[1] It was a musical household: MacCunn senior, a prosperous shipowner by profession, was an amateur cellist; his wife, a former pupil of Sterndale Bennett, sang and played the piano.

[2] The parents encouraged the musical development of their second son, who, alongside his general education at the Greenock Academy and elsewhere, received private lessons from local teachers in violin, piano, organ, harmony and composition.

While a student he had substantial compositions premiered: the cantata The Moss Rose, performed at the RCM in 1884, and the overture Cior Mhor, which was given by Manns in a concert at the Crystal Palace in October 1885.

[5] MacCunn resigned the scholarship in 1886 in what the music critic John Purser describes as "a fit of pique" because he felt he was not receiving the social status due to him.

The following year Manns performed MacCunn's new orchestral suite, Highland Memories, and the Carl Rosa company presented Diarmid and Ghrine at the Royal Opera House.

[1] In 1900 he signed a two-year contract as conductor of the Moody-Manners company,[16] conducting a wide repertoire of operas, including Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Carmen, La Juive, The Flying Dutchman, Tristan and Isolde and Martha.

[2] His works written after 1900 include The Masque of War and Peace (1900) produced at Her Majesty's Theatre, another opera – The Golden Girl – and a piece for chorus and orchestra, The Wreck of the Hesperus (both 1905).

[2] MacCunn became ill with throat cancer in 1916 and died at his home in St John's Wood, London on 2 August 1916, aged forty-eight, survived by his widow and son.