The British Music Society of York is not quite what the name might lead you to think. It is simply an organisation which, as its core activity, stages six chamber music concerts per year, its season running from October to March. For historical reasons, however, it still has more the structure of a music society: its subscribers are called members, and the Society's committee and officers are appointed at an AGM, held in May or June.
The original British Music Society was a national body, founded in 1918 by Dr Arthur Eaglefield Hull with the intention of advancing the cause of music in Britain on every conceivable front. The Society was incorporated in 1919 and had extraordinarily influential backers, officers and committee members - the list including Bernard Shaw.
The Society's aims came to be summarised in its literature as follows.
Many of these aims were easier to fulfil at grassroots level rather than centrally, and the Society pursued vigorously its policy of encouraging local centres and branches. In the end there were about 40 such groups, one of the earliest in Leeds. It wasn't too long before musicians and music lovers 24 miles away in York became interested in the BMS.
At 7.30 pm. on Wednesday, 9 February 1921, 26 local York musicians (including the composer William Baines) met at Queen Anne's School under the chairmanship of Mr G.A. Davis to discuss the possibility of founding a branch in York. Mr Kennedy of the Leeds Centre spoke and answered questions on the Aims and Objects of the B.M.S.. All those present who paid their one guinea subscription as full members of the Society were then invited to serve on a Provisional Committee to oversee preparations for the inaugural meeting of the branch.
The inaugural meeting itself was held on Thursday, 17 March 1921 in the Guildhall. It was chaired by the Lord Mayor of York, Alderman E. Walker, and featured a lecture on The place of music in daily life given by Dr Hull himself, in his final year as the parent Society's Hon. Director. The local artists who gave of their services in the subsequent concert were principally singers, though there were violin solos from a Miss Veale and piano solos from William Baines. The York Centre was off the ground: by the end of the season it could boast 104 members, 54 of them full.
A society that spread itself so thinly, in both geography and objectives, was always going to be vulnerable to economic downturns, and sure enough it foundered in the financial chaos that visited the world in the early 1930s. In the spring of 1933 the parent BMS in London announced it would go into liquidation as of 31 May. The communiqué claimed the Society had fulfilled its original objectives of promoting British music and improving the standard of music and musical awareness in Britain: members had the satisfaction that, far from being a face-saving formula, this was no less than the truth.
With the demise of the parent body, the various centres and branches were left to their own devices. Some continued to pursue a more modest version of the original aims at a local level, often with a change of name. The Belfast Centre, for instance, took the obvious course of retaining the initials by which the Society had mostly been known - BMS - but standing now for Belfast Music Society. This option wasn't available to the York Centre when its 12th Annual General Meeting (4 July 1933) discussed whether to disband or continue. Fortunately for music in York the decision was made to continue, under the compromise name of British Music Society of York.
The Society celebrated its 75th Anniversary with a concert on 16 February 1996 at which Melinda Maxwell and the Brindisi Quartet gave the premiere of a work specially composed for the occasion, Christopher Fox's Oboe Quintet. At the November concert of the 2017-2018 season the Society was delighted to mark the 100th birthday of its President, the well-loved organist and composer Dr Francis Jackson CBE. He was President of BMS York for over 48 years, from 7th June 1973 until his death in January 2022 aged 104.
In mid-2020, amid the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, the committee took the difficult decision to cancel the whole of the 2020-21 season. The society's 100th season was thus delayed until restrictions were lifted the following year. The first concert of the 2021-22 season saw the first performance of Nicola LeFanu's String Quintet, a BMS commission specially for the 100th anniversary occasion. The 103rd season of concerts confirms that the society is continuing to go from strength to strength. Why don't you join, too?