John Thomson (composer)

[1] Thomson studied in Germany with a letter of introduction to the Mendelssohn family, and his Drei Lieder were published in Leipzig in 1838.

As a musicologist he edited the Vocal Melodies of Scotland, and he was one of the first conductors to provide his audience with a programme of his concerts giving a critical analysis of the works to be performed.

His other compositions included a fine bagatelle for solo piano, a six-part Glee With Whispering Winds, three operas, a flute concerto and a flute quartet, and concert arias.

Among Thompson's compositions admired by his younger contemporary Felix Mendelssohn when they met in Edinburgh in the summer of 1829 was a G minor piano trio of 1826, in which stormy and sometimes fierce passages are mixed with Schubertian warmth.

Subsequently, his work was little performed, but it was featured in John Purser's Scotland's Music series, and a group of people in Kelso organised a bicentennial festival in 2005.