BU Academic Marks Anniversary of First BBC Prom

13 August 2007

BU Professor and radio historian Sean Street is to mark the 80th anniversary of the Proms with a special broadcast that reveals the hugely popular concerts were nearly axed before they began.

Professor Street, Director of the Centre for Broadcasting History Research here at BU has examined the birth of the Proms for a special programme to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3, during the interval in the Prom concert on Monday 13 August, to start around 8.20pm.

It is hard to imagine now but in 1927 the Proms were for the chop. The Times reported that Sir Henry Wood had received a letter from Chappell and Co., the music publisher which ran them, informing him that it ‘proposes to give no more symphony concerts and (what is more serious) no more promenade Concerts in the summer’.

But the BBC, only 5 years old, hungry for music to broadcast, and somewhere to broadcast it from, stepped in. After lengthy and labyrinthine negotiations, the BBC took on the Proms and Sir Henry Wood, and the first BBC Prom was broadcast on 13 August, 1927 from the Queen’s Hall.

Professor Street explores the significance of this moment of musical and broadcasting history. Jenny Doctor, who has edited a new history of the Proms tells him how certain Cassandras, including Chappell’s, wailed that broadcasting would be the death of live music: no one would go to the concerts if they listen to them at home – an argument still heard today.

The first BBC Prom proved otherwise. The Queen’s Hall was besieged and the police, turning Prommers who couldn’t get in away, were heard urging them to hurry home so they could hear the concert on the wireless. One listener in Liverpool was so grateful for the broadcast of a concert he couldn’t possibly get to that he sent the BBC 25 shillings.

The BBC building Henry Wood House now stands on the site of the Queen’s Hall which was destroyed in the Blitz. The Proms office is exactly where the prommers stood.

Professor Street talks to the Proms’ director, Nicholas Kenyon, about the music that was played that evening. The programme was eclectic, including Elgar’s overture Cockaigne, the Hungarian Rhapsody by Liszt and Mowing the Barley, a traditional song arranged by Cecil Sharp. Kenyon considers what this reveals about musical taste then and now, and the way concerts as events have changed – and remained the same.

The papers of August 14, 1927 reveal what the music critics had to say. ‘Handel’s Largo in G …was greeted with hand-clappings and cries of enthusiasm loud enough to be heard far outside the building’ wrote the Special Representative sent by The Sunday Times. Editorial comment and letters gauge public feeling about the BBC’s initiative.