The Royal Musical Association 1874–1901

Extract

An account of the origins of the RMA was given by Gerald Abraham in his address to the Association entitled ‘Our First Hundred Years’ given at the Annual Conference in April 1974: the idea of forming a musical society on the lines of a learned society apparently arose in conversation between Sir John Stainer and Dr William Pole, Professor of Civil Engineering at University College, London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, after lunch in Oxford one day in 1867, as Stainer, then President of the Association, recollected in an occasional note in The Musical Times in 1901. When Stainer subsequently became organist at St Paul's Cathedral in 1872 and moved to London, the idea bore fruit and steps were taken to found such a society. Detailed knowledge of how the Association came to be established however became available only comparatively recently, when an accident brought to light the minute books of the Association from its foundation down to 1949. These had been considered lost for a number of years until they appeared in the catalogue for a sale at Christie's in 1981 and were recovered from the vendor (who had come upon them by chance) by private arrangement. Prior to this fortunate recovery, the record of the achievement of the Association depended on the successive volumes of Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association. These remain the major basis for such a record, including, as they do, the names of speakers, their papers and a transcript of the discussion following the papers; however the newly recovered minute books, containing a record of both General and Council meetings, add important circumstantial detail to the general outline. The volumes have been deposited in the British Library Department of Manuscripts. The following account of the early years of the RMA is based on both sources.“