Records of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society

Identifier(s): MS 13266

Collection

Ask a librarian

Scope and Content

Comprises guard books, containing programmes, critiques, reports, rules of the Society and ephemera, 1853-1946; a minute book, 8 Oct. 1853-2 Jan. 1856, containing membership, attendance and financial records; George Peake’s Melbourne Philharmonic Society : Diamond Jubilee, 1853-1913 : historical souvenir. Melbourne : Peacock, [1913]; a draft, research notes, correspondence and reviews concerning W.A. Carne’s A century of harmony : the official centenary history of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society. Melbourne : The Society, 1954; an index to artists and works; manuscript scores and an album of arrangements by Charles Edward Horsley, ca. 1860s-1870; printed scores, 1809 and undated; an illuminated address presented to John Hudson Marsden, 28 Jan. 1879; Memorandum of association, articles of association, and by-laws, 1925; programmes; badges; and printed ephemera.

Dates

Creation: 1809-1946

Creator

Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society (Organization)

Restrictions

Available for reference.

Biographical Information

The Melbourne Philharmonic Society, now the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, was founded in 1853 and is still active. W.A. Carne described it in 1954 as ‘the oldest choral body in the British Commonwealth of Nations with continuous public performance’. Charles Edward Horsley was born in London in 1822 and came to Melbourne in 1861. He was the Society’s Conductor from 1862 to 1865. In 1870, the Mayor of Melbourne commissioned him to compose a cantata to a poem by Henry Kendall: Euterpe was performed at the opening of the new Melbourne Town Hall in August that year. Horsley returned to England in 1871, moved to New York in 1873, and died there in 1876.