Erskine: String Quartet in C minor (Kilravock No.8)

Allegro
Andante
Allegro

Thomas Erskine, Sixth Earl of Kellie (popularly known as “Fiddler Tam”) was born in Kellie Castle, Fife, in the same year as Haydn, but pre-deceased the young Mozart by ten years, a body ravaged by excess of all kinds finally giving up on him during a trip to Brussels. In contrast to his notorious high living was his unique standing as Grand Master of both English and Scottish Masonic Lodges – a fellow mason (and former schoolmate) was the architect Robert Mylne, who built St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh. So it is a pleasing thought that Kellie himself may have had a hand in its unusual design and superb acoustic…. The eminent music historian Dr. Charles Burney wrote of him as follows:

The late Earl of Kellie, who was possessed of more musical science than any dilettanti with whom I was ever acquainted…..shut himself up at Mannheim….studied composition [with Johann Stamitz], and practised the violin with such serious application, that, at his return….there was no part of theoretical or practical music, in which he was not equally versed with the greatest professors of his time. Indeed, he had a strength of hand on the violin, and a genius for composition, with which few professors are gifted.

Our current knowledge of Kellie and his work is almost exclusively due to the efforts of fellow Scottish musician David McGuinness, director of Concerto Caledonia – to whose pioneering recording of this and other vocal and orchestral works (led by the FSQ’s own Scot, Lucy Russell) listeners are enthusiastically directed. Much of his music has been lost, but some of his chamber music survived in Kilravock Castle – where, Dr. McGuinness tells us, “Bonnie Prince Charlie played chamber music the night before the disastrous Battle of Culloden”. The present edition of this quartet was prepared by David McGuiness himself from the Kilravock set of parts (now safely preserved in the National Library of Scotland), and continues to be brought to life with grateful acknowledgment.

© Alan George
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