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WILLIAM MCGIBBON AND THE VERNACULARIZATION OF CORELLI'S MUSIC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2018

LEON CHISHOLM
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Abstract

In his 1720 poem ‘To the Musick Club’ Allan Ramsay famously called upon an incipient Edinburgh Musical Society to elevate Scottish vernacular music by mixing it with ‘Correlli's soft Italian Song’, a metonym for pan-European art music. The Society's ensuing role in the gentrification of Scottish music – and the status of the blended music within the wider contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment and the forging of Scottish national identity – has received attention in recent scholarship. This article approaches the commingling of vernacular and pan-European music from an alternative perspective, focusing on the assimilation of Italian music, particularly the works of Arcangelo Corelli, into popular, quasi-oral traditions of instrumental music in Scotland and beyond. The case of ‘Mr Cosgill's Delight’, a popular tune derived from a gavotte from Corelli's Sonate da camera a tre, Op. 2, is presented as an illustration of this process. The mechanics of vernacularization are further explored through a cache of ornaments for Corelli's Sonate per violino e violone o cimbalo, Op. 5, by the Scottish professional violinists William McGibbon and Charles McLean. The study foregrounds the agency of working musicians dually immersed in elite and popular musical traditions, while shedding new light on McGibbon's significance as an early dual master of Italian and Scots string-playing traditions.

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Eighteenth-Century Music , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , September 2018 , pp. 143 - 176
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the late David Johnson for sharing insights with me during the early stages of research for this article, and Anicia Timberlake for her helpful input on an earlier draft. The final version also benefitted from comments by the anonymous reviewers. I am grateful to Manuel Erviti, Mark Rodgers and the staff of Dundee Central Library for their help in procuring some of the figures that appear in this article.

References

1 Erskine, Andrew and Boswell, James, Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq. (London: W. Flexney, 1763), 25Google Scholar. ‘Maggie Lauder’ appears in several eighteenth-century printed collections, including A Collection of the Most Celebrated Scotch Tunes for the Violin (Dublin, 1724) (as ‘Moggy Lauther’), and continues to be played by traditional musicians today. See, for example, The Corries, ‘Maggie Lauder’, The Lads Among Heather, volume 2 (Gavin Browne Productions, 2005). Less common today is ‘The Carle He Came o'er the Craft’, published in, among others, Aird, James, A Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs Adapted to the Fife, Violin, or German-Flute, five volumes (Glasgow: author, 1782–1797), volume 1 (1782)Google Scholar.

2 Erskine and Boswell, Letters, 25. The ‘Ode’ itself appears on pages 26–27.

3 David Johnson writes that Erskine ‘satirizes the jew's harp by writing about it as though it were a classical musical instrument’ and that the passage was ‘funny because of the disparity between the two traditions; because people's reactions to folk and classical music were so dissimilar that they normally never made this kind of connection between them at all’. Johnson, , Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, second edition (Edinburgh: Mercat, 2003), 187–188Google Scholar. The first edition appeared in 1973.

4 Johnson, David, Scottish Fiddle Music in the Eighteenth Century, second edition (Edinburgh: Mercat, 1997)Google Scholar. The first edition appeared in 1984.

5 Johnson writes that the ‘Scots drawing room style’ was invented by ‘a small group of composers in Edinburgh between 1720 and 1745’. It ‘was created . . . by harmonising Scots tunes in an up-to-date art-music manner’ and sometimes by adding ‘variations to them which also have marked art-music characteristics’. Johnson, Scottish Fiddle Music, 34.

6 Geminiani, Francesco, A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (London, 1749)Google Scholar; Munro, Alexander, A Collection of the Best Scots Tunes, Fitted to the German Flute, with Several Divisions, & Variations (Paris[: Dumont, 1732])Google Scholar.

7 Gelbart, Matthew, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelbart, Matthew, ‘Allan Ramsay, the Idea of “Scottish Music” and the Beginnings of “National Music” in Europe’, Eighteenth-Century Music 9/1 (2012), 81–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrew Alexander Greenwood, ‘Mediating Sociability: Musical Ideas of Sympathy, Sensibility, and Improvement in the Scottish Enlightenment’ (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2012); Nelson, Claire, ‘Tea-Table Miscellanies: The Development of Scotland's Song Culture’, Early Music 28/4 (2000), 596–618CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 On the Edinburgh Musical Society see Jennifer Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society: Its Membership and Repertoire 1728–1797’ (PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2001), and Emerson, Roger L. and Macleod, Jenny with Simpson, Allen, ‘The Musick Club and the Edinburgh Musical Society’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, New Series, volume 10 (2014), 45–105Google Scholar.

9 Emerson and Macleod, ‘The Musick Club and the Edinburgh Musical Society’, 45.

10 Gelbart's argument builds upon an earlier assertion by Johnson, who identified the Act of Union as ‘the psychological roots’ of the Scots drawing-room style, which was part of a larger ‘aggressively nationalistic and aggressively fashionable movement’. Johnson identified Allan Ramsay as ‘the chief spokesman’ of the movement. Johnson, Scottish Fiddle Music, 34.

11 Allan Ramsay, Poems (Edinburgh, 1720), 289.

12 Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 30.

13 Greenwood, ‘Mediating Sociability’, takes a similar approach in his investigation of the ‘improvement’ of Scots song and its contribution to the broader concept of improvement discussed by Scottish Enlightenment writers.

14 Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 181.

15 Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 31.

16 Michael Talbot, ‘Corelli, Arcangelo’, Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (12 July 2017).

17 Bianconi, Lorenzo, Music in the Seventeenth Century, trans. David Bryant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 RISM A/II 119.400 lists the complete contents of Manuscript 957. I thank Davitt Moroney for introducing me to this manuscript. All of the Op. 5 ornaments contained in Manuscript 957 are transcribed in Corelli, Arcangelo, Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 5, ed. Hogwood, Christopher and Mark, Ryan, two volumes (New York: Bärenreiter, 2013)Google Scholar.

19 See, for instance, Johnson, Music and Society, 127–128. While Gow is prominent, McGibbon is left out of chronologies of fiddlers presented in Collinson, Francis, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 208–222Google Scholar, and Alburger, Mary Anne, Scottish Fiddlers and Their Music (London: Gollancz, 1983)Google Scholar. Similarly, in Stuart McHardy's folkloric book of stories about Scottish fiddlers, Gow features heavily while McGibbon is entirely absent: McHardy, MacPherson's Rant and Other Tales of the Scottish Fiddle (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2004).

20 Johnson, Music and Society, 4–5; Claire Nelson, ‘Tea-Table Miscellanies’, 604; Gouk, Penelope, ‘Music's Pathological and Therapeutic Effects on the Body Politic: Doctor John Gregory's Views’, in New Connections in the History of Art, Music and Medicine, ed. Gouk, Penelope and Hills, Helen (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 191–207Google Scholar; Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 99–100; Greenwood, ‘Mediating Sociability’, 105–108. Johnson maps Gregory's categories of ‘national’ and ‘cultivated’ directly onto the modern categories of ‘folk’ and ‘art’ music; Gelbart disputes this view.

21 Gregory, John, A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World, third edition (London: J. Dodsley, 1766), 115Google Scholar.

22 The John Kirkpatrick Band, The Complete John Kirkpatrick Band (Fledg'ling Records 3091, 2013). The tune was previously recorded on John Kirkpatrick and Ashley Hutchings, The Compleat Dancing Master, (Island HELP 17, 1974). On these albums, the tune is entitled ‘Dr Cosgill's Delight’.

23 The tune also appeared in The New Country Dancing Master, 3d Book, Being a Choice Collection of Country Dances (London: Walsh and Hare, c1726).

24 Recent printed anthologies of fiddle tunes that contain ‘Mr Cosgill's Delight’ include Williamson, Robin, ed., English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Fiddle Tunes (New York: Oak, 1976)Google Scholar, and Barnes, Peter, ed., The Barnes Book of English Country Dance Tunes: A Collection of 436 Commonly Used English Country Dance Melodies (Lincoln, MA: Canis, 1996)Google Scholar.

25 Laurel Swift, ‘Mr Cosgill's Delight’, YouTube video, 1:12, posted 7 June 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDVrgDwkKZc. Swift reports that she learned the tune from bandmate Colin Cotter, who in turn learned it from Kirkpatrick, John, John Kirkpatrick's English Choice: 101 Traditional Dance Tunes That Sit Happily on the Melodeon Scale (Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire: Dave Mallinson, 2003)Google Scholar (personal communication).

26 Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (London), AGG/2/152.

27 Keller, Kate Van Winkle, Fiddle Tunes from the American Revolution (Sandy Hook: Hendrickson Group, 1992), 8Google Scholar.

28 Keller reports that Bush's source was a fife tutor that was published in Philadelphia in 1776. Willig's 1805 publication may have been a reprint of the lost print. Keller, Fiddle Tunes, 8.

29 An early version of the tune appears in Playford's The English Dancing Master of 1651 under the title ‘Broome, the Bonny, Bonny Broome’. Example 1, taken from Glen, John, Early Scottish Melodies: Including Examples from Mss. and Early Printed Works, along with a Number of Comparative Tunes (Edinburgh: J. & R. Glen, 1900), 35Google Scholar, is a transcription of the version that appears in Playford.

30 National Library of Scotland (NLS), Glen 37 (previously MS 3298).

31 Evelyn Florence Stell, ‘Sources of Scottish Instrumental Music 1603 – 1707’, two volumes (PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1999), volume 1, 87.

32 Geminiani rendered the tune name as ‘The Broom of Cowdenknows’.

33 For example, the dozens of country-dance books that survive from the 1650s to the 1720s (including the Playfords’ Dancing Master series) include numerous tunes by known composers. See William Alan MacPherson, ‘The Music of the English Country Dance, 1651–1728: With Indexes of the Printed Sources’ (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1984).

34 Sébastien de Brossard, Dictionnaire de musique, third edition (Amsterdam: Roger, 1708), 140. At the end of a paragraph devoted to the sonata da camera in his entry for ‘Suonata’, Brossard writes, ‘Voyez pour modele les ouvrages de Corelli’. This sentence does not appear in the first edition of 1703.

35 Laborde, Jean-Benjamin de, Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne, four volumes (Paris, 1780), volume 3, 182–183Google Scholar; Gregory, A Comparative View, 147; Hawkins, John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, five volumes (London: T. Payne, 1776), volume 4, 318Google Scholar; Burney, Charles, A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, four volumes (London: author, 1776–1789), volume 3, 555Google Scholar.

36 Burney criticized Corelli's music along similar lines, noting its ‘narrow compass’ and lack of ‘true pathetic and impassioned melody and modulation’. Burney, A General History of Music, volume 2, 443, and volume 3, 558 respectively. The ‘narrow compass’ was an unacknowledged observation of Burney's correspondent Thomas Twining. See Careri, Enrico, ‘The Correspondence between Burney and Twining about Corelli and Geminiani’, Music & Letters 72/1 (1991), 40–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In one formulation of a frequent modern defence of the composer, Peter Allsop notes that ‘Corelli's alleged lack of originality has been judged against the norms that he himself created’. Allsop, Peter, ‘“Nor great fancy or rich invention”: On Corelli's Originality’, in Arcangelo Corelli fra mito e realtà storica: nuove prospettive d'indagine musicologica e interdisciplinare nel 350º anniversario della nascita, ed. Barnett, Gregory, D'Ovidio, Antonella and La Via, Stefano, two volumes (Florence: Olschki, 2007), volume 1, 34Google Scholar.

37 Burney, A General History of Music, volume 3, 550.

38 Burney, A General History of Music, volume 3, 489. It is clear that Burney's reference to ‘the national melody of the northern inhabitants of this island’ embraced music from Lowland Scotland (and perhaps also Highland music). Burney made the remark in connection with Henry Purcell's ‘A New Song to a Scotch Tune’ (‘When First Amyntas Sued for a Kiss’), which had appeared in Playford's The Theater of Music: or, A Choice Collection of the newest and best Songs . . . the Fourth and Last Book (London, 1687).

39 Hawkins, A General History, volume 4, 318.

40 Zaslaw, Neal, ‘Ornaments for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Op. 5’, Early Music 24/1 (1996), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Burney, A General History of Music, volume 3, 556.

42 Burney, A General History of Music, volume 3, 562.

43 Burney reported that Corelli revised and corrected the sonatas over a three-year period. Burney, A General History of Music, volume 3, 556.

44 For overviews of sources for ornaments for Corelli's Op. 5 see Zaslaw, ‘Ornaments’; Seletsky, Robert, ‘18th-Century Variations for Corelli's Sonatas, Op. 5’, Early Music 24/1 (1996), 119–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thomas Gartmann, ‘Research Report of a Non-Edition: Difficulties in Editing Corelli's Op. V’, in Arcangelo Corelli fra mito e realtà storica, volume 1, 191–209. Additional Op. 5 ornaments are discussed in Russell, Craig H., ‘An Investigation into Arcangelo Corelli's Influence on Eighteenth-Century Spain’, Current Musicology 34 (1998), 42–52Google Scholar; Johnstone, H. Diack, ‘Yet More Ornaments for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Op. 5’, Early Music 24/4 (1996), 623–633CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Walls, Peter, ‘Performing Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Op. 5’, Early Music 24/1 (1996), 133–142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The authenticity of these ornaments has been questioned since the eighteenth century, though it is generally accepted today that the ornaments are indeed Corelli's. For further discussion see Gartmann, ‘Research Report’, 208; Michael Talbot, ‘“Full of Graces”: Anna Maria Receives Ornaments from the Hands of Antonio Vivaldi’, in Arcangelo Corelli fra mito e realtà storica, volume 1, 255; Cook, Nicholas, ‘At the Borders of Musical Identity: Schenker, Corelli and the Graces’, Music Analysis 18/2 (1999), 179–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zaslaw, ‘Ornaments’, 102–105; and Walls, ‘Performing Corelli's Violin Sonatas’, 137–138.

46 Young is an obscure but vital figure in the history of north Atlantic fiddle traditions. He was the scribe of three major manuscript sources of Scottish fiddle tunes, all copied in Edinburgh in the late 1730s and early 1740s: the Duke of Perth Manuscript (in private possession; a photocopy at NLS is catalogued as MS 21715), the Young Manuscript (Bodleian Library MS Don.d.54) and the Mcfarlan Manuscript (NLS MSS 2084 and 2085). In 1748 he co-founded the Aberdeen Musical Society with John Gregory and five others. He served as the Society's first clerk, and its constitutional documents are in his hand.

47 On the origins of the contents of British fiddle books see MacPherson, ‘The Music of the English Country Dance’, 63–101.

48 See RISM A/II 119.400 for a complete inventory.

49 On cibells see Dart, Thurston, ‘The Cibell’, Revue belge de musicologie 6/1 (1952), 24–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Manuscript 957 includes two other pieces entitled ‘Sibell’ in addition to the two mentioned here. Neither of the other cibells is listed in Dart's index (28–29). Nor are they the same as the ‘Sibell’ in the Mcfarlan Manuscript, which was also copied by David Young, the scribe of Manuscript 957.

50 Both tunes were published under these names in London. ‘Submissive Admirer’ appeared under this name in The Musical Entertainer (London: George Bickham, 1737), 9. In the same year, the tune of ‘Stella Darling of the Muses’ was published under its original title of ‘Semplicetta Tortona’ in The Favourite Songs in the Opera Call'd Demetrius (London: Walsh[, 1737]). A score of the same tune with the English title was published as Stella Darling of the Muses. The Charmer. To a Celebrated Air in Demetrius some time around 1740. The tunes by Handel and Pescetti are among the latest datable items in Manuscript 957.

51 Sonata No. 12, the famous set of variations on La folia, is anomalous.

52 Zaslaw, ‘Ornaments’, 97–98.

53 Johnson, Music and Society, xvi–xvii. McGibbon was baptized on 12 April 1696: Old Parish Registers Births 644/1 70 267 Glasgow. Accessed through the Scottish government website for searching government records and archives, www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk (subscription required).

54 For a long time it was thought that Malcolm McGibbon was William's father. This false piece of information stems from a 1792 note by William Tytler, who claimed that McGibbon's father was oboist ‘Matthew McGibbon’. Tytler, William, ‘On the Fashionable Amusements and Entertainments in Edinburgh in the Last Century’, Transactions of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland 1 (1792), 508Google Scholar. The first name of this musician was, in fact, Malcolm. David Johnson, Music and Society, xvi, notes that Malcolm was William's uncle; his father was Duncan.

55 Johnson interprets a record of a bond investment by Duncan McGibbon as having ‘an air of desperation about it’. He adds, ‘By 1707 Duncan McGibbon and his wife Sarah Muir had had seven children. They can never have become rich’. Johnson, Music and Society, xvii, note 1.

56 Tytler, ‘On the Fashionable Amusements’, 510. Errors in the information about McGibbon that Tytler provided raise questions about the reliability of this important biographical detail. It is, however, a feasible explanation for McGibbon's exceptional skill as a violinist, which by all accounts surpassed that of his Scottish-born contemporaries.

57 Johnson, Music and Society, xvii.

58 On Corbett's trips to Italy see Edwards, Owain, ‘Espionage, a Collection of Violins, and “Le Bizzarie Universali”: A Fresh Look at William Corbett’, The Musical Quarterly 73/3 (1989), 320–343CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Alexander Campbell, writing in 1798, reported that McGibbon was in Italy some time before 1746: ‘From the time Ramsay published his “Tea-table Miscellany”, no collection of songs appeared worth mentioning . . . till in the year 1746, after his return from Italy, William M‘Gibbon published his first set of a “Collection of Scots tunes”’. Campbell, Alexander, An Introduction to the History of Poetry in Scotland, from the Beginning of the Thirteenth Century Down to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1798), 13Google Scholar. McGibbon returned to Scotland well before 1746 – he was already playing for the fledgling Edinburgh Musical Society in 1726. Johnson, Music and Society, 34.

59 The name ‘William McGibbon’ appears in an entry dated 29 April 1717 in the register of marriages for the Port of Menteith parish: Marriages, Old Parish Registers, Port of Meneteith, 388/10 405 (accessed through www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk).

60 The favouritism shown to foreign-born musicians paralleled the situation in London. See Rohr, Deborah, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: A Profession of Artisans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Edinburgh Musical Society was one of very few British musical organizations outside of London that managed to maintain long-term professional foreign musicians in its employment: Burchell, Jenny, Polite or Commercial Concerts?: Concert Management and Orchestral Repertoire in Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, Manchester, and Newcastle, 1730–1799 (New York: Garland, 1996), 33Google Scholar.

61 Jennifer Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 141–142.

62 Macleod lists ‘Overtures’ by McGibbon as a purchase of the Edinburgh Musical Society in 1728. Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 270. It is unclear whether these lost overtures were copied by hand or published in print.

63 In Music and Society Johnson mentions ‘some . . . trio sonatas dating from about 1727’, but he does not provide an explanation for the date. Johnson may have based the date on a reference, dated 1727, to the purchase of some ‘Sonatas’ by McGibbon in the account books of the Edinburgh Musical Society. The purchases are listed in Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 100, 270, 272. Without further comment, Johnson identifies the trio sonatas in question with an incomplete copy of a print of trio sonatas by McGibbon preserved at the Library of Congress. David Johnson, ‘McGibbon, William’, Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (12 August 2017).

64 Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 283.

65 Other works were by Corelli, Dallo, Geminiani, Vivaldi, Festing, Oswald and Thomson. Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 272.

66 A Collection of Scots Tunes was reprinted numerous times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tune arrangements and variations attributed to McGibbon also appear in manuscript sources, including Manuscript 957 and the Mcfarlan Manuscript.

67 Flores Musicae, or the Scots Musician. Being a general Collection of the most celebrated Scots Tunes, Reels, Minuets and Marches (Edinburgh: John Clark, 1773).

68 Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, 253, and Johnson, Music and Society, 193 and 194, note 1. There is some doubt as to whether Fergusson's ‘Macgibbon’ in fact referred to William McGibbon. In the poem, Macgibbon is a ‘sangster’ who could ‘tune the reed’. Taken literally, these terms describe a singer and piper, not a fiddler.

69 Fergusson's poem appeared in Weekly Magazine, 5 March 1772. It is reprinted in Fergusson, Robert, Scots Poems (Edinburgh: Porpoise Press, 1925), 18–20Google Scholar.

70 ‘McGibbon . . . was a strange figurehead to choose in this context, for as we have seen he was primarily a classical musician and far from opposed to Italian trends’. Johnson, Music and Society, 193.

71 Claudero, , ‘On Seeing a Scots Fidler in Laced Clothes’, in Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1765), 36Google Scholar.

72 Claudero, ‘On Seeing a Scots Fidler’, 37. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘fribble’ as ‘a trifling, frivolous person, one not occupied in serious employment, a trifler’.

73 Claudero, ‘On Seeing a Scots Fidler’, 36. ‘A true son of the nine’ may refer to the nine Muses.

74 Campbell, Alexander, Albyn's Anthology, or A Select Collection of the Melodies and Vocal Poetry Peculiar to Scotland & the Isles, two volumes (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1816), volume 1, viGoogle Scholar.

75 North doubted the authenticity of the graces attributed to Corelli by the publisher Estienne Roger. North, Roger, Roger North on Music; Being a Selection from His Essays Written during the Years c1695–1728, ed. Wilson, John (London: Novello, 1959), 160–161Google Scholar.

76 A dedication on the flyleaf of Manuscript 957 reads: ‘To Mr Davie from his friend James Middleton 11 Oct 1837’. Remarks that Davie made in Davie's Caledonian Repository about an ‘old manuscript’ in his possession make it clear that his source for the ornaments was Manuscript 957. Davie's Caledonian Repository, second series, book 1, 14. Johnson has drawn attention to the inclusion of McGibbon's graces for the first movement of Corelli's Sonata No. 9. Johnson, ‘McGibbon, William’. It should be noted, however, that Johnson misidentifies the source as the first book in the first series of Davie's Caledonian Repository, published in about 1829. The first series comprises four volumes, none of which indicates a publication date. Neither do the two books of the second series.

77 Davie's Caledonian Repository, second series, book 1, 14.

78 Chambers, Robert, Traditions of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1868), 348Google Scholar.

79 Gelbart notes similar cultural functions ascribed to ‘sartorial purity’ in Ramsay's The Ever Green (1724). Gelbart, ‘Allan Ramsay, the Idea of “Scottish Music”’, 91–92 and 103.

80 Simon Fraser acknowledged as much while criticizing McGibbon (as well as James Oswald) on similar grounds as Campbell did: ‘the merits of Macgibbon and Oswald in rescuing many fine airs from oblivion, were undoubtedly very great notwithstanding’. Fraser, Simon, The Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland and the Isles (Edinburgh, 1815), 105Google Scholar.

81 John Gregory, William Tytler, Joseph Ritson and James Beattie are among the writers Gelbart discusses (in addition to Ramsay) in The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’.

82 Ramsay, Poems, 288.

83 ‘Hail safe Restorer of distemper'd Minds, / That with Delight the raging Passion binds: / Extatick Concord, only banisht Hell, / Most perfect where the perfect Beings dwell’. Ramsay, Poems, 290.

84 Brian Boydell, ‘Dubourg, Matthew’, Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (12 August 2017), and Holman, Peter, ‘A Little Light on Lorenzo Bocchi: An Italian in Edinburgh and Dublin’, in Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914, ed. Cowgill, Rachel and Holman, Peter (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 75Google Scholar.

85 Marc Pincherle discussed the manuscript in ‘De l'ornamentation des Sonates de Corelli’, in Feuillets d'histoire du violon (Paris: Legouix, 1927), 136–143. The provenance of the lost manuscript is outlined in Zaslaw, ‘Ornaments’, 99.

86 Zaslaw, ‘Ornaments’, 99. Previously, David Boyden had proposed a later date based on a combination of physical and biographical evidence: ‘From the watermark of a distinctive horse on the fly-leaf, we can deduce, although not prove conclusively, that this MS dates from c. 1723. . . . In any case, the Dubourg MS was probably written before 1728, while Dubourg was still a pupil and associate of Geminiani’. Boyden, David, ‘The Corelli “Solo” Sonatas and Their Ornamental Additions by Corelli, Geminiani, Dubourg, Tartini, and the Walsh Anonymous’, Musica antiqua europæ orientalis 3 (1972), 595Google Scholar. The Dubourg ornaments are also discussed in Marx, Hans Joachim, ‘Some Unknown Embellishments of Corelli's Violin Sonatas’, trans. Laurence Dana Dreyfus, The Musical Quarterly 61/1 (1975), 65–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Hawkins, A General History, volume 5, 398.

88 The note values of Dubourg's first variation double the original notation.

89 Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society’, 256. As Macleod indicates, the name recorded is ‘Mr McLean’. Johnson has connected this musician to Charles McLean.

90 David Johnson, ‘McLean, Charles’, Grove Music Online www.oxfordmusiconline.com (12 August 2017).

91 A handwritten note above a set of variations on ‘Birks of Invermay’ in A Collection of Favourite Scots Tunes (Edinburgh, c1772) identifies the composer as ‘Mr Charles McLean org:t’.

92 ‘Further to Charles McLean's disappearance from the records after 1740: the chances are high that he went to London. Dr. H. Diack Johnstone has turned up information . . . about a flat in Angel Court, Piccadilly, rented by “Chas. Macklain” from 1743 onwards, the flat having been previously occupied by the composer Michael Christian Festing’. Johnson, Scottish Fiddle Music in the Eighteenth Century, x. Festing's ornaments for Op. 5 are discussed in Johnstone, ‘Yet More Ornaments’.

93 For further discussion of variations on the Gavotta from Sonata No. 10 see Seletsky, ‘18th-Century Variations’, 121–124 and 127–129.

94 Seletsky, ‘18th-Century Variations’, 127.

95 Seletsky, ‘18th-Century Variations’, 127.

96 The editors of the Bärenreiter edition, Christopher Hogwood and Ryan Mark, number the variations of McGibbon and Dubourg differently. In each case, they treat the first two strains as the plain tune and begin counting variations thereafter. Thus they assign just one variation to McGibbon and four to Dubourg. None the less, in each case, the plain tune differs significantly from that of Corelli's gavotte. For this reason, I count the first two strains of the sets by McGibbon and Dubourg as variations. Hogwood and Mark, ‘Violin: Decorated Versions’, 28 and 32. In the case of McLean's set of variations, I agree with their numbering system, since the first iteration of the gavotte is very similar to Corelli's, though it does contain some differences: Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, volume 2, 30.

97 The dance was choreographed by Cathy and John Millar in 1993. Instructions appear on the website of the Bay Area Contra Dance Society at www.bacds.org/events/playfordball2000/dances/dancelist.html#Corelli (24 February 2017).

98 The Thomas Shiels Fiddle Manuscript (1820–1821) is preserved at the Reid Library of the University of Edinburgh. ‘Sweden's March’ is transcribed in Johnson, Scottish Fiddle Music, 98–99 (see also 105 and 249).

99 The thirty-strain version of ‘Black Jock’ was published in Bremner, Robert’s A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (Edinburgh, 1759)Google Scholar. For a modern edition see Johnson, Scottish Fiddle Music, 86–89.

100 de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 67Google Scholar.

101 Johnson, Music and Society, 111–129, and Scottish Fiddle Music, 2–5.