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.

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.

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 – 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. 

Archive Item of the Month – January 2021

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) 

Haydn left Vienna on 1 December 1790 for a visit to London in the company of violinist Johann Peter Salomon (1734-1815, Member A069). They arrived in Dover on the afternoon of 1 January 1791. On arriving in London, Haydn was a guest of the music publisher John Bland in his home above the shop at No.45 Holborn. Bland appears to have commissioned a portrait of the composer from Thomas Hardy (1756/7-1804), an artist who painted several portraits of musical figures; his portraits of Madame Mara, Madame Gautherot, Madame Krumpholz and Samuel Arnold, alongside the Haydn portrait, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in May 1792. Many of these were also engraved by the artist and the prints were sold at Bland’s music shop; the engraving of the Haydn portrait was first advertised for sale on 13 February 1792.

Archive item of the month – December 2020 

“Beethoven 2020”: 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth 

Ludwig van Beethoven, engraving by Blasius Höfel (1792-1863) “after” a drawing by Louis René Letronne (1788-1841); published in Vienna by Artaria und Comp., 1814.

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.