From the Archives: B Natural

An autograph book with a dual meaning.

The trumpeter John Jacob Solomon (2 August 1856 – 1 February 1953), joined RSM on 4 July 1880 soon after finding some eminence as a performer. He had studied with Thomas John Harper (1816-1898) at the RAM and was also to become a teacher there from 1894. He was a founder member of the London Symphony Orchestra; some of the signatures and quotations within the album include those by Hans Richter, and the first guest conductors, namely Artur Nikisch, Fritz Steinbach, Edward Elgar and Edouard Colonne, although all date from the period prior to that orchestra’s founding.  

“Never – Sometimes – Always” by Helena Brain; 1901.   From an album of autographs collected by John Solomon over the period 1901-1906 and donated by Solomon on 6 August 1950.

The first item in the autograph book is from “His grateful pupil, Helena Brain” and has a musical quotation combined with a pertinent comment on being oneself. Brain uses the signs of musical notation for changing pitch (flat, sharp, natural) in a clever format to make her comment about being natural or unaffected. Considering that Solomon was, a short time later, instrumental in the adoption of the Bb trumpet it could be considered to be a curious inscription: “Solomon was quicker than [Walter] Morrow to perceive and demonstrate the advantages of the modern B♭ trumpet; from about 1905 Solomon urged its adoption in place of the F, thereby helping to bring about that which Morrow had failed fully to achieve through the use of the F trumpet, namely suppression of the cornet as a substitute for the trumpet in symphony orchestras” (Anthony Baines, revised by Edward Tarr in Grove Online).