On the 10th of April 1918 a chance meeting occurred on the steps of the newly established Air Ministry. The Royal Air Force had been formed for little more than a week and events were moving fast within the new organisation. It was possible to deal directly with principals and decisions were being made and acted upon very quickly. The meeting was between Walford Davies and a well placed official in the new Air Ministry who was impressed with Walford's ideas concerning music in a military force. He was also aware that the new Royal Air Force would need a comprehensive policy towards music and he was in a position to influence events. Within days Dr Davies became Major Davies in the newly established appointment of Organising Director of Music.

His duties were initially rather vague beyond advising and formulating policy on music in the Force. He started by carrying on what he had been doing as a civilian — lecturing and organising choirs — and within days of his appointment he had gone to Hastings to address two meetings of some six hundred cadets each. This was followed by a similar visit to Bath and he also started collecting arrangements of songs that he intended having published as an official RAF Song Book. However, he encountered strong demands for the formation of official bands and these demands soon determined that bands, rather than choirs, were to become his priority.

He asked for an initial establishment of bandsmen from which he could form the first bands and on the 10th of May the Air Council approved in principle the establishment of bands (twenty-four strong) at Hastings, Blandford, Halton and Cranwell. A Royal Air Force Band School was also proposed but the Air Council was less generous when deciding who would be allowed a fulltime job as a bandsman. It was decided that men would be trained from the following sources:

(1) Efficient instrumentalists in low medical categories already in the Royal Air Force

(2) Musicians to be found in hospitals and convalescent camps, disabled but fit to play in stationary depot bands

(3) Retired bandsmen willing to return and ineligible for other service

(4) Specially enlisted boys from 16 to 17

(5) Certain men over 51 years of age who could be obtained by advertising in the papers generally read by musicians.

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The plan was published and unit commanders in the United Kingdom were asked to forward nominal rolls of suitable applicants by the 27^th June 1918. However, before this date arrived the plan was radically changed because the Director of Manpower would approve the establishment of only fifty musicians. This was totally inadequate for what he wanted to do so Walford Davies countered with a request for fifty band instructors instead, each of whom would be responsible for organising a voluntary band. There were over a quarter of a million men and two hundred or more Royal Air Force stations at the time and this new proposal stood a greater chance of being able to satisfy the demand for bands.

At the same time he was searching for a suitable building where the proposed Music School could be established. The War Office made it plain that there was no room at Kneller Hall but then he was offered the use of an empty house at 1 Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead, which was conveniently close to the Cadet Reception Centre in Hampstead. During June he interviewed a number of potential instructors, band sergeants and bandsmen and decided that the first Officer Commanding Music School would be Captain Claude Powell (Captain Powell later became the successful conductor of the Guildford Orchestra after he left the Service). Another member of the staff was Sergeant Major Murrell who was a music hall artist in civilian life. His speciality was to play ten instruments in ten minutes finishing up with the Post Horn Gallop, perhaps this was considered to be a good qualification for a School of Music instructor.

The proposals for fifty instructors and a school were quickly approved and on the 2nd July 1918 the Royal Air Force School of Music was opened in the house in Fitzjohns Avenue with a staff of two officers and three SNCOs. Two grants of £1,000 were made from the Central Regimental Fund to buy instruments and a Treasury grant of £500 was made to buy music for the school and to be circulated around the bands.

Permission was then given for five established bands to be formed provided that the personnel were either of a low medical category or could be spared from other duties. The first of these bands was formed at Blandford in July but it did not stay there for long. In August a section of the band was sent to France to entertain units while the remaining twenty-five men were posted to the Royal Air Force Cadet Brigade Depot at Hastings.

Excerpt Text taken from – Music in the Air by Ian Kendrick (out of print) click link for more information.

http://www.musicintheair.org.uk/raf-music-services/music-book.html