When at the concert my fair stars arise;
What poets of fictitious beauties sing,
Shall in bright order fill the dazzling ring;
From Venus, Pallas, and the spouse of Jove,
They’d gain the prize, judged by the god of Love.’[[514]]
A writer of some ability and acuteness, who travelled over Scotland, and wrote an account of his journey, published in 1723, tells us that he was at several ‘consorts’ in Edinburgh, and had much reason to be pleased with the appearance of the ladies. He had never in any country seen ‘an assembly of greater beauties.’ It is not in point here, but it may be stated that he also admired their stately firm way of walking ‘with the joints extended and the toes out,’ and thought their tartan head-mantles of scarlet and green at church as gay as a parterre of flowers. At the same time, he knew them to be good housewives, and that many gentlemen of good estate were not ashamed to wear clothes of their wives’ and servants’ spinning.[[515]]
To return to music—it looks like a mark of rising taste for sweet sounds, that we have a paragraph in the Edinburgh Courant for July 12, 1720, announcing that Mr Gordon, who had lately been travelling in Italy for his improvement in music, was daily expected in Edinburgh, ‘accompanied with Signor Lorenzo Bocchi, who is considered the second master of the violoncello in Europe, and the fittest hand to join Mr Gordon’s voice in the consorts which he designs to entertain his friends with before the rising of the session.’ On the 28th of May 1722, at the request of several gentlemen of Glasgow, Mr Gordon was to give a ‘consort’ in that city; and immediately after we hear of him publishing ‘proposals for the improvement of music in Scotland, together with a most reasonable and easy scheme for establishing a Pastoral Opera in Edinburgh.’[[516]] Signor Bocchi seems to have been able |1718.| to carve a professional position for himself in Edinburgh, for in 1726 we find him publishing there an opera of his own composition, containing twelve sonatas for different instruments—violin, flute, violoncello, &c., with a libretto in broad Scotch by Allan Ramsay, beginning:
‘Blate Johnnie faintly tauld fair Jean his mind.’
It was about this time that the native music of Scotland—those beautiful melodies which seem to have sprung up in the country as naturally and unperceivedly as the primroses and the gowans—were first much heard of to the south of the Tweed. William Thomson, who was a boy at the Feast of St Cecilia in 1695, had since grown up in the possession of a remarkably sweet voice for the singing of Scots songs, and having migrated to London, he was there so well received, that Scottish music became fashionable even amidst the rage there was at the same time for the opera and the compositions of Handel. A collection of Scottish songs, with the music, under the title of Orpheus Caledonius, was published by Thomson in London in 1725, with a dedication to the Princess of Wales, and republished in an extended form in 1733.
Of the other performers at the Feast of St Cecilia, a few were still flourishing. Adam Craig, a teacher of music, played second violin at the gentlemen’s concerts with high approbation. Matthew M‘Gibbon was no more; but he had left a superior representative in his son William, who had studied under Corbet in London, and was now leader and first-violin at the concerts, playing the music of Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel with great skill and judgment. A collection of Scots tunes by William M‘Gibbon, published in 1742 and subsequent years, was long in high repute.[[517]] Of the St Cecilia amateurs we only hear now of Lord Colville, who seems to have been a great enthusiast, ‘a thorough master of music,’ and is said to have ‘understood counterpoint well.’ His instruments were the harpsichord and organ. He had made a large collection of music, much of it brought home to him from Italy.