[MysticCat]

As did some others, I have done some cutting and pasting, along with some editing:

Sinfonia was born on October 6, 1898, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, when a group of thirteen young men under the guidance of Ossian Everett Mills met “to consider the social life of the young men students of that institution” and “to devise ways and means by which it might be improved.” At the time, male students at the Conservatory were far outnumbered by female students. Mills, bursar of the Conservatory, was profoundly interested in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual development of the Conservatory students and recognized that a large proportion of them intended to put their musical knowledge into the church either as organists or singers. Mills felt that this class of people, as much as any, needed to be men of high ideals and, beginning in 1886, had invited a group of male students to meet with him once a week. Thirteen years later, Mills was still leading these weekly prayer meetings, and he encouraged the “Old Boys” of the Conservatory to invite the “New Boys” to a “get-acquainted” reception. The result of this invitation was the birth of The Sinfonia Club, which soon became The Sinfonia Fraternity. Sinfonia became a national fraternity on October 6, 1900, with the admission of a group of men at the Broad Street Conservatory in Philadelphia.

It is noteworthy that Sinfonia was not founded as a Greek letter fraternity, but rather chose to become more “Greek.” The Greek letters FMA appeared in Fraternity life very early on, and were officially placed on the badge within 10 years of the Fraternity’s founding. The name of the Fraternity was officially changed from The Sinfonia Fraternity of America to Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America in 1946, although in practice the current name had been used since the first decades of the Fraternity.