In the Beginning
The first Proms concert took place on 10 August 1895 and was the brainchild of the impresario Robert Newman, manager of the newly built Queen's Hall in London.
While Newman had previously organised symphony orchestra concerts at the hall, his aim was to reach a wider audience by offering more popular programmes, adopting a less formal promenade arrangement, and keeping ticket prices low.
Who was Henry Wood?
Born in 1869, Henry Wood had undergone a thorough musical training and, from his teens, began to make a name for himself as an organist, accompanist, vocal coach and conductor of choirs, orchestras and amateur opera companies.
Newman arranged to meet Wood at Queen's Hall one spring morning in 1894 to talk about the project. 'I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,' he explained. 'Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.' In February 1895 Newman offered Wood conductorship of a permanent orchestra at Queen's Hall, and of the first Proms season.
The Early Days
The series was known as 'Mr Robert Newman's Promenade Concerts' and the programmes were perhaps over-generous by today standards, lasting around three hours. The informal atmosphere was encouraged by cheap tickets - one shilling (5p) for a single concert, or a guinea (£1.05) for a season ticket.
Eating, drinking and smoking were permissable (though patrons were asked to refrain from striking matches during the vocal numbers). The more 'serious' items were confined to the first half, and a major attraction of the shorter second half was the Grand Fantasia - choice morsels extracted from popular operas.
Developing Public Taste
Wood and Newman were keen to introduce audiences to an ever wider range of music. In the first seasons, a tradition was established of a Wagner Night on Mondays and a Beethoven Night on Fridays. Wood continued to present an enterprising mixture of the familiar and the adventurous, programming new works each season (referred to as 'novelties').
He also promoted young, talented performers, and he fought to raise orchestral standards, making himself unpopular in 1904 with a successful bid to scrap the system whereby orchestral players could send deputies to the rehearsals and appear in person only for the concert. By 1920 Wood had introduced to the Proms many of the leading composers of the day, including Richard Strauss, Debussy, Rakhmaninov, Ravel and Vaughan Williams.
The First World War
The onset of the First World War brought a public dislike for all things German, yet Wood and Newman - almost alone among the cultural establishment at the time - insisted that 'the greatest examples of Music and Art are world possessions and unassailable even by the prejudices of the hour'. In 1915 the publishers Chappell and Co., having earlier taken over the lease of the hall when Newman had run into financial troubles, also took over the orchestra, which was renamed the New Queen's Hall Orchestra.
Enter the BBC
But the Proms were running at a loss, and in 1927 Chappell's announced its withdrawal of financial support. In the same year the BBC had established its status as a Corporation with a mandate 'to inform, educate and entertain', clearly a vision that Henry Wood held for the Proms.
The BBC took over the Proms, and for three years the concerts were given by 'Sir Henry Wood and his Symphony Orchestra', until the BBC Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1930. The Proms now reached a far wider audience and although some feared that broadcasting would reduce audience numbers, Wood emphasised its role in achieving his aim 'of truly democratising the message of music, and making its beneficent effect universal'.
A New Home at the Royal Albert Hall
Three days after Britain declared war on Germany, the BBC decentralised its Music Department and announced that it was unable to support the Proms.
With characteristic determination Wood found private sponsorship for the 1940 and 1941 seasons, and replaced the BBC orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra. But air-raids intensified and the 1940 season lasted only four weeks. On 10 May 1941 a Luftwaffe bombardment gutted the Queen's Hall.
The only other hall available in London for orchestral concerts was the Royal Albert Hall, opened in 1871. It was not until the following season that the BBC returned to sponsor the Proms.
The End of an Era
1944 marked two anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of the Proms, and Henry Wood's seventy-fifth birthday. By now Wood's phenomenal energies were waning. His last concert was on 28 July, a whisker short of his half-century of conducting the Proms. He died three weeks later.
Moving Forward
After the War, the traditional Wagner Nights became unfashionable. From 1953 Viennese evenings became popular and composer anniversaries were well catered for. In 1957 and 1958 the deaths of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams were marked by complete symphony cycles.
Malcolm Sargent, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1950, gave most of the performances, but the 1950s also saw a gradual increase in the number of orchestras taking part. Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, under Sir John Barbirolli, became the first non-London orchestra to perform at the Proms, and over the next few years concerts were given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic. Basil Cameron featured prominently alongside Sargent, but other influential figures also began to appear: Charles Groves, Colin Davis, Norman Del Mar, Charles Mackerras.
New Directions
With the arrival of William Glock as BBC Controller, Music, in 1959, the identity of the Proms began to change. The core orchestral repertoire, a mainstay of the Proms, was reduced to accommodate a more experimental style of programming, one which carried bold juxtapositions and reflected current musical trends from around the world. Between 1959 and 1964 the number of works new to the Proms had more than doubled.
The 1963 season brought international figures such as Georg Solti, Leopold Stokowski and Carlo Maria Giulini, and in 1966, the first foreign ensemble, the Moscow Radio Orchestra, appeared, followed soon after by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. It was this period that saw the transformation of the Proms from a successful but relatively conservative enterprise into a major international festival.
Wider and Wider Still
Other major innovations since the 1960s were the introduction of complete opera performances (beginning in 1961 with Glyndebourne Opera's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni), concerts by ensembles from non-Western cultures (including India, Thailand, Indonesia and Japan), music for percussion, jazz, gospel and electro-acoustic music, and concerts devised especially for children.
Since 1961 the BBC has commissioned a number of new works each season, offering Proms audiences a chance to hear the latest in musical trends, and creating a unique platform for dozens of contemporary composers. The 1970s brought other new features such as a series of Late Night concerts and Pre-Prom Talks.
Beyond the Proms Centenary
The 100th Proms season took place in 1994 and the festival now includes over 70 main Prom concerts every year, ever widening the range of symphonic and operatic music presented. The BBC Proms continues to welcome leading international performers whilst showcasing the best of the British music scene, including the BBC's own orchestras and choirs.
1996 saw the launch of Proms in the Park, Proms Chamber Music and the Proms Lecture. The first Proms recital followed in 1997, and there have been special events such as 'Choral Day' (1998), '1000 years of music in a day' (1999), 'Proms Millennium Youth Day' (2000) and Proms celebrating music from the worlds of jazz, film and stage musicals. And with the launch of Poetry Proms at the Serpentine Gallery and 'Composer Portraits' at the Royal College of Music alongside the ever-expanding series of Pre-Prom talks at the Royal Albert Hall, the 2000 season saw more extra events than ever before.
Every Prom is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, On Air and Online, and in 2002 more Proms were broadcast on BBC Television than ever before, plus a number of Proms were video-webcast via the Proms website, including the internationally-renowned Last Night. The Proms also became interactive for the first time with BBC4, the BBC's digital TV service; members of the public could email in their own thoughts and questions to be used during the live broadcasts, and by pressing the 'red button', digital viewers to BBC1, 2 and 4 TV could enjoy synchronised programme notes. In 2004, programme notes were added to the DAB service on radio and Freeview. In 2005, the Proms launched its first WAP site, accessible via mobile phones, alongside a free daily text message alert service. And almost every Prom can now be heard 'on demand' via the Proms website for a week after broadcast.
Yet although the scope of the Proms has increased enormously since 1895, Henry Wood's concept for the season remains largely unaltered: to present the widest possible range of music, performed to the highest standards, to large audiences.
And promenading in the Royal Albert Hall's arena continues to be a central feature, lending the Proms its unique, informal atmosphere.
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