In 1933 at the height of the Great Depression there was concern about how the economy was affecting professional musicians. Amateur choirs, orchestras and music clubs were struggling to promote concerts and even to survive, and, as a result, they were offering fewer engagements to professional artists. A group of influential musicians decided to create Regional Federations of Music Societies to help amateur choirs and orchestras to exchange information and music, avoid clashes of concert dates and arrange professional artist tours in order to make their events more financially viable. By the end of 1934 there were 11 federations representing 486 societies.
The NFMS and The Carnegie UK Trust
Making Music, The National Federation of Music Societies (NFMS) was founded in York on 23 February 1935 with the support of The Carnegie UK Trust and at the instigation of Frederick Woodhouse of the Incorporated Society of Musicians and Sir George Dyson (1883-1964), the first Chairman and President. A year after its constitution, the organisation was brought before the public eye at its first conference by Sir Thomas Beecham's scathing attack on the BBC in his speech addressing 900 delegates from 300 member societies.
Distributing funds
The NFMS historically distributed public funding to music societies. It began distributing those of The Carnegie UK Trust in 1935 and when CEMA (The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) was created, it invited the NFMS to allocate funds to larger performing societies and music clubs who were not eligible for support from Carnegie. When CEMA became the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1945, this role continued. We stopped administering national funds to amateur music groups in England in 1984, but continued to distribute funds in two regions as provided by Regional Arts Boards. We have continued to distribute funds provided by the Scottish Arts Council for choral and orchestral societies until the present day.
Celebratory concerts
As well as supporting its member organisations at a local level, Making Music has always maintained an important national presence through lobbying and national events. In 1943, we produced twelve 'People's Concerts' and a few years later, took part in the Festival of Britain celebrations at the Royal Festival Hall. In 1977, massed choirs were organised to perform a Te Deum in honour of the Queen's Silver Jubilee in the Royal Albert Hall.
Largest community development project
In 1993 Making Music teamed up with BT to undertake Making More of Music, a project which enabled 10,000 representatives of member societies to attend training opportunities across the country over of three years. Making Music worked again in partnership with BT on the community development project, The Music Experience, funded by The National Lottery through The Arts Council of England and publicly launched in September 1998. This was the largest project ever undertaken in the voluntary arts sector in this country.
NFMS to Making Music
In 2000, the National Federation of Music Societies (NFMS) took the decision to change its working title to Making Music, to reflect the new inclusivity and breadth of membership that was becoming so important. Since then membership has continued to grow rapidly, and now includes a very wide range of musical groups and genres, from choirs, orchestras and music clubs to steel bands, samba groups and festivals.
For a full article on the history of Making Music, please see 75 years of Making Music in Highnotes, September 2010, Issue 14.
Since 1935, we have:
- provided support and advice to more than 4,000 music groups in the UK
- helped set up more than 600 voluntary music groups in the UK
- supported our members to put on over 500,000 concerts to audiences of around 60 million people
- provided hundreds of training and development opportunities for our members
- helped our members access over £7 million of funding
- helped our members reach huge audiences through broadcasts on national radio
- supported around 400 young concert artists at the start of their careers through such programmes as our Award for Young Concert Artists, Solo Singers' Platform in Yorkshire and the Concert Promoters' Network
Making Music for Everyone
Today we support a wonderfully diverse range of voluntary music groups including choirs, samba groups, barbershop groups, handbell ringers, festivals, steel pan groups, orchestras and many more. We are proud to say that over 25% of our members are now rooted outside the classical music genre.
