief search in the RSM Archive revealed only two items: the first probably having little to rouse the reader’s excitement and the second of considerable curiosity from the perspective of the history of autograph and manuscript collecting.
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