1. Concerts and Recitals from 1979 to 2003
 
In 1979 a series of three Inaugural Concerts launched our live music programme, and was held in association with Chelsea College and Goldsmith’s College.  The first concert featured works by Gerald Finzi, Rutland Boughton, Michael Hurd, Lennox Berkeley, Frank Bridge and Arthur Bliss; and this consistently enterprising pattern of programming continued as the series was later extended to twenty concerts in all, with a tribute to Sidonie Goossens remembered as a particular highlight.
 
In 1981 and 1982 concerts were held, one each year, at Wavendon in Milton Keynes, including one exploring the theme of Shakespeare and English Song.  Subsequent BMS concerts have included those celebrating the centenaries of Benjamin Burrows (1992) and Eugene Goossens (1993); an Arnold Cooke eighty-ninth birthday concert (1995); a piano recital by Society President John McCabe (1997); Sixty Glorious Years (1997), a recorded concert of music celebrating the centenary of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, with a programme Foreword written by Prince Michael of Kent; a William Baines centenary recital by pianist Malcolm Binns (1999); a Malcolm Williamson seventieth birthday concert (2001); and a concert celebrating three combined anniversaries: the British Music Society’s twenty-fifth, Roger Quilter’s fiftieth,  and the centenary of the birth of the Society’s first President Lennox Berkeley (2003).
 
2. Competitions from 1985 to 2002
 
This sequence began in 1984-85 with British Opera in Retrospect, an ambitious musical event aimed at reviving interest in seldom-heard British operas, and held in European Music Year.  About seventy-five entries, both competitive and non-competitive, were received, with competitive entries including operas by Arthur Bliss, Rutland Boughton, Hamish McCunn, Ethel Smyth and Charles Villiers Stanford.  The winning awards were presented at the London Coliseum.
 
From 1988-97 the Society promoted a series of Music Awards, with concerts given by young musicians studying at Music Colleges and featuring an extensive variety of British composers.  Prizewinners’ concerts were held at the Purcell Room (Piano, Strings), Kings Lynn Festival (Voice), Warwick and Leamington Festival (Woodwind) and Salisbury Festival (Organ).  The Award for Voice was incorporated with a sister project, British Composer Year, and concerts and recitals were held throughout the country.  In 2004 a similar, one-off Piano Award competition was held in London, for which John McCabe was commissioned to write a piece to be played by all competitors, Tunstall Chimes.
 
In 2000-01, we held the BMS Choral Competition for the Millennium, which included performances of rare works by Edgar Bainton, George Dyson, Frederic d’Erlanger , John Joubert, Hubert Parry and Arthur Sullivan.  Prizes were awarded at a luncheon held during the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival.  In 2002 there was a Golden Jubilee Song-Writing Competition, held in association with the English Poetry and Song Society and including a supporting recital of songs written by Masters of the King’s and Queen’s Musick.

3. Seminars, Lectures and Lecture-Recitals from 1979 to 2000
 
From 1979 onwards various lectures have taken place, on such subjects as John Ireland (1979), John Foulds (1980), Arnold Bax (1983), British Opera from Queen Victoria to the Festival of Britain (1984), Elgar and Bax in Sussex (1984), Edmund Rubbra (1986), William Sterndale Bennett (1987), Scores Lost and Sometimes Found (1990), and the Sir Arthur Sullivan Centenary ( 2000).
 
4. Sponsored Concerts from 1991 to 2003
 
Concerts sponsored by the BMS and given at the Windsor Festival in Eton and Slough by the Broadheath Singers were important annual events between 1991 and 2003, and provided performances of such rarely-heard works as The Cloud Messenger (Holst), The Black Knight (Elgar), The Canterbury Pilgrims (Dyson), The Lady of Shalott (Rootham), Songs of the Fleet (Stanford), and many more.  Other concerts were sponsored in Portsmouth and Luton, and at the London College of Music.

5. Various Miscellaneous Events These included a BMS-organised trip to Ischia, which enabled a small group of members to visit and stay at Sir William and Lady Walton’s home, La Mortella (2003); and a showing of the film London Belongs To Me, which features a musical score by Benjamin Frankel.  A formal luncheon was held in 2000 to celebrate the Society’s twenty-first birthday; and a lunch was given in Gloucester in 2004, prior to a Three Choirs Festival concert featuring two BMS Vice-Presidents: Tasmin Little, who played the Delius Violin Concerto, and Richard Hickox, who conducted the original version of Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony.

6. More Recent Events
 
In 2004 there began a further series, concluded in 2009, of Lecture-Recitals given by musical experts on composers as varied as Alwyn, Balfe, Frankel, Gardner, Hurlstone, Maconchy and Rawsthorne.  Also included in this series were two lectures given by composers themselves on their own music, namely Arthur Butterworth and Patric Standford, and an interview with the Society's second and current President, John McCabe.
 
The Society continues to subsidise various other worthwhile festivals and events, such as a sponsored tour to celebrate the centenaries of Constant Lambert and Alan Rawsthorne in 2005-06, the 2007 King’s Lynn and 2008 West Norfolk Festivals, the 2009 English Music Festival (through advertising), and the 2010 Gloucester Music Society.
 
In most years a concert or recital has been given following our Annual General Meeting, with recent examples including a recital by the Solaris Quartet in 2007, a Howard Ferguson centenary recital in 2008, and a concert featuring compositions by BMS composer-members in 2009.