Our first meeting in this new season will be at 7.30 on Monday 28th September 2026, when we shall be very pleased to welcome Roy Bexon of Salisbury MusicSociety who will present “My life and music”.
For existing members of the Society at this meeting our annual membership fee of £25 will be due. This is unchanged from last year. It will be gratefully received in cash or by cheque payable to SRMS. We regret cannot accept payment by card. For visitors it will be £5.
The programme is available on our previous post and hard copies are in Salisbury, Wilton and Amesbury libraries and in the Tourism Office in Butcher Row. If members who live elsewhere know of other places to display them, space copies will be available on Monday.
Last year was a great success and we were pleased to welcome some new members. This year’s programme is equally interesting …
We are pleased to publish our programme for the new season which contains lots of interest for listeners to classical music. The printed version will be in the Library and in the Tourism Centre in Salisbury soon.
You can see it is an interesting programme with a wide variety of topics and speakers on a diverse range of themes. We have a large screen in the room so we can display visual material as well.
Copies of the programme are in the TIC, Salisbury, and the libraries in Wilton, Amesbury and Salisbury.
At £5 – less if you sign up for the whole season – it is a good value evening. We kick off on 28th so we may see you there …
The chair of the Society, Peter Horwood, has written a brief review of the 2025/26 season just ended. He says “the Society continued to offer its members and visitors a hugely varied and entertaining programme across its fourteen evenings. Spanning centuries and genres, subjects included the music and life of Delius, Gordon Jacob, Eric Satie and Alan Hovhaness. Themed evenings including a mixed selection of music for wind ensemble, a fascinating lecture on Black musicians in England 1500-1800 and the music they played, and an interesting evening on Iberian music. The latter provided a reminder of the fine, but unaccountably neglected music of the Portuguese composer, Jolly Braga Santos.
“A particularly memorable evening was provided by professional cellist Catherine Wilmers, who along with her selection of recorded music themed on cello and piano music by British women composers, took up her cello and played some memorable encores. Catherine’s career included playing with several leading London orchestras and the Society was privileged to be visited by such a talented artist.
“In addition, the Society held two members evenings where members were encouraged to bring along music to share and relate what they found particularly appealing about their chosen pieces.
“Another highlight from the season included an intriguing presentation titled ‘Murder, Mishap and Misfortune’ that related, with musical examples, the strange and unexpected deaths of lesser-known composers. Bizarrely this apparently grisly subject offered some moments of great amusement!”
New season
The programme for the new season is all but complete with just a few text additions waiting finalising. It kicks off on Monday 28th September. It has a diverse range of presentations on music for brass, Steve Reich, 21st Century music, Schubert and much else. The addition of a screen in the Guide’s Centre means presentations can include visual material which adds interest and background.
We look forward to seeing you again in the Autumn.
Members’ evenings always bring surprises. It is an opportunity for them to bring for the delectation of others, something that appeals to them or they have discovered recently. They are always eclectic and never with any kind of theme unlike say, a concert where the organisers try to focus on a composer say. Which sort of makes such evenings a strength because no one of knows what the others are going to bring. It is if you will, a kind of musical tapas the only difference being it’s all brought to you and you don’t have to chose.
But enough, what did we hear you ask? We started with Brahm’s second cello sonata in F, a kind of introduction to the evening. Following was a surprise and that was a quartet for saxophones by Jean Francaix (in French) where you will read he had an illustrious career and was encouraged by Ravel. The saxophone does not get much of an airing in classical music – a pity for such versatile family of instruments.
Well, we then had an addition to our evenings in the form of a DVD and a recording of Begin the Beguine performed by Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell. This Cole Porter song did not get much attention until Artie Shaw recorded a few years later on the B side of a record whereupon it shot to fame and was a huge success for him. Shaw met Porter and words were exchanged apparently because Porter rather resented his success with the number. The film performance was great to see with amazing dancing to go with the music.
We were introduced to the music of Lassana Diabaté a musician from Guinea in Africa in a performance of Sunjata’s Time for string quartet, a quite unusual piece.
Something more traditional but meaningful for the presenter was the third movement from Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major K 370. The concerto (for that effectively what it is) is significant as one of his first major works having left Salzburg in 1781 and started to make his mark in Vienna.
Next was a leap to the American composer Philip Glass and the third movement of his Violin Concerto composed in 1987 and is typical of this composer with its repeated themes and modulation.
Film music doesn’t always get the attention it deserves with three examples from the Italian Job, Once Upon the Time in the West and Where Eagles Dare. It is a creation of the twentieth century with the invention of the cinema and eventually the ‘talkies. Composers have to match the music to the action although in some cases the film is edited around the music.
A wonderful film of a Chaconne from Partita No 2 BWV 1004 followed performed by Nathan Milstein. Although of some vintage, it was outstanding and a reminder of his greatness as a performer. We remarked on how young the audience was when the camera panned back. Would such a performance today attract such an audience …?
We finished with extracts from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s best know work Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. Born in London of West African descent he was nicknamed the ‘African Mahler’ in America but has nowadays largely disappeared. He died young aged 37 and was encouraged in his brief career by Elgar among others.
An enjoyable and informative evening. Eclectic or what?
Our next meeting will be at 7.30pm on Monday 3rd November 2025. It will commence with a short Annual General Meeting followed by our Members’ Evening. For this Robin now has almost sufficient pieces for what should be a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Any last minute ideas for possible inclusion if there is time to Robin please.
Following this on 17th November we will have a presentation entitled: “Seventh Son” An appreciation of the work of Gordon Jacob. Written and presented by Geoff Ogram
On 1st December at our final session before Christmas, David Davies will present some Classical Music Signature Tunes. To help him prepare for this, David has asked me to forward the following to members:
“The meeting on December 1 is entitled ‘Are you sitting comfortably? These words began Listen with Mother at 1.45 every weekday on the BBC Light Programme from January 1950 and on into the 60s. And every programme ended with the Berceuse from Faure’s Le Jardin de Dolly suite for piano duet. The words and the tune are still remembered fondly by a whole generation.
“But what else in radio and television (including adverts) has used classical music as a signature tune? We shall have a not-too-serious discussion on this topic, and I would appreciate your letting me know your suggestions.
You can email me at davidracheld@gmail.com Thank you. David Davies“
We hope you will be able to join us at these sessions.
The new starts on Monday 22nd at 7:30 with a presentation called intriguingly Murder, Mishap and Misfortune by Alan Forshaw. Alan’s presentations are always good value and show a deep knowledge of the subject and will no doubt contain some surprises.
The full programme is available and copies can be picked up in the Library (immediately to the right when you go in), the Tourist Information Centre in Fish Row or a pdf can be seen via this link.
If you want to try us out then the first visit is free and full season’s membership (14 evenings) for a mere £25.
We are delighted to attach the programme for the forthcoming season starting on Monday 22 September at 7:30. You can see there is lots to interest with presentations of more familiar composers together with the less well-known. The strange but amazing music of Eric Satie has an outing and also Delius, a composer we have not featured for many years.
There are evenings on American music as well as from Iberia. Indeed, there is considerable variety in the programme. There are two members’ evenings where members bring along one or two of their favourites. The evenings are open to all we should add.
The Society is keen to explore some of the hidden corners of the repertoire, including pieces seldom heard in the concert hall.
The programmes have been printed and if you like a paper version, they will shortly (next week) be in the Library and in the Tourism Information Centre. If you want to give us a try your first visit is free.
A music festival is coming to Salisbury between 3rd and 5th October. It claims that in the eighteenth century, annual three-day festivals were common in Salisbury to great acclaim. They hope to bring together local musicians and visiting professionals to provide a range of concerts. Details can be found on their website.
Final meeting focused on this somewhat forgotten English composer
May 2025
This was the last evening of the current season and we were delighted to welcome Michael Jones who enlightened us about the life and work of this somewhat forgotten English composer. Michael is an accomplished musician in his own right with a number of recordings to his name as well as his special interest in Bainton (pictured). He is developing a website which should be completed soon.
Well, you might not recognise the name but you will recognise one of his pieces And I Saw a New Heaven which was performed at Grenfell Tower memorial and at the Hillsborough memorial. First some history. His father was a Congregational minister who later moved with his family to Coventry. His musical abilities at the piano were noticed early and he made his first public appearance as solo pianist age 9, and at 16 he won an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music to study piano with Franklin Taylor and theory with Walford Davies. In 1899 he won a Scholarship to study composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, and thus became one of the rising generation of British composers destined to contribute extensively to the English Musical Renaissance.
In 1901 he was appointed piano professor to the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Conservatory of Music, and after over thirty years of service emigrated to Australia to take up the Directorship of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I should add at this point that the above biography was accompanied with photos, images of his original scores and programmes which amply displayed Michael’s erudition and scholarship. Many items were not the sort of thing you could turn up with a quick Google* search.
He composed pieces in most of the main genres. We heard for example, a tone poem Pompilia; part of The Blessed Damozel; a lovely song Slow, Slow Fresh Fount; and part of a ‘cello sonata.
To demonstrate his diversity we also heard extracts from his second Symphony, an early and most accomplished Fugue, a Viola Sonata and a movement from a String Quartet. Michael finished with a second extract from Prometheus.
This surely has to be a composer who deserves more attention. It is strange how some composers – and most artists I suppose – seem to drift out of fashion and then suddenly their time comes again. We shall see.
We were most grateful for Michael’s presentation delivered with a great deal of enthusiasm and as I say, erudition. His photos illustrated life at the beginning of the last Century.
This was the last evening of the current season and it has been another successful year. We have been pleased to welcome some new faces. A feature has been several evenings exploring the works of composers whose work – like that of Bainton – have been overlooked or who have gone out of fashion. We’ve had music from Scotland, Wales and England as well as Poland and France.
Peter Howard, our chair, thanked all those who have come and supported us during the year and promised next year’s programme will be just as good. We start again in September. A printed programme will be in Salisbury and Amesbury libraries in September and in the Tourism Information Office as well as here on line.
If you want to widen your interest in music keep and eye out here and on Facebook. We look forward to seeing you.
