(b ?Edinburgh, c1713; d London, 12 May 1789). Scottish music publisher. He established his business in Edinburgh in mid-1754, and had considerable early success: his first issues included Niccolo Pasquali’s excellent Thorough-Bass Made Easy (1757); his own The Rudiments of Music (1756, 3/1763), an instruction book commissioned by the Edinburgh town council for newly formed church choirs; and reprints of the fiddle variations on Scottish tunes by the locally celebrated William McGibbon. Bremner also profited from a fashionable boom in guitar playing, publishing a guitar arrangement of Twelve Scots Tunes (c1760) and Instructions for the Guitar (1758, 2/1765), which was probably written by his son Robert who had been sent to London to study the guitar with Geminiani. From 1755 Bremner supplied sheet music regularly to the influential Edinburgh Musical Society, and travelled to London and Dublin to act as its agent. In 1761 he issued the Six Overtures op.1 of Lord Kelly, the first orchestral pieces in the Mannheim style ever composed in Britain.
These successes enabled Bremner to move his business to London in 1762 (the Edinburgh shop was maintained under a manager, John Brysson). His business continued to flourish; a notable venture was the Periodical Overtures in Eight Parts, a quarterly series of new works for amateur orchestral societies. In 1764 he bought plates from John Simpson, in 1777 most of the stock and plates of john Johnson (ii), and in 1779 some plates from the firm of Welcker. His own music was neatly engraved and printed on high-quality paper. After Bremner’s death his London stock, plates and copyrights were bought by Preston & Son, who described their purchase as ‘not only the most extensive, but also the most valuable list of works ever exhibited in this kingdom’.
Bremner owned the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book for some years from 1762. He bought it for ten guineas at the sale of Pepusch’s library and subsequently presented it to Lord Fitzwilliam.
KidsonBMP
An Additional Catalogue of Instrumental and Vocal Music, Printed and Sold by Preston & Son … Late the Property of that Eminent Dealer, Mr. Robert Bremner (London, 1790)
J. Glen: The Glen Collection of Scottish Dance Music, i (Edinburgh, 1891), p.vii
H.G. Farmer: A History of Music in Scotland (London, 1947/R), 293–4
D. Wyn Jones: ‘Robert Bremner and The Periodical Overture’, Soundings, vii (1978), 63–83 [incl. incipit catalogue]
D. Johnson: Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century (Edinburgh, 1984), 70–72
DAVID JOHNSON