Music of Scotland in the eighteenth century

Growing divisions in the Scottish kirk between the Evangelicals and the Moderate Party resulted in attempt to expand psalmondy to include hymns the singing of other scriptural paraphrases.

In the second half of the eighteenth century these innovations became linked to a choir movement that included the setting up of schools to teach new tunes and singing in four parts.

There were numerous publications of traditional tunes in the period, particularly when the oppression of secular music and dancing by the kirk began to ease, between about 1715 and 1725.

By 1775 Edinburgh was a minor, but functioning European musical centre, with foreign and native resident composers and professional musicians.

[3] This movement had its origins in the influence of English psalmondist and hymnodist Isaac Watts (1674–1748) and became an attempt to expand psalmondy in the Church of Scotland to include hymns the singing of other scriptural paraphrases.

[3] In the second half of the eighteenth century these innovations became linked to a choir movement that included the setting up of schools to teach new tunes and singing in four parts.

A corrected version was licensed for private use in 1751 and some individual congregations petitioned successful for their use in public worship and they were revised again and published 1781.

[6] After the Glorious Revolution episcopalianism retrained supporters, but they were divided between the "non-jurors", not subscribing to the right of William III and Mary II, and later the Hanoverians, to be monarchs,[7] and Qualified Chapels, where congregations, led by priests ordained by bishops of the Church of England or the Church of Ireland, were willing to pray for the Hanoverians.

[10] Well-known fiddlers included Pattie Birnie (c. 1635–1721),[11] and later Neil (1727–1807) and his son Nathaniel Gow (1763–1831), who, along with a large number of anonymous musicians, composed hundreds of fiddle tunes and variations.

The Highland Society of London, formed in 1778, put an emphasis on bagpiping, particularly the ceòl mór (the great music), which had developed for ceremonial purposes for the Gaelic aristocracy from the seventeenth century.

[12] Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie (1732–81) was one of the most important British composers of his era, and the first Scot known to have produced a symphony.

[18] The Edinburgh Musical Society was so successful in this period that it was able to build its own oval concert hall, St Cecilia's, in 1762.

According to James Baxter, by 1775 Edinburgh was a minor, but functioning European musical centre, with foreign and native resident composers and professional musicians.

[12] In the mid-eighteenth century a group of Scottish composers began to respond to Allan Ramsey's call to "own and refine" their own musical tradition, creating what James Johnson has characterised as the "Scots drawing room style", taking primarily Lowland Scottish tunes and adding simple figured basslines and other features from Italian music that made them acceptable to a middle class audience.