married Mimi Ettlinger (1873–1932), daughter of a Frankfurt cloth merchant; they had one son. Operatic and concert work was in short supply for young English conductors at the time; Ronald was obliged to seek employment in musical comedy in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Among those for whom he conducted and composed were Harry Graham, Lionel Brough, Kate Cutler, Evie Greene and John Le Hay. Neither this employment nor his engagement from 1898 as conductor of the Winter Gardens concerts in Blackpool helped his professional advancement in the snobbish atmosphere of fin de siècle England. Ronald continued to compose serious music; a song-cycle, "Summertime", was written for the tenor Ben Davies, who premiered it in 1901. The music critic of The Manchester Guardian called the songs "melodious", but added that they "impressed by their graceful lyrical character rather than by evidence of any inventive fancy." HMV and orchestral appointments In 1900 Ronald was approached by Fred Gaisberg of the recording firm the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of EMI. He accepted the post of musical adviser, and was the pianist on many of the company's early song recordings. Gaisberg calculated that Ronald's varied musical contacts would help the new company recruit the distinguished performers it needed. Ronald helped the company to sign up Melba and other leading singers including Adelina Patti, Charles Santley and Enrico Caruso. He remained closely connected with HMV for the rest of his career, becoming a director in 1930 and a founder-director of Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) formed by the merger of HMV with its rival, the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931. In 1901 Ronald was conductor of London's Queen's Hall concerts and in the same year he was contracted by Blackpool's Winter Gardens as conductor of summer Sunday concerts until where Adelina Patti, Nellie Melba and Caruso performed. He held this position until the First World War. Ronald began to make progress as a conductor after the foundation of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in 1904. He was a frequent guest conductor of the LSO, and in 1905 he was appointed director of the Birmingham Promenade Concerts. When Thomas Beecham parted company from the New Symphony Orchestra in 1908, Ronald succeeded him as its conductor. The orchestra was later known as the Royal Albert Hall orchestra; Ronald remained with it until 1928, when it disbanded. He and the orchestra began recording for HMV in