Making Music celebrates 90th anniversary

Alison Reeves, Deputy CEO and Manager in Scotland, talks about the 90th anniversary of the National Federation of Music Societies (now known as Making Music), the reason this organisation was needed and how we have championed leisure-time music from the start.

In the 100 years previous to the emergence of the National Federation of Music Societies (NFMS), music-making and concert going became a hugely popular leisure activity. Increased incomes and leisure-time enabled more and more people to take part and from the 1820s, groups began to organise and formalise into societies. Train travel enabled festivals and competitions, and professional musicians to tour. The standard was high, concerts were packed and professionals made careers out of writing and performing for societies. 

But during the economic depression of the 1930s, societies began to struggle - which meant less appointments for the professionals they employed. This was of great concern to the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) and professionals such as Sir George Dyson, a composer for and conductor of choral societies. Dyson brokered a relationship between ISM and the Carnegie UK Trust to establish a structure that could provide financial support for societies to mount concerts and employ professionals.  

The NFMS was founded in York on 23 February 1935 with Frederick Woodhouse from ISM and Dyson as founders. A grant of £30,000 (£1.8M today) was given by the Carnegie UK Trust and societies joined from across the UK to apply for the scheme; a financial guarantee of up to '75% of the estimated loss on a season's concerts'. The original trustees wrangled over membership regulations including 'amateur status, local constitutions, responsible officers, audited accounts'. Some members on the first ledger remain members today including Penzance Choral Society, Ludlow Music Society, Northumberland Orchestral Society and Ayr Choral Union. 

The first conference brought together over 900 delegates from 300 societies. The event is best remembered for conductor Sir Thomas Beecham’s attack on the BBC. Some saw broadcasting as a great threat to live classical music and complaints were made about programming, cuts and rearrangements, and the London-centric concert selection. Dyson gave the threat of 'mechanised music' generally as one of the reasons for establishing the NFMS.  

The Carnegie Trust continued to fund societies through NFMS for 15 years. Following World War II, The Arts Council was formed. They quickly realised the importance of the amateur sector and took over the subsidising of societies through the NFMS in 1951. Dyson wrote in 1960 that the Federation was now 'an integral and permanent feature of our social and artistic musical life'.

Dyson’s work to establish the NFMS was driven by an understanding of the great value of music societies to the country which remains true today. In a 1936 account he said: 'These choral and orchestral societies are the backbone of our music. They stimulate teaching, employ the profession, encourage the amateur and educate the public. When they flourish, music flourishes; when they languish, so much music goes. And there is no substitute for them.'

Find out more about our history