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‘Putting the BBC and T. Beecham to Shame’: The Macnaghten–Lemare Concerts, 1931–7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sophie Fuller
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Abstract

This article explores and contextualizes the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts, a London concert series run for six seasons in the 1930s by the violinist Anne Macnaghten and the conductor Iris Lemare, with the help of the composer Elisabeth Lutyens and others. Notable for their performances of the work of emerging British composers such as Benjamin Britten and Elizabeth Maconchy, the concerts are also remarkable for the central role played by women – as performers, organizers and composers – and for the space they provided for the unconventional and ignored. Drawing on interviews with Macnaghten and Lemare as well as extensive archival research, the article provides details of the 20 concerts and argues for their hitherto overlooked importance in understanding the British concert life of this decade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 138 , Issue 2 , 2013 , pp. 377 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The Royal Musical Association

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References

1 The Times, 5 December 1931, 8.

2 M. M. S. [Marion Scott], ‘Chamber Music – Concerts’, Musical Times, 75 (1934), 266.

3 Anne Macnaghten, ‘The Story of the Macnaghten Concerts’, Musical Times, 100 (1959), 460.

4 Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1985), 210.

5 The situation of Alice Lord is typical. In 1929 Lord, who had been organist and pianist at the Great Hall Cinema in Tunbridge Wells for the previous five years, was made redundant ‘owing to Talking Pictures’. See her recommendation letter from the cinema: <http://originals.neilbrand.com/pdf_files/Reference-Alice_Lord_copyright_Neil-Brand.pdf> (accessed 8 July 2012). The position of cinema pianist was one of the few musical jobs widely taken up by women, though they were often poorly paid. See Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain, 196–7.

6 Ralph Vaughan Williams, ‘Elizabethan Music and the Modern World’, Monthly Musical Record, 63 (1933), 217; repr. in Vaughan Williams on Music, ed. David Manning (Oxford and New York, 2008), 67–70.

7 Ethel Smyth's The Prison, having been in an original prospectus for this Royal Philharmonic season, was withdrawn, though it was heard at the BBC's British Music Festival (see below, p. 380), which devoted an entire concert to her music in honour of her seventy-fifth birthday. Unsigned, ‘London Concerts – Orchestral Programmes for 1933–34’, Musical Times, 74 (1933), 940.

8 Neville Cardus, Sir Thomas Beecham (London, 1961), 71. The first orchestral concert Beecham had conducted in December 1905 had included The Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnal for baritone and orchestra by Cyril Scott. Younger British composers performed by Beecham's New Symphony Orchestra had included Henry Balfour Gardiner, Granville Bantock, W. H. Bell, Frederick Delius, Joseph Holbrooke, Norman O'Neill and Ralph Vaughan Williams. See Alan Blackwood, Sir Thomas Beecham: The Man and the Music (London, 1994), 7, 16–17. In 1909 Beecham conducted the first British performances of Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers. No other woman found her way into his concert programmes.

9 In 1935 Smyth claimed that Delius was the only modern composer whose music Beecham really loved. Ethel Smyth, Beecham and Pharaoh (London, 1935), 18. Apart from Delius, Beecham was probably best known for performing music by Sibelius, Strauss and Stravinsky.

10 Thomas Russell, Philharmonic Decade (London, 1945), 147–50. Toye is better known as a music critic and writer than as a composer – his novel Diana and the Two Symphonies (London, 1913) includes a character who wants to form a Musical Association to bring together English composers and give them facilities for getting their music performed. See M. N., ‘New Fiction: “Diana and the Two Symphonies”’, Votes for Women, 21 November 1913, 111.

11 Unsigned, ‘London Concerts – Orchestral Programmes for 1933–4’, Musical Times, 74 (1933), 940. At its launch the BBC Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor was Adrian Boult, also the new musical director of the BBC. Nicholas Kenyon, The BBC Symphony Orchestra: The First Fifty Years 1930–1980 (London, 1981), 34–49.

12 Unsigned, ‘London Concerts – The British Music Festival’, Musical Times, 75 (1934), 170.

13 For a far-reaching and insightful account of these concerts, see The Proms: A New History, ed. Jenny Doctor and David Wright (London, 2007).

14 For works performed at the Proms, see the online Proms archive, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive>.

15 Howell's Lamia was performed in 1924 and 1926, her Piano Concerto in 1927 and her overture The Rock in 1928. Spain-Dunk's Idyll in C♯ minor and Romantic Piece were played in 1925, her overture The Kentish Downs in 1926 and her symphonic poem Elaine in 1927.

16 In the 1930s (as in the 1920s) numerous songs by British women, including Maude Valérie White (1855–1937) and Elizabeth Poston (1905–87), were heard. Songs and orchestral music by the French composers Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944) and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) were also programmed in the 1930s, while no less than six orchestral and chamber works by Smyth were given, some more than once.

17 See Stephen Lloyd, Sir Dan Godfrey: Champion of British Composers (London, 1995).

18 See Stephen Lloyd, Sir Dan Godfrey: Champion of British Composers (London, 1995), 173.

19 See Stephen Lloyd, Sir Dan Godfrey: Champion of British Composers (London, 1995), 197–8.

20 Jennifer Doctor has described the BBC in the mid-1930s as ‘the most important music impresario operating in Britain’. Jennifer Doctor, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 1922–1936: Shaping a Nation's Tastes (Cambridge, 1999), 332.

21 In 1931, for example, Benjamin Britten listened to works by Walton, Lambert, Holst, Warlock, Boughton and Smyth in what he called a ‘British Composers’ Night’ at the Proms (though the evening in fact included a work by Borodin). Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten, ed. Donald Mitchell, Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke, 6 vols. (London and Woodbridge, 1991–2012), i: 1923–39, 204.

22 ‘Auribus’, ‘Wireless Notes’, Musical Times, 71 (1930), 45; Kenyon, The BBC Symphony Orchestra, 72.

23 Rutland Boughton to Edward Clark, London, British Library (hereafter GB-Lbl), Add. MS 52256, fol. 74v.

24 For details of the BBC's Concerts of Contemporary Music, see Doctor, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 369–89.

25 Unsigned, Monthly Musical Record, 63 (1933), 222.

26 Iris Lemare, interview with author, York, 29 April 1988. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations by Lemare are taken from this interview.

27 In 1921, a writer in the Musical Times noted, ‘The British Music Society has inaugurated a London Contemporary Music Centre for performing – at first in private – unknown MS. and published music, in all except orchestral forms, by living British composers.’ Unsigned, ‘Miscellaneous’, Musical Times, 62 (1921), 61.

28 The 13 composers setting Joyce's poetry were George Antheil (1900–59), Bax, Bliss, Edgardo Carducci (1898–?), Bernard van Dieren (1884–1936), Goossens, Herbert Howells (1892–1983), Herbert Hughes (1882–1937), Ireland, Moeran, C. W. Orr (1893–1976), Albert Roussel (1869–1937) and Roger Sessions (1896–1985). The work was published, before the first performance, as The Joyce Book by the Sylvan Press in 1927. On The Joyce Book, see Stephen Banfield, Sensibility and English Song (Cambridge, 1985), 322–4. For the Chisholm, Darnton and Moeran concert, see Monthly Musical Record, 62 (1932), 86 and 110.

29 ‘R[ichard] C[appell]’, ‘Concerts and Opera’, Monthly Musical Record, 63 (1933), 14.

30 The original members of the Music Society String Quartet were Mangeot, Dorothy Christian, Rebecca Clarke and May Mukle. W. S. Meadmore, ‘British Performing Organizations’, Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, ed. Walter Willson Cobbett I (London, 1929), 204.

31 For programmes of The Music Society, see London, Royal College of Music, André Mangeot Collection, Box 4.

32 On W. W. Cobbett, see Marion Scott, ‘Walter Wilson Cobbett: Apostle of Chamber Music’, The Christian Science Monitor (3 March 1923), 16, and Unsigned, ‘Obituary’, Musical Times, 78 (1937), 175–6.

33 See Betsi Hodges, ‘W. W. Cobbett's Phantasy: A Legacy of Chamber Music in the British Musical Renaissance’ (DMA dissertation, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008).

34 The works were: Arnold Foster, Fantasy for Piano Quartet in One Movement (1929); Dorothy Gow, Fantasy String Quartet (1932); Helen Perkin, Phantasy String Quartet (1929); Lilian Harris, Fantasie Trio for Strings (1932); Benjamin Britten, Phantasy in F minor for String Quintet (1932); and William Alwyn, Fantasia for String Quartet no. 12 (1937). Elizabeth Maconchy's orchestral Fantasy for Children (1927) was also performed, as were several single-movement chamber works which were not given a Fantasy/Phantasy title. For details of works, composers and performers at the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts, see Appendix.

35 Chris Barstow, ‘Anne Macnaghten’, The Strad, 94/55 (December 1983), 551–2; Anne Macnaghten, interview with author, Hitchin, 16 April 1988. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations by Macnaghten below are taken from this interview.

36 Daily Express (Irish edition), April 1930, in Macnaghten archive (uncatalogued).

37 John Amis, ‘Obituary: Iris Lemare’, The Independent, 13 May 1997; Lemare, interview.

38 On Lutyens, see Elisabeth Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl (London, 1972), and Meirion and Susie Harries, A Pilgrim Soul: The Life and Work of Elisabeth Lutyens (London, 1989).

39 Macnaghten, interview; Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl, 50.

40 Lemare, interview; Unsigned, ‘A History of Rambert Dance Company’, <http://www.rambert.org.uk/images/upload/archive/History_of_Rambert_2398.pdf> (accessed 3 February 2012).

41 Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl, 51.

42 Letters from Maconchy to Williams, [n.d.] 1933 and 17 October 1933, private collection. An edition of the correspondence between the two women, edited by Jenny Doctor and Sophie Fuller, is to be published by Ashgate.

43 Doctor, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 175.

44 Doctor, The BBC and Ultra-Modern Music, 51.

45 Quoted in Barstow, ‘Anne Macnaghten’, 552.

46 Lemare, interview.

47 I have, however, used the term Macnaghten–Lemare here to refer to all six seasons, rather than just the first four.

48 The concerts started again in 1950 under the auspices of the Macnaghten New Music Group, organized by Macnaghten with an advisory committee consisting of Hadley, Lemare, Lutyens, Maconchy, Rawsthorne and Williams, with Vaughan Williams as president. In 1957 the concerts became simply the Macnaghten Concerts and continued to promote new music until they were disbanded in 1994, though Macnaghten was no longer directly involved after 1978. Macnaghten, ‘The Story of the Macnaghten Concerts’, 461; Ernest Chapman, ‘The Macnaghten Concerts’, Composer, 57 (1976), 14–18; Catherine Nelson, ‘Obituary: Anne Macnaghten’, The Guardian, 23 January 2001.

49 At the concert on 21 January 1935, four new trios were played by the Sylvan Trio. See Appendix for details of the concerts, including the performers.

50 The Macnaghten Quartet initially consisted of Macnaghten, Joan Wordsell, Violet Brough and Joan Bonner. By autumn 1932 the personnel had changed to Macnaghten, Elise Desprez, Beryl Scawen-Blunt and Mary Goodchild.

51 Maconchy to Williams, 22 October 1932 (private collection).

52 Letters from a Life, ed. Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, i, 293.

53 Letters from a Life, ed. Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, i, 296.

54 Macnaghten, interview. The three movements were published posthumously in 1983. John Evans, Philip Reed and Paul Wilson, A Britten Source Book (Aldeburgh, 1987), 22–3.

55 Maconchy is probably best known for her remarkable series of 13 string quartets, written from 1932 to 1984. Reviews of Rawsthorne's quartet (his first work to be given a public concert performance in London) included one by Marion Scott in the Musical Times: ‘A string quartet no. 1 (1932) by Alan Rawsthorne brought forward a composer whom one had never heard of, and one would now gladly meet again.’ Marion Scott, ‘London Concerts’, Musical Times, 75 (1934), 266. On early performances of Rawsthorne's music, see Gordon Greene, ‘The Pre-War Years’ in a programme for Rawsthorne's memorial concert (Wigmore Hall, 24 November 1971). Uncatalogued papers relating to Rawsthorne consulted at the British Music Information Centre, London, now part of the British Music Collection at the University of Huddersfield.

56 On Herbert, see Claire Tomalin, liner notes to Songs of Muriel Herbert, LINN: CKD 335 (2009).

57 Extract from Britten's diary, sent to Lemare by Rosamund Strode, now in ‘Letters to Iris Lemare’, GB-Lbl MS Mus. 287, fol. 117v.

58 Letters from a Life, ed. Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, i, 293. Ironically, the one time that Britten's name did appear in the programme as a performer, it seems likely that he did not appear (see Appendix).

59 Stratton was leader of the LSO from 1933 to 1952.

60 On Perkin and Ireland, see Fiona Richards, ‘“An Anthology of Friendship”: The Letters from John Ireland to Father Kenneth Thompson’, Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (Urbana, IL, 2002), 263–4; and on Perkin, see Fiona Richards, ‘Changing Identities: The Pianist and Composer Helen Perkin’, Australasian Music Research, 7 (2002), 15–30, and eadem, ‘Helen Perkin: Pianist, Composer and Muse of John Ireland’, The John Ireland Companion, ed. Lewis Foreman (Woodbridge, 2011), 132–46.

61 Quoted in Margaret Stewart, English Singer: The Life of Steuart Wilson (London, 1970), 157. Wilson may have been willing to help out for other reasons as well. Surviving letters show that he and Lemare, whom he had known since her schooldays at Bedales (where he was director of music), had been at one stage more than just close friends. See ‘Letters to Iris Lemare’, GB-Lbl MS Mus. 287, fols. 44–99. The concerts had an additional attraction for him in the shape of Mary Goodchild, the cellist of the Macnaghten Quartet from 1932, whom he married in 1937.

62 Gordon Jacob to Iris Lemare, 29 January 1932. ‘Letters to Iris Lemare’, GB-Lbl MS Mus. 287, fol. 73r.

63 Hubert Foss to Iris Lemare, 19 December 1934. ‘Letters to Iris Lemare’, GB-Lbl MS Mus. 287, fol. 49r.

64 Vaughan Williams to Darnton, asking him to help W. E. Glasspool – a student whose work was heard at the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts. Darnton Collection, GB-Lbl Add. MS 62773, fol. 283r. On Vaughan Williams as a teacher, see Jennifer Doctor, ‘“Working for her own salvation”: Vaughan Williams as Teacher of Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Ina Boyle’, Vaughan Williams in Perspective: Studies of an English Composer, ed. Lewis Foreman (Colchester, 1998), 181–201.

65 Quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London, 1992), 47.

66 Vaughan Williams to Iris Lemare, postmarked 15 December 1933. Macnaghten Concerts Collection, GB-Lbl Add. MS 59814, fols. 44–46. It is surprising that no music by Boyle, a Vaughan Williams student and close friend of Maconchy, was programmed at the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts. On Boyle, see Elizabeth Maconchy, Ina Boyle: An Appreciation (Dublin, 1974).

67 Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl, 51.

68 Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl, 55.

69 Vaughan Williams on Music, ed. Manning, 69. The way in which a concert series focusing on British music, such as the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts, can play a part in constructing a sense of national musical identity would be an interesting avenue for further investigation.

70 On Maconchy, see Hugo Cole and Jennifer Doctor, ‘Maconchy, Dame Elizabeth’, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed 3 February 2012). Maconchy had 11 works performed at the concerts, followed by Britten with eight and Lutyens with six.

71 As well as studying at the RCM, H. K. Andrews received doctorates from Trinity College, Dublin and New College, Oxford. He was the author of books such as An Introduction to the Technique of Palestrina (London, 1958) and The Technique of Byrd's Vocal Polyphony (London, 1966). His papers, including music manuscripts, are held by the RCM.

72 Oliver Gotch was almost certainly the son of Rosamund Gotch (1864–1949), who designed costumes for the RCM. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, Papers of the Horsley Family (18th–20th cent.), MSS Eng. c. 2255, d. 2093, e. 2290–4. Iris Lemare remembered: ‘I think he was a painter who wrote music. Mrs Gotch – his mother, his sister? – was the wardrobe mistress at the College of Music, Mary Gotch.’

73 Harris studied at the RCM from September 1919 to July 1933, a total of more than 13 years!

74 On Joseph, student and amanuensis of Gustav Holst, see Alan Gibbs, ‘The Music of Jane Joseph’, Tempo, new series, 209 (1999), 14–18.

75 Somers Cocks studied at the RCM between September 1926 and July 1928, and between November 1928 and April 1932. In 1947 he received an ARCM (composition). In 1953 he became the Eighth Lord Somers, Baron of Evesham, and between 1967 and 1977 he was a professor of theory and composition at the RCM. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edn, ed. Charles Mosley, 3 vols. (Wilmington, DE, 2003), iii, 3676.

76 Born in India, Sykes was an organ scholar at Oxford before studying at the RCM with Vaughan Williams. In 1936 he joined the staff of Kingswood School in Bath, where he stayed for the rest of his life. See the John Sykes Project website, <http://www.jasykes.talktalk.net> (accessed 4 February 2012).

77 Over the last 20 years there has been some renewed interest in their lives and music, though currently each has only one work available on CD: Darnton's Concertino in C major for Piano and String Orchestra (1948) and Gow's Oboe Quintet in One Movement (1936). British Piano Concertos, Naxos 8.557290 (2005); An English Renaissance: Music for Oboe and Strings Inspired by Leon Goossens, Oboe Classics, CC2009 (2004).

78 On Darnton, see Andrew Plant, ‘The Life and Music of Philip Christian Darnton’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2002).

79 Cuttings from Musical Times, December 1926; Musical Opinion, January 1927; Musical Standard, 4 December 1926, in Darnton Collection, GB-Lbl Add. MS 62773.

80 Christian Darnton, You and Music (rev. edn, Harmondsworth, 1945), 9.

81 See BBC Written Archives Centre: ‘Composer Darnton, Christian File 1 1929–1939’.

82 Darnton Collection, GB-Lbl Add. MS 62773, fol. 173r.

83 Anne Macnaghten, ‘Obituary: Dorothy Gow’, RCM Magazine, 79 (1982), 61. On Gow, see also John France, ‘Dorothy Gow’, The Maud Powell Signature, Women in Music, 2/ii (June 2008), <http://www.maudpowell.org/signature/Portals/0/pdfs/signature/Signature_June_2008_issue.pdf> (accessed 27 May 2013), 87–9.

84 This is presumably the same work that was performed at a Macnaghten–Lemare concert on 26 February 1934. See Appendix below.

85 Vaughan Williams to Gow, 12 January 1958, private collection.

86 Lutyens to Gow, 20 July 1971, private collection. Gow's surviving manuscript scores can be found at GB-Lbl Add. MSS 63000–63007.

87 Lutyens, A Goldfish Bowl, 52.

88 Daily Sketch, undated cutting in Darnton Collection, GB-Lbl Add. MS 62773.

89 Carpenter, Benjamin Britten, 48.

90 Unsigned, ‘London Concerts – Lemare Concert’, Musical Times, 77 (1936), 71.

91 Daily Telegraph, 15 December 1931.

92 On women's position as musicians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Marion Scott, ‘British Women as Instrumentalists’, Music Student, 10/9 (May 1918), 337, and Sophie Fuller, ‘Women Composers during the British Musical Renaissance, 1880–1914’, Chapter 2 of ‘Women as Musicians’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1998), 43–80.

93 At a concert in June 1897, a reviewer for the Musical Times noted that the Westminster Orchestral Society consisted of 60 executants including ‘more than a dozen ladies’; see Musical Times, 38 (1897), 463. On the various Viennese ladies’ orchestras touring Europe and the USA in the 1870s, see Margaret Myers, Blowing her Own Trumpet: European Ladies’ Orchestras and Other Women Musicians 1870–1950 in Sweden (Gothenburg, 1993), 147–9, and Jan Bell Groh, Evening the Score: Women in Music and the Legacy of Frederique Petrides (Fayetteville, AR, 1991), 66–7; on Moberley's Orchestra, see Percy Scholes, The Mirror of Music, ii, 732, and Musical Times, 33 (1892), 346; on Lady Radnor's String Band, see Helen Pleydell-Bouverie, Countess-Dowager of Radnor, From a Great-Grandmother's Armchair (London, 1927), 43.

94 On Hunt's bands, see Women's Penny Paper (25 October 1890), 7; on Watson, see Paula Gillett, Musical Women in England, 1870–1914 (Basingstoke, 2000), 60–2.

95 Burrows conducted the orchestra from 1933 to 1935. Groh, Evening the Score, 58.

96 British Pathé, The British Women's Symphony Orchestra, <http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-british-womens-symphony-orchestra> (accessed 14 February 2012).

97 Marion Scott, ‘Gwynne Kimpton: A British Woman Conductor’, Christian Science Monitor (24 June 1924), repr. in The Maud Powell Signature: Women in Music, 2/iii (autumn 2008), <http://www.maudpowell.org/signature/Portals/0/pdfs/signature/Signature_Autumn_2008.pdf> (accessed 27 May 2013), 10.

98 Lemare's oboists were Sylvia Spencer, Elizabeth Kitson, Margaret Eliot and on one occasion a Hilary Tayler, who was probably male. The only time a female flautist – Ursula Waterhouse – played was in the first orchestral concert, 28 January 1932.

99 Unsigned, ‘Ladies Chamber Orchestra’, The Times, 30 January 1932, 8.

100 On Marshall, born Florence Thomas, and usually known as Mrs Julian Marshall, see Musical World, 64 (5 June 1886), 366. In 1881 she had played the piano for the first concert given by the Dundee Ladies’ Orchestra. Musical Times, 23 (1882), 82.

101 Donald Brook, Conductor's Gallery (London, 1947), 116.

102 Donald Brook, Conductor's Gallery (London, 1947), 118.

103 Lemare, interview.

104 The other members of Shinner's quartet were Cecilia Gates, Florence Hemmings and a Miss Holiday. Monthly Musical Record, May 1887, 115. See also Marion Scott and Katharine Eggar, ‘Women's Doings in Chamber Music, III: Women in the String Quartet’, Chamber Music (supplement to the Music Student), 3 (October 1913), 12.

105 Marion Scott and Katharine Eggar, ‘Women's Doings in Chamber Music, III: Women in the String Quartet’, Chamber Music (supplement to the Music Student), 3 (October 1913), 13–14. The Clench Quartet disbanded sometime before 1913, when Stone entered a convent. They had made a feature of premièring music new to Britain, including Debussy's String Quartet. The Lucas Quartet played at the RCM in 1930 (Royal College of Music Magazine, 27 (1931), 33).

106 See Royal College of Music Magazine, 25 (1929), 78; The Times, 4 December 1931, 12.

107 Liane Curtis, ‘“Moments of Being”: Rebecca Clarke and Friends’, paper read at British Musicology Conference, King's College, London (April 1996).

108 Unsigned, Glasgow Herald, 4 February 1935 (Lemare archive).

109 William McNaught, Evening News, 5 February 1935 (Lemare archive).

110 Constant Lambert, Sunday Referee, 10 February 1935 (Lemare archive).

111 An interesting comparison can be made with the music by women heard at the Macnaghten Concerts when they were restarted in the 1950s. In the brochure for the first season of four concerts in 1950 and 1951, for example, only one woman (Gow) is included among the 11 contemporary composers.

112 See, for example, Jennifer Doctor, ‘Intersecting Circles: The Early Careers of Elizabeth Maconchy, Elisabeth Lutyens, and Grace Williams’, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2 (1998), 90–109 (p. 92).

113 Barstow, ‘Anne Macnaghten’, 553.

114 On Scott, see Pamela Blevins, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty (Woodbridge, 2008). In an interesting foreshadowing of the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts, Scott had formed a string quartet and started a concert series in 1908 with the aim of promoting new British music. Works by various contemporary composers were programmed, alongside early music by composers such as Arne and Purcell. It is perhaps not surprising that as a critic for the Musical Times, Scott was always very enthusiastic about the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts.

115 Programme for First Public Concert of Members’ Works, 25 January 1912. RCM, SWM archive.

116 Dunhill (1877–1946) was the first male associate and in 1915 devoted one of his chamber-music concerts to works by members of the SWM (Katharine Eggar, Liza Lehmann, Marion Scott and Ethel Bilsland). Musical Times, 56 (1915), 231. In 1918 Cobbett donated the Cobbett Free Library of Chamber Music to the Society. See Percy Scholes, ‘The Society of Women Musicians: A Model for Men’, Music Student, 10 (1918), 335.

117 Society of Women Musicians, First Annual Report 1911–1912. RCM, SWM archive. By 1913 the Society had also formed an orchestra, which collaborated with Richard Terry on a series of performances of the ‘lesser-known works of Bach at popular prices’. Musical Times, 54 (1913), 444. The SWM dissolved in February 1972.

118 Maconchy to Williams, 15 June 1933 (private collection).

119 See, for example, Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women: 1850–1920 (London, 1985).

120 Lucie Heaton Armstrong, ‘What Can our Daughters Do for a Living?: Music as a Profession’, Women's Signal, 7 (26 August 1897), 138–9.

121 On women's support systems, see also Cyrilla Barr, ‘Rebecca Clarke's One Brief Whiff of Fame’, Rebecca Clarke: Essays on a Life in Music, ed. Liane Curtis (forthcoming), 25–69.

122 An interesting comparison can be made with the Adolph Hallis concerts. A chamber-music series started in 1936, promoting new work that was programmed with early music; it was doubtless directly inspired by the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts, in which Hallis had taken part. The Hallis concerts – in contrast to the Macnaghten–Lemare concerts – were organized with a committee structure. Chaired by Hallis, the original committee included Britten, Darnton, Rawsthorne and just one woman, the singer Sophie Wyss. For programmes, see GB-Lbl Darnton Collection, Add. MS 62773 B, vol. LVII.

123 Lemare, interview; see also BBC WAC File Title/Number: Lemare Iris RCONT 1.

124 Iris Lemare to R. S. Thatcher, 23 July 1941 (BBC WAC: Lemare Iris RCONT 1).

125 A.D.W. internal BBC memo, 5 November 1937 (BBC WAC: Personal File Artist Macnaghten Concerts 1937–62).

126 R. S. Thatcher to Anne Macnaghten, 29 June 1939 (BBC WAC: Personal File Artist Macnaghten Concerts 1937–62).

127 Macnaghten re-formed her quartet in 1947 (with the cellist Arnold Ashby, who became her second husband), continuing to promote new music through the New Macnaghten Group and the Macnaghten Concerts, as well as branching out into educational work. Barstow, ‘Anne Macnaghten’, 553–4; Nelson, ‘Obituary’.

128 Rhiannon Mathias, Lutyens, Maconchy, Williams and Twentieth-Century British Music: A Blast Trio of Sirens (Aldershot, 2012), 65.

129 Internal Memo, 7 October 1941 (BBC WAC: Grace Williams Music–Composer File 1a 1939–1949).

130 Grace Williams to Kenneth Wright, not dated, but received 31 December 1943 (BBC WAC: Grace Williams Music–Composer File 1a 1939–1949).

131 Marion Scott, ‘London Concerts: Macnaghten–Lemare Concerts’, Musical Times, 76 (1935), 170.

132 Ethel Smyth is reported to have said: ‘I have floating in my mind a theory of women in orchestras a little founded on a saying of Leibniz: “Women know all the things men can never learn” i.e. that their contribution to art, to literature, to politics or anything they are allowed to practice without restraint, is different.’ Quoted in Reginald Pound, Sir Henry Wood: A Biography (London, 1969), 231.

d The works by Britten and Bruckner in this concert were conducted by Reginald Goodall with Bax's Mater ora filium conducted by Iris Lemare. See annotations on copy of programme at the British Library.