To mark The National Lottery’s 30th birthday celebrations this year we have put together a blog post about the archive of the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS), acquired by the British Library in 2002 thanks in part to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, alongside generous donations from other individuals and trusts. This post highlights some of the treasures found in the RPS archive and the research that the archive has sparked since its acquisition by the Library.

The RPS and its archive

The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) was founded in 1813 as the Philharmonic Society of London by a group of 30 professional musicians with the purpose ‘to promote the performance, in the most perfect manner possible, of the best and most approved instrumental music’. It continues today as a busy charitable organisation devoted to ‘creating opportunities for musicians to excel, championing the vital role that music plays in all our lives’. The Society began by establishing an annual concert season which included music by the greatest composers of the time, with new commissions from composers like Beethoven, Cherubini, Mendelssohn, Dvořák, and Saint-Saëns, some of whom were also invited to conduct their own works. The Society also has a long history of inviting distinguished performers to perform at its concerts, among them figures like Clara Schumann and Pablo Casals. You can find out more about the RPS’s impressive history and current activities on the RPS website and through the selected literature in the ‘References’ section below.

Over the years, the performing and administrative activities of the RPS resulted in the formation of a considerable archive (now British Library RPS MS 1-417). This contains over 270 manuscript scores, including many composer’s autograph manuscripts of works performed by the RPS, alongside dozens of volumes of letters and important administrative documents up to 1968. The latter include a series of 20 minute books in which the proceedings of meetings of the Directors of the RPS were recorded. These minute books are full of valuable information about the running of the Society, its financial affairs, the planning of each concert season, the commissioning of new works, matters raised by its members, and much more.

One such minute book records the commissioning of a new symphony from Beethoven in November 1822 and the Directors’ decision to offer Beethoven £50 for this. Notes of the meeting show that they hoped to receive it by March 1823, in time for performance during the 1823 concert season. This became Beethoven’s famous Symphony no.9 and the manuscript in the RPS archive is known as the ‘London manuscript’.

    ‘Resolved that an offer of £50 be made to Beethoven for a M.S. Sym[phon]y. He having permission to dispose of it at the expiration of Eighteen Months after the receipt of it. It being a proviso that it shall arrive during the Month of March next.’ 

A page from a Minute book in the RPS Archive recording the offer of £50 to Beethoven for the commission of a new symphony (3rd paragraph from the top). British Library RPS MS 280, f.2.

The manuscript that Beethoven sent to the Philharmonic Society in 1824 of his Symphony no.9 was a copy prepared by three music copyists under his supervision. The manuscript includes numerous minor corrections and annotations in Beethoven’s hand, alongside markings arising from the first London performance.

The opening of the 4th movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no.9 in the RPS manuscript. British Library RPS MS 5, f. 91.

In 2021 the Library held the exhibition Beethoven: Idealist. Innovator. Icon, which included a number of collection items from the RPS Archive, including the London manuscript of the Ninth symphony. This was displayed alongside Beethoven’s autograph manuscript (on loan from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) for the first time in the UK.

The RPS Archive also includes 47 volumes of letters from numerous British and European composers and musicians who corresponded with the RPS. Among them, one from Tchaikovsky following his visit to Britain in 1893. The composer had conducted his Fourth Symphony at a Philharmonic Society concert in May that year and wrote to the secretary, Francesco Berger, of his eagerness to return to conduct a new symphony he was working on (that was his Sixth, but Tchaikovsky died later in the year before another visit could be organised).

Letter from P.I. Tchaikovsky to the RPS Secretary Francesco Berger. British Library RPS MS 366, f. 165.

The archive includes much more too, from concert programmes, posters and official notices through to a number of objects. Among them are a tuning fork and numerous ivory counters with Directors’ and other members’ names on them.

This tuning fork in the RPS archive is dated 1896 on the fork. It was mounted on a wooden base and kept inside a wooden box. British Library, RPS MS 327 B.

These ivory counters were issued to Directors and other members of the Philharmonic Society, probably instead of tickets to concerts or to indicate attendance at meetings. The name of the director/member was given on one side of the counter with the other displaying ‘Philharmonic Society’. British Library RPS MS 326.

Such a wide-ranging archive has provided plenty of scope for research of different kinds over the years, and indeed it has been a frequently-consulted addition to the British Library’s collection both onsite and online (the entire RPS archive was digitised in 2013 for the Gale database, Nineteenth Century Collections Online). As well as material relating to famous composers and performers, the archive also offers insights and glimpses of other individuals. People like Joseph Harris, copyist of the instrumental parts for the first London performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, who we hear from in letters describing his work (he said that the Ninth was “the longest & most difficult thing I ever copied… yet the most beautiful Composition”).

The 19th century was a period in which the ‘business’ of music making and the act of concert going became increasingly established in ways we can still recognise today. The wealth of detail in the RPS Archive has allowed researchers to map this change through the seemingly prosaic but essential processes documented in minute books, financial ledgers and other administrative documentation. Being able to preserve the archive here at the British Library is especially beneficial because of the connections with other collections held here, be it those of individuals who worked with or for the Society, or of other concert organisations. Together, such collections help to provide a rich and vivid picture of music making and concert life from the 19th century onwards. 

Chris Scobie, Lead Curator Music Manuscripts and Archives

Loukia Drosopoulou, Curator Music

References

The Royal Philharmonic Society: The History and Future of Music. https://royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/assets/files/RPS_A5_History_booklet_08_revised.pdf

Leanne Langley, ‘A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2013. https://doi.org/10.23636/1057

Cyril Ehrlich, First philharmonic: a history of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1995.

Most directors of cathedral music would probably consider their energies amply enough absorbed by the demands of choir and organ and liturgy, but a few years into his tenure at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Dr. John Stainer (1840–1901) found duty beckoning him away from the choir-stalls and organ-loft to the belfry in the north-west tower.  Here, in the mid-1870s, over 160 years after the cathedral’s completion, there still hung no full peal of bells for change-ringing, only the solitary service-bell.  (The three clock bells chiming faithfully over in the south-west tower were entirely separate: what was lacking were bells to celebrate Sundays, feast-days and great occasions.)  It was a situation incompatible with civic and national pride, and a problem which now fell to Dr. Stainer, at least in part, to remedy.  With the other members of the newly-formed Bell Committee, he set about creating cathedral music of an altogether different kind.

John Stainer: ‘A genial, good-natured, likeable man’

John Stainer, c. 1878. Reproduced in Lock and Whitfield, ‘Men of mark: a gallery of contemporary portraits of men distinguished in the Senate, the Church, in science, literature and art, the army, navy, law, medicine’ (London: Sampson Low, 1876-1883). British Library RB.23.b.7030.

Stainer, a native of London who had sung as a boy treble at St. Paul’s, had been appointed organist and Director of Music in 1872, aged 32.  He is generally acknowledged to have made considerable improvements to the Cathedral’s musical standards while remaining, as one description has it, ‘by all accounts […] a genial, good-natured, likeable man whose industrious personality engendered respect in others.’ [1]  He was also a composer in his own right: ‘God so loved the world’, from his oratorio ‘The Crucifixion’, is still sung regularly in Holy Week. 

Campanology must presumably have been relatively unfamiliar territory for him, but his ‘industrious personality’ he nevertheless threw into the work of the Bell Committee.  Three years were to suffice for the necessary fund-raising and the commissioning of a brand-new peal of twelve bells.  Tuned to the key of B flat and weighing thirteen tons in all – at the time the world’s heaviest peal of twelve, and still second only to the bells of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral – they were cast at the (still-extant) foundry of John Taylor & Co. in Loughborough, carried gingerly to London, hoisted into the north-west belfry through a gap apparently left specifically for that purpose by the ever-prescient Sir Christopher Wren, and rung for the first time on All Saints’ Day, November 1st, 1878. [2]

Enter H. R. Haweis, foe of ‘din and discord’

Such a prominent change to London’s soundscape was bound to attract much attention and comment.  One figure who could be counted upon to offer an opinion was the Rev. Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838–1901), the charismatic, go-ahead vicar of St James’s, Marylebone.  A veteran of the Italian War of Independence and an early advocate of the Sunday opening of museums and galleries, he had made a name for himself by arguing controversially that spiritualism was compatible with Christianity, and, even more controversially, by actually attending séances.  Amidst all this he still found time for music, and in particular for a keen interest in bells.  His expertise, though amateur, was well-respected – he had been the author of the article ‘Bell’ in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published earlier that year [3] – and indeed, when it came to bells, he was a hard man to please: ‘I question whether there is a musically true chime of bells in the whole of England, and if it exists, I doubt whether any one knows or cares for its musical superiority.’ [4]  He was convinced of the tonal supremacy of Belgian bells, writing repeatedly of the ‘relief’ afforded him by visits to ‘the old cathedrals of Belgium, with their musical chimes and their splendid carillons’. [5]  ‘Willingly do I escape from the din and discord of English belfries to Belgium, loving and beloved of bells,’ he declared.[6]

H. R. Haweis, c. 1888. Reproduced in J. Waléry, ‘Our celebrities: a portrait gallery’ (London, publisher unknown, 1888). British Library 1764.e.5.

So he could certainly be expected to take an interest in the tintinnabulary developments at St. Paul’s, and to wish to see and hear the new peal at closer quarters.  Just over a week before the inauguration, John Stainer wrote to him with a personal invitation.   ‘Our formal opening will take place at 5.30 on Nov[ember] 1st but if you will mount the tower with me at 11 on that day you shall have the bells struck for your own special benefit.’ [7]  Stainer also sketched out a musical stave indicating the pitches of the new bells, along with their respective weights.

Letter from John Stainer to H. R. Haweis, 22nd October 1878. British Library MS Mus. 1928. Reproduced with permission. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Haweis pronounces his verdict

As it turned out, Haweis did not have to wait that long to carry out his inspection, nor Stainer to find out his verdict.  On 29^th October, a letter from Haweis appeared in the Times: ‘Fresh from a tour in Belgium, with the sound of the Mechlin [Mechelen] and Ghent bells still ringing in my ears, I ascended, with note-book, candle, and muffled hammer, the side tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which twelve new bells have just been placed by the munificence of the City companies […]’.  (A pause to point out that ‘For eight years I have pleaded the cause of bells and carillons in England.’)  Having first excoriated the flatness of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster (‘hoarse, cracked, and gong-like […] the scourge of the neighbourhood’), the new peal at St. Paul’s he merely damned with faint praise.  ‘It is as good as most in England,’ he wrote. ‘Ten years ago it would have been passed by architects and bell committees with applause – will probably be so passed now – and the newspapers may speak of the “superb new peal” and its “mellow silver tones”, the cost, and so forth – and indeed it is quite as good as I expected and as expensive as needs be.’ [8]

But after six hours in the belfry he had discovered a more fundamental flaw: the bells were out of tune.  ‘I am quite clear that the radical imperfection of the octave and a half as it now hangs will appear whenever the first attempt is made to ring a tune on the first seven and last five of St. Paul’s bells.’ [9]  He also believed that they had been hung in such a way as to damage the tower when ringing.

Whether Haweis returned on the morning of the 1^st November to take up Stainer’s invitation, or what passed between the two men if he did, is not known.  But that evening the Cathedral was ‘crowded to the doors’ for the inauguration, with thousands more gathered in the churchyard and down Ludgate Hill to hear the first peal rung by the Ancient Society of College Youths, the City of London’s foremost bell-ringing society.  (The Society is well-named in that, tracing its foundation to 1637, before the Great Fire, it is older than the cathedral itself, as well as most of the City’s churches.) [10]

The west front of St. Paul’s seen in N. D’Anvers, ‘Some Account of the Great Buildings of London’ (London: Marcus Ward, 1879). Autotype photograph by Frederick York (1879). The change-ringing bells hang in the north-west tower on the left.

A regular ‘ding-dong’ in the Times?

In subsequent days Stainer and other members of the Bell Committee wrote to the Times in defence of their work.  Stainer took Haweis to task on the question of tuning.  It was not a question of pitch but of timbre, he argued; all bells sound several secondary tones as well as the principal one, and Haweis must, moreover, have been striking the bells in the wrong place.  ‘The only place where a bell should be struck is on the sound bow itself […]  Would Mr. Haweis test a [Stradivarius] violin by bowing it below the bridge?  […]  When properly tested on the sound-bow, there will be found a remarkable purity of tone throughout the St. Paul’s peal […]  They are in excellent tune, and capitally hung.’ [11]

Haweis returned to the letters page on November 14th, the tenor of his argument unaltered.  The bells were sharp, he was sure of it, and in any case, if the ear has an impression of sharpness, it scarcely matters whether timbre or pitch is the technical cause: ‘It is no more apology for sharp bells to say that they seem sharp when they sound sharp, but are really “excellently in tune,” as Dr. Stainer says St. Paul’s bells are, than to tell me that my boot is a comfortable fit although it seems to pinch […]’ [12]

A lasting legacy for Londoners

Other committee members continued the debate in subsequent editions, but Haweis, never to be persuaded, was to maintain his lamentation of the deficiencies of both St. Paul’s and Westminster belfries, notably at a Royal Institution lecture the following February. [13]  Stainer, for his part, seems to have been content to let the bells speak for themselves.  At any rate, he had given enough satisfaction to Dean and Chapter to be entrusted with the installation in the south-west tower, three years later, of ‘Great Paul’, at sixteen tons the United Kingdom’s largest working bell, and the second-largest ever cast in this country. [14]  He was knighted for his services in 1888, but in the same year had to resign his position owing to failing eyesight.

Stainer and Haweis died within three months of each other in 1901.  The bells, of which Stainer had predicted ‘Londoners will some day be proud’, rang on, Sunday in and Sunday out, gradually embroidering themselves into the life of the City. [15]  ‘And neighbouring towers and spirelets joined the ringing / With answering echoes from heavy commercial walls, / Till all were drowned as the sailing clouds went singing / On the roaring flood of a twelve-voiced peal from Paul’s,’ John Betjeman was to write in 1955, by then recalling the Sunday morning soundscape of the pre-Blitz City. [16]  Many of the bells he was remembering had been first silenced by wartime conditions, then destroyed in the bombing of their churches — but, almost miraculously, those of St. Paul’s had survived, and to this day ring out for half an hour before three services on Sundays.

But Haweis’s ultimate wish, one to which Stainer had expressed sympathy, is yet to be fulfilled: the installation of a carillon in the south-west tower of St. Paul’s: ‘I still hope,’ he had written, ‘to see Dr. Stainer […] seated there at a noble carillon clavecin of 40 Belgian bells, whose melodious tongues will then utter aloud the open secrets of the great Tone-Poets, while the crowd below […] shall be rapt in wonder […].’ [17]  A project, perhaps, for some future Director of Music.

Dominic Newman, Manuscripts Cataloguer

MS Mus. 1928, a newly-catalogued collection of various musicians’ letters, is now available for consultation in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room.

References

[1] Dibble, J.  (2004, September 23).  ‘Stainer, Sir John (1840–1901), musicologist and composer.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 25 Oct. 2023, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36234.

[2] St Paul’s Cathedral, ‘The bells’, web article.  Retrieved 26 Oct. 2023 from https://www.stpauls.co.uk/bells.

[3] Baigent, E.  (2004, September 23). ‘Haweis, Hugh Reginald (1838–1901), author and Church of England clergyman’. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 25 Oct. 2023, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-33763.

[4] Haweis, H. R., Music and Morals (London: Longmans, 1872), p. 389.

[5] Ibid., p. 377.

[6] Ibid., p. 387.

[7] Letter from John Stainer to Hugh Reginald Haweis, 22 Oct. 1878.  British Library MS Mus. 1928.

[8] Haweis, H. R., “The New Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 29 Oct. 1878, p. 8.  The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS135052125/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=6035918d. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.

[9] The Times, 29 Oct. 1878, ibid.

[10] “The Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 2 Nov. 1878, p. 8. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS135314274/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=74c6b84b. Accessed 26 Oct. 2023.

[11] The Times, Nov. 7th, 1878.

[12] Haweis, H. R. “St. Paul's Bells.” The Times, 14 Nov. 1878, p. 11. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS185777006/TTDA?u=blibrary&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=48be56ae. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.

[13] The Times, 10 Feb. 1879.

[14] “The Bells Of St. Paul’s.” The Times, 2 Nov. 1878, ibid.

[15] Stainer incidentally has another musical legacy in London: Stainer Street, near his birth-place in Southwark.  This street is unusual in being enclosed along its entire length by a long brick tunnel-like arch holding up the platforms of London Bridge station.  The arch is effectively a barrel-vault and creates, appropriately enough, a church-like acoustic.  Into this space, which is now part of the station concourse, an old church organ was installed in 2022; at the time of writing it is available for anyone to play free of charge.

[16] John Betjeman, ‘Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station’, in Collected Poems (London: John Murray, 1985), p. 270.

[17] The Times, 14 Nov. 1878, ibid.

Two events at the British Library

Join us at the British Library in November for two events marking Gustav Holst’s 150th anniversary – including a special performance inside the Rare Books & Music Reading Room! 

Gustav Holst: An Archival Legacy 
Wednesday 20 November 2024, 14.00-16.30, Foyle Room, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB (tickets are free, but please contact [email protected] to book a place)   

150 years on from his birth (and 90 years after his death), Gustav Holst is celebrated for several very famous pieces of music – among them, The Planets. But much of his work remains little known, and his life still awaits the thorough exploration given to some of his contemporaries. In this event, we put the focus on the archival sources – manuscript scores, notebooks, letters – and their potential to provide new insights into the composer, his music and those who helped to support him in his work.

Laura Kinnear (Curator, Holst Victorian House, Cheltenham), Judith Ratcliffe (Archivist, The Red House, Britten Pears Arts) and Chris Scobie (Curator, Music Manuscripts & Archives, British Library) delve into their respective collections to showcase the range of material preserved. Holst’s early life, his creative process, his musical influences and the role of his daughter, Imogen, in preserving all this material will all be discussed. We are also delighted to be joined by Holst specialist Philippa Tudor, whose research into Gustav, Imogen and Isobel Holst has drawn on archival collections far and wide.

Notebook in which Holst kept a note of works composed. Add MS 57863, ff. 24v-26

Looking at the archival sources reveals hidden stories and can challenge received wisdom – ultimately providing a means to reassess the legacy of this unique composer of the early 20th century today.  

The afternoon will also include performances by musicians from the Royal College of Music, where Holst himself was a student, performing the Terzetto for flute, oboe and viola alongside a suite for solo viola by Imogen Holst. 

Tickets are free, but please book by emailing [email protected].    

Gustav Holst: An Archival Legacy

PROGRAMME
14.00  Welcome (Sandra Tuppen, Head of Music Collections, British Library)
14.05  Holst's early life and the collections at the Holst Victorian House, Cheltenham (Laura Kinnear)
14.25  Holst's creative process and the collections at the British Library (Chris Scobie)
14.45  Holst's archive, legacy and the collections at The Red House, Aldeburgh (Judith Ratcliffe)
15.05  BREAK (tea and coffee provided)
15.25  Researching Gustav, Isobel and Imogen Holst (Philippa Tudor)
15.50  Performances:

                Imogen Holst: Suite for Unaccompanied Viola  (1930)    
                Gustav Holst: Terzetto (1925)

            (Aisha Goodman, viola; Zoë Borseth Rasmusssen, flute; Ross Williams, oboe)

16.20  END

 

Letter from Gustav Holst to Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1903. BL, Add MS 57953

Holst’s Planets: A Celestial Remembrance 
Sunday 10th November 2024, 15.30, Rare Books & Music Reading Room, British Library (tickets available via the British Library website) 

Before that, a very special concert on Sunday 10 November will feature Holst’s most famous piece, The Planets, performed in the composer’s version for two pianos by Simon Callaghan and Thomas Kelly. The British Library’s Rare Books & Music Reading Room, usually a quiet space of course, will be filled with cosmic sound for the occasion – from the imposing menace of ‘Mars’ to the mystical music of ‘Neptune’.   

Part of the manuscript of Holst's 'Jupiter' written out for two pianos. Add MS 57881, f. 20

There are some especially nice connections here: Gustav Holst was a regular user of the old reading room at the British Museum for one thing, spending time there in his study of Sanskrit. Many of Holst’s music manuscripts were donated to the British Museum (now British Library) by his daughter, Imogen, too. Among them are autograph, or part-autograph, scores of several of the movements from The Planets written out for two pianos (the autograph full scores of most movements are at the Bodleian Library in Oxford). This reflects the way that Holst worked at the time: producing a continuous draft of a work on four staves, so that it could be played on two pianos. After he had heard this, he would set to work on the orchestration, annotating the score with his intentions – a good example of which can be seen above.  

For more information and to book tickets, please visit: https://www.seetickets.com/event/holst-s-planets-a-celestial-remembrance/british-library/3190448  

This is the first in a series of concerts to be held in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room, the others are: 

Medieval women in song, Sunday 1 December 2024, 15.30: https://thebritishlibraryculturalevents.seetickets.com/event/voice-trio-medieval-women-in-song/british-library/3190586  

Take Five: The five viols of Fretwork play five centuries of music, some of it in five, Sunday 12 January 2025, 15.30: https://thebritishlibraryculturalevents.seetickets.com/event/fretwork-take-five/british-library/3195325