Search
DONATE
  • Supporting those in need
  • Membership
  • News
  • History and Archives
    • The Society’s History
    • Archive item of the month
  • contact us
Menu

Archive Item of the Month – April 2020

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and Water Music, HWV348-350

The oldest surviving score of Handel’s Water Music.  London: ca 1717-1719.

illus – Ouverture
Read More»

Archive Item of the Month – March 2020

March for March: Grand march [Hob. VIII/3bis]
composed expressly for and presented to The Royal Society of Musicians, London by Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).  London: 1792.

March for March: Grand March
Read More»

Archive Item of the Month – February 2020

Valentines’ day : Thomas Valentine (1759-1800) and his immediate family

RSM Member Thomas Valentine (A093) hailed from an extensive family of musicians from Leicester and moved to London in the late 1770s.  His name appears in the list of instrumentalists for the important and ground-breaking music festival held in London in 1784, namely the Handel Commemoration Concert at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon (see 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 by Charles Burney, London, printed for the benefit of the Musical Fund, 1785).  Valentine joined the Society of Musicians on 4 July 1784 just a few weeks following this festival and his application had been supported by Redmond Simpson (who compiled the financial accounts for the Handel Commemoration Concert) and notes that Valentine “has practised music for a livelihood upwards of seven years, is a single man, aged about 25, plays at Covent Garden Theatre, has many scholars”.

The application document
Read More»

Archive Item of the Month – January 2020

Beethoven 2020 : 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth

bust of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Head and shoulders painted plaster bust of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), clad al’antica, after a bust by Johann Nepomuk Schaller (1777-1842) of 1827. The sitter’s cloak is gathered at the right shoulder with a morse, the whole atop an integral socle. Rectangular name-plate below unlettered.

Read More»
« Previous

Archive item of the month

  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • 2020

Follow us on Twitter

Tweets by @RSMusicians

The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain
26 Fitzroy Square
London W1T 6BT
020 7629 6137
[email protected]

Founded 1738
Incorporated by Royal Charters 1790 & 1987
Patron: Her Majesty The Queen
President: Judith Weir CBE
Registered Charity Number 208879

facebook.com/royalsocietyofmusicians
Twitter: @RSMusicians
Privacy Policy
All content on this website is
© The Royal Society of Musicians.