One hundred years ago today on 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany and entered what was to become one of the deadliest conflicts in history. Today, along with the rest of the world, the London Symphony Orchestra remembers the sacrifices made on all sides so that we might have a future.
The LSO is one of very few orchestras today that was operating during World War I, and the only London orchestra. Formed in 1904, the LSO had just celebrated its tenth anniversary when fighting broke out. We will be marking the centenary of the war in several ways throughout 2014–2018, both in our artistic programme and online.
Telling the Story
We hold an extensive archive, including the complete set of minutes of the Board and concert programmes from the beginning to the present day, which we realised would contain details of how the LSO dealt with and survived through these troubled times. How did it react to the news? Did the members go off to fight? What happened to those left behind? Did concerts continue under threat of attacks from the air? How did the repertoire change? With these questions in our minds, and many more, we set off on a journey.
In the coming weeks we will be telling the story of the LSO in World War I in a series of blogs. We hope to paint a picture of an orchestra and its role in conflict.Through research in our own archives, the National Archive, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Royal Society of Musicians, the Musicians Union, the Royal College of Music, and using the Imperial War Museum’s Lives of the First World War digital memorial (and many more sources besides!) we have learned so much about our individual members who served in the military, the orchestra itself and the cultural scene in London during wartime. We hope that you will follow this story as it unfolds on this blog.
And we will need your help! Despite our best efforts we are still lacking a lot of information and photos of our individual members who signed up to fight. We hope that through this process we can find some of our members’ living relatives who can help us fill in the gaps. Today we remember trumpeter Sydney Moxon, who was killed in action in France. Click here for Sydney’s story, and find out how you can help.
