The Federation of Recorded Music Societies

"The oldest society that we've got was formed in the 1890s, in Kings Lynn," says Tony Baines, Secretary of the Federation of Recorded Music Societies (FRMS). No one can explain why Kings Lynn in particular was so progressive, though one can easily understand why, in those far off days, music lovers would meet to listen to recordings. Few alternatives existed. To enjoy music at home one could perhaps buy a musical box or a pianola, learn an instrument or buy a gramophone. No wonder that most middle-class Victorian families possessed a piano. In 1898, cylinder recordings sold for the equivalent of £61 today. Because of such cost they were not for everyone. Belonging to a recorded music society made sense. The FRMS website tells us that early Society meetings concentrated on the rival merits of particular sound-reproducing systems, a preoccupation that endured until the mid-1920s, when electrical recording arrived.

More difficult to understand is why such societies continued to increase in popularity over the next half-century. But they did, and the ascendancy was reflected in increasing membership of the FRMS. "We have a couple of other societies that go back to 1918," says Baines. "There's one called the City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society, founded about 1918. The high point of membership came in the years after the Second World War. In the 1950s, the number of societies shot up to 350 or 360, but it has steadily dropped since then. It's still dropping gradually, though occasionally a new society is formed." Currently there are 215 societies in the Federation.

The fundamental reason for the existence of the FRMS is to legalise the operation of recorded music societies, to provide the cheapest possible licensing fee from the Performing Right Society (PRS) and the Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). Playing commercially issued recordings in public - as opposed to a strictly domestic environment - requires permission. Affiliation to the FRMS includes a blanket licence. "We negotiate global contracts with the PRS and the PPL, then apportion them to our member societies according to their numbers of membership," explains Baines, a 72-year old retired primary-school head teacher. "We are currently clarifying the position on the public performance of videos and DVDs. We have also negotiated Public Liability Insurance at a very competitive premium." As well as being the Secretary of the FRMS, Baines is also a member of the Stoke on Trent Society. "Formed in 1944," he says. Like the mystery of why this all began in King's Lynn, this timing poses another unanswered question, as several societies were formed in the post-war years.

Edward Greenfield, former Guardian music critic and joint author of the Penguin Guide to CDs, is the current FRMS President. "He has been a tremendous help in getting interesting speakers to address the annual music weekend, held in Daventry in recent years," says Baines. "Last year Dame Joan Sutherland gave us a talk, so we do get some high profile speakers. Not only singers, but conductors and pianists. There are also regional events, which are mini versions of the music weekend."

Bulletin is the FRMS's magazine, published twice a year. First published in 1936, Bulletin celebrates its 70th anniversary this year - as does the FRMS itself. The magazine's contents include articles on music and musicians, and reviews of Books, CDs and DVDs, with news items relating to the Federation and the constituent societies, plus an exchange of readers' letters.

"We are interested in making the movement more widely known," says Baines. "My next door neighbours don't even know that such a movement exists! We think that there are more people out there who would be interested in the movement if only they knew about it.

"A typical society is a group of people dedicated to listening to music together. Generally that's classical music in various broad aspects, but also sometimes jazz, sometimes musicals. In fact, one or two of our societies are jazz societies. The numbers of members in a particular society vary from perhaps a dozen to over a hundred. There are one or two nationwide societies, such as The Elgar Society, The Delius Society and The Wagner Society, which perhaps have got a couple of hundred members each. Every society is entirely self-supporting. We don't govern them, each one governs itself. They provide a fortnightly, or in some case weekly, programme of music. Sometimes the programme will have been put together by one of their own members, sometimes it will have been a visitor from another Society, and sometimes it will have been a professional musician of some kind. Usually a Society owns its own equipment, which it can insure through us. We have favourable rates for insuring equipment. And so each self-supporting group gets on happily with its business of sharing the experience of listening to music."

"What we find these days is that it's generally the older generation that pursues this particular hobby. We get new members, but they are mostly retired people, those with more leisure. I think that the movement is gradually diminishing, but it's strong enough to survive for many years yet. It's certainly nowhere near expiring.

"Most of the subscribers of articles and letters to the magazine are members. The Federation has a technical officer, Philip Ashton, who gives advice on equipment. "As yet, music DVDs are not very widespread, though the format is on the way in. Of course, there are still recordings of the great musical works that are not on any kind of videos, which will continue to be popular for a long time," says Baines. Asked about the attitude towards contemporary music, Baines is frank: "I don't want to give the impression that we're not a progressive movement, but there's not a great following for the ultra-modern music, in my experience."

Naturally, such societies change and evolve. "My local society has become more involved with opera than it was before. I think people are more knowledgeable about the great modern artists now, more knowledgeable about who are the great singers, the great pianists and the great violinists, because of their exposure in concerts and on television," he says. I ask him about very early recordings, particularly whether there are any members or societies devoted to music pre-First-World-War, which was recorded on cylinders. "I don't know of any, though you'd certainly find individuals who are interested in that. But I don't know of any society that exists to 'perform' it."

Visit the Federation of Recorded Music Societies Website

Well, now there exists an easy way to enjoy these very early recordings. A new and wonderful use of the web allows us to hear performances from the very beginning of recorded sound. For this you need no equipment other than a PC connected to the internet. An American site now offers downloads of 170 items from a collection of 6,000 cylinders from circa 1890-1929, available free as digital sound files.

The University of California Santa Barbara Library collection operates a website that offers the entire gamut of musical styles and performers of the cylinder era, including early pop songs, instrumental pieces, opera arias, speeches and even performances on the musical spoons. Surprisingly, there seems to be little in the way of early jazz. For the most part, jazz was simply not recorded in the first place rather than not being offered on this website, though cakewalks and rags were recorded, together with a considerable amount of expert banjo playing.

Some of the most popular recordings were comedy and vaudeville routines. Dialect recordings are plentiful, often being negative portrayals of the Irish and African-Americans. Most early cylinders had a spoken announcement at the beginning with the name of the piece, performer and company. Because microphones were not in widespread use until 1924, the year that electrical recording arrived, most cylinders are acoustic recordings, for which performers sang, bellowed, shouted or played into a recording horn, not a microphone. Because of this process, loud instruments recorded well, softer instruments didn't.

The name of Edison is prominent in this collection. Originally,Thomas Edison saw sound recording as a tool for office dictation rather than entertainment. His first cylinder recording was made in 1877, on tinfoil. The cylinder boom started in 1897, when 500,000 cylinders were produced, but Edison cylinders were not mass produced by moulding until 1901. The last commercially produced cylinders were made in July 1929. Concert cylinders intended for public performance, where more volume was needed, were larger, being 5" in diameter.

According to the site, except for Edison cylinders and discs, most early sound recordings will remain protected by a variety of laws and not enter the public domain until 2067. So if you wish to hear a Medley of Straight Jigs from 1911, Flanagan's Troubles in a Restaurant from 1907, an excerpt from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor or Come Josephine in my Flying Machine, the big hit of 1911, for the time being this is your best opportunity to enjoy a fascinating collection.

Visit the Cylinder Recording Library