Chamber Music Societies – a living heritage practice

Chamber Music Societies are part of our living heritage - and they deserve to be included in the Living Heritage inventory.

What is a Chamber Music Society?

Chamber Music Societies (CMS) are set up and run by a group of volunteers, and programme and organise chamber music concerts featuring professional musicians or aspiring professionals (e.g. students) who are mostly chamber music soloists and small ensembles, with an average 22 professionals engaged by each CMS annually. There are an estimated 700+ CMS in the UK.

The repertoire presented is mostly classical and contemporary classical music, also sometimes featuring light classical, early music, jazz and other genres; or specially commissioned new music, e.g. see Rhyl Music Club’s commission of three pieces from female composers reflecting on Beethoven’s work or regular commissions at Grayshott Concerts.

CMS are generally rooted in their local area, bringing live music on to the doorstep of their communities, making quality musical experiences accessible close to home. CMS concerts ensure audiences who might otherwise have to travel considerable distances or find it difficult to access live music, or live music of particular genres, can experience live music in their locality. CMS audiences will thus usually be very local. 

The other Unique Selling Point (USP) of CMS is that the nature of many of their recitals allow audiences to engage with musicians much more closely than in a large concert hall or music venue. And because events are on their doorstep, audiences may also be willing to engage with less familiar music (new works, early music or just less well-known pieces). 

In addition, CMS provide an invaluable career-building network for younger professional musicians, who also benefit from the experience of performing in a variety of events across the UK and gain feedback from their interactions in a supportive environment.

Concerts mostly take place in multi-purpose spaces rather than cultural venues, for example places of worship (about half of all concerts), Local authority venues, school halls, hospitality spaces (e.g. bar, restaurant, hotel), or eve private homes. This is where many CMS first started and remained for many years, for example Haslemere Concerts, historically, and Soirées at Breinton even now.

Concerts mainly take place in the evening, but there are also CMS dedicated to lunchtime concerts; all of them will also often run events at other times, e.g. weekend afternoons, morning coffee concerts, etc.. 

They average seven concerts a year, with average audiences of 150 (with a wide range, both in numbers of concerts from 1 – 13, and in average audiences, from 30 to 230). As well as concerts, many CMS offer (often free) workshops, interactive sessions and performances to schools or residential institutions (e.g. care homes). Estimated total number of concerts and workshops promoted by CMS UK-wide per year in 2022 was around 22,000 and estimated total audiences reached around 260,000.

CMS are usually small charities run by a committee of volunteers drawn from enthusiastic audience members and concert goers who:

1. programme concerts, including curating themes, repertoire and content, book artists and manage them on the day
2. organise, market, run the concerts, including booking venues, hiring instruments, selling tickets, creating programmes, managing refreshments and audiences 
3. manage the finances, including ticket sales and/or fundraising

Occasionally, they will engage a professional as artistic director for the programming. Planning for concerts and booking of artists is likely to be done more than 12 months ahead.

Some CMS own a grand piano, an instrument often needed for chamber music, or have access to one in their usual venue (e.g. a church); otherwise, part of their financial outlay will be to hire the instrument needed, e.g. grand piano, harpsichord.

Concerts can be by subscription (either an annual subscription or for instance for a set number of concerts, over half of CMS have this model), or by chargeable or free ticket. The membership/ subscription model is popular because it gives the CMS the cashflow and ability to commit to the fees required to book professional artists. Other CMS may have free concerts with encouraged donation, or Pay What You Can. They might also have different types of ticketing for different kinds of concerts (e.g. free family or school concert, chargeable evening concert).

The volunteer committee’s aim with their ticket prices is always to be as accessible as possible to the widest range of people in their community, whilst ensuring that they break even financially, seeing that most of them operate without any or very little funding. Nearly 90% of them offer concessions on their tickets, to different kinds of potential audiences (mainly young/students, also disabled, low income etc.). 

Some CMS have a small amount of local funding (e.g. from Local Authority, local trust or foundation), or funding from a trust or foundation for a specific programme (e.g. from a composer’s trust), many fundraise from individuals (e.g. legacies, fundraising events such as dinners or raffles), and sometimes have local businesses advertising in their programmes or contributing in kind or small financial sponsorship. CMS may also cover their costs by selling concert programmes or providing refreshments to their audiences.

Three quarters of CMS break even financially, or make a small loss or surplus; any surplus generated is used towards the next series of concerts and events.

Our Big Survey 2022 reports gives much more detailed information on how the volunteer promoters in Chamber Music Societies organise and fund themselves, the venues they use, ticketing approaches, repertoire and much more. 

Our Living Heritage – and what puts it at risk

There are an estimated 700+ Chamber Music Societies (CMS) in the UK. They started being set up by groups of volunteers from the last quarter of the 19th century (oldest Making Music member founded 1872) and many were created by 1930 when the Depression presented a serious threat to their survival and ability, therefore, to engage professional musicians whose careers were thus also under threat. This was one prompt for setting up the National Federation of Music Societies, to help guarantee the survival of CMS.

Many of the first and early CMS, e.g. Haslemere, started out in people’s living rooms before moving out into larger venues like churches. Some of this still remains, for instance Soirees at Breinton, a CMS in Surrey that organises concerts in the large conservatory of a private house. Many venues CMS use, however, are now under threat – churches closing, local authorities selling off property etc., and this is a very real risk for CMS activity.

CMS particularly flourished after WWII and were often supported by public funding as well as audience subscriptions, until the late 1980s. Whilst most are still in receipt of some funding, often local, rather than national, CMS have found it harder to obtain such funding in recent years. 

Coupled with changing audience behaviours (less likelihood to buy an annual subscription, tendency to buy tickets very close to an event, e.g.) have meant many CMS have closed down in recent years or have found it difficult to break even.

Many CMS also lack younger volunteers on their committees who would be more likely to have the right, e.g., digital skills for organising and marketing concerts. There is also a question whether future volunteers, perhaps lacking exposure to music at school, will have the artistic skills, knowledge or confidence to programme concerts. 

The practice of Chamber Music Societies has traditionally been passed on by the volunteers in the committee to new volunteers recruited from their audiences. This is another risk, as many CMS find it hard to find new volunteers and thus to be able to step back from their own volunteering when they need to (e.g. advanced age). There are potentially various reasons for this – more varied working patterns, meaning fewer people are able to commit to regular volunteering, later retirement, depriving CMS of the younger energetic retiree volunteer, and a lack of newer younger audiences which may stem from a decline of music education from state schools. Potential younger audiences may also look for different production values, presentation styles, ways of promoting and selling tickets and some CMS have not kept up with societal changes and do not chime with younger generations’ ways of consuming music and culture. 

Another risk to CMS is that more professional musicians are establishing their own festivals or concert series because of the benefits of gaining control of programming and the desire to engage with their audiences. Good for audiences, but this may be hard to match as a CMS.

There are encouraging signs, in that new volunteer-led promoting groups do arise continually in local areas, with communities self-organising, determined to provide access to live music that would not otherwise be available to them. So the future is bright, if this venerable model is able to adapt without losing its tradition of providing live music, affordably, on everyone’s doorstep in the UK.

Find out more about the Living Heritage Inventory

Banner photo credit: Brass Tracks, as part of Skye Chamber Music