Capital city of Scotland. It was the seat of government until 1707. It was also the largest town in Scotland before 1800 and its artistic capital until 1880, when these features were ceded to Glasgow. Edinburgh's main periods of musical excellence were the 16th and 18th centuries, though there have been interesting local developments since the mid-1960s. The city's modern musical reputation rests largely on its annual international festival, inaugurated in 1947. A new Scottish parliament, opened on 1 July 1999, renews Edinburgh’s status as a flourishing capital city.
During the 16th century Edinburgh’s musical life revolved around the court. King James IV patronized the composer Robert Carver, whose masses and motets were probably mostly written for the Scottish Chapel Royal. A native school of partsong and instrumental composition grew up, modelled on the French and English schools but with its own passion and delicacy. An important partsong is the anonymous Departe, departe, a lament for the Master of Erskine, who was killed at the battle of Pinkie on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 1547. The Reformation of 1560 brought art music into disrepute. Church music was immediately reduced to unharmonized psalm tunes. Royal music-making continued at Holyrood Palace with Mary, Queen of Scots (1560s) and James VI (1580s, 1590s), but against a background of public disapproval. When James VI removed to London in 1603, art music in Edinburgh was left without a focus. A nominal Chapel Royal was retained for some decades into the 17th century, but James brought English musicians with him for his one return visit to the city (1617), as did Charles I for his Scottish coronation (1633). An outstanding music book was published in 1635: The Psalmes of David, edited by Edward Millar and containing 200 harmonized metrical psalm tunes, some set in elaborate counterpoint. But the Covenantors' rise to power in 1637 prevented the book from being widely used.
After 50 years of stagnation, Edinburgh reawoke in the 1690s to the continental fashion for Italian Baroque music. The city became an important centre for private music teaching and amateur middle-class music-making, strengths it has retained to the present day. The first public concerts were probably given in 1693, and a detailed programme survives for a St Cecilia's Day concert in 1695. The Edinburgh Musical Society was formally constituted in 1728, and gave concerts weekly; it built St Cecilia's Hall in 1762. Music publishing restarted in the city in 1727, and by 1760 had grown to a significant business; notable publications at this time were Barsanti's Concerti grossi op.3 (1742), Pasquali's textbook Thorough-bass made Easy (1757), the Earl of Kelly's six overtures op.1 (1761), and the songbook The Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803), in which many of Robert Burns's songs appeared for the first time. After 1720 Edinburgh was able to support composers of considerable merit, such as William McGibbon, James Oswald, Francesco Barsanti, Charles McLean, Domenico Corri, J.G.C. Schetky, the Earl of Kelly and Robert Mackintosh.
The Napoleonic Wars reduced Edinburgh once again to a provincial musical centre. The Edinburgh Musical Society closed in 1798, and for the next 30 years promoting concerts was a risky business. Publishing was reduced to books of national songs and parlour ephemera. At the same time, transport greatly improved, making whistle-stop tours possible for visiting virtuosos and underlining the gulf between international standards and what Edinburgh could make from its own resources. This laid the foundations for a musical inferiority complex – anything good must come from outside – which lasted into the 20th century. Since the early 19th century, Edinburgh's finest native musical talent has usually fulfilled itself in other places. One example of such talent is Alexander Mackenzie, born in Edinburgh in 1847; his autobiography describes the city in the 1870s as bustling with musical activity and visiting celebrities, but with no real opportunities for locals. He later found fame in London as a composer, became principal of the Royal Academy of Music, and invented the Associated Board examination system.
Nevertheless, by the 1880s Edinburgh's musical life had definitely improved. A main cause of this was the formation of amateur choirs: music festivals were held in 1815, 1819, 1824 and 1843, the Edinburgh (RoyaI) Choral Union was founded in 1858, and the orchestras initially put together to accompany choirs then gave symphony concerts as well. Contemporary Scottish compositions began to be heard (though the composers mainly lived in London), particularly works by Hamish MacCunn, whose opera Jeanie Deans had its premičre in Edinburgh in 1894. Edinburgh University set up its music faculty in 1893. Music journalism became a regular part of the Scotsman newspaper, and a magazine, The Scottish Musical Monthly, appeared for a few issues in 1894.
The early 20th century was marked by the musical ascendancy of Glasgow over Edinburgh. Glasgow founded Scotland's first and only conservatory in 1890, many of its students coming from Edinburgh; Scotland's first fully professional orchestra in 1891, which gave regular seasons in Edinburgh; the BBC Scottish Orchestra in 1935 (from 1967 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra); Scottish Opera in 1962; and the Scottish Music Information Centre in 1969. Edinburgh's leading musician during this period was Donald Tovey, Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University from 1914 to 1940. He founded the Reid Orchestra in 1917 in order to give the city a home-based ensemble. The orchestra performed with such distinguished soloists as Suggia, Hindemith, the Aranyi sisters and Casals, and gave the premičres of Tovey's opera The Bride of Dionysus (1929) and of his Cello Concerto (1935). Tovey's programme notes for the orchestra's concerts were collected as the renowned Essays in Musical Analysis (1935–9); in them Tovey complains about working conditions in Edinburgh and ‘the severity of its musical climate’.
The climate changed after World War II. The Edinburgh International Festival, founded in 1947 (see §2 below) put Edinburgh back on the world's musical map. The 1950s saw the establishment of the Edinburgh Quartet and the emergence of two fine composers native to Edinburgh, Robert Crawford and Thea Musgrave. In 1969 Leonard Friedman created the Scottish Baroque Ensemble, whose imaginative programmes took daring risks with public taste. This led in 1974 to the founding of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which has built up an enviable international reputation. Smaller ensembles were also founded at this time, such as the New Music Group of Scotland, the McGibbon Ensemble, the Mondrian Trio and the Hebrides Ensemble. Since 1980 the Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust has also presented a diverse range of interesting concerts. Edinburgh’s amateur musical life has continued to flourish, with regular concerts being given by such groups as the Scottish Sinfonia, Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Choir, Waverley Singers, and Dunedin Consort.
Buildings for music have greatly improved. In addition to the late 19th-century Lyceum Theatre and Usher Hall, St Cecilia’s Hall was refurbished in 1968, the Queen's Hall in 1979, the Playhouse Theatre (3130 seats) in 1985 and the Festival Theatre (1900 seats) in 1994, so that Edinburgh now has two viable opera houses. St Mary's Music School was founded in 1972, and the state education system matched this shortly afterwards by opening special music units at Broughton High School and Flora Stevenson Primary School. Edinburgh University has attracted large numbers of postgraduate music students in recent years, and Napier University opened a school of music in 1996.
The arrival of Peter Maxwell Davies as a part-time Edinburgh resident in the late 1970s had a profound effect on the city's other composers, acting at once as a stimulus, challenge and irritant. Edinburgh, until then a comfortable provincial backwater for composers, suddenly became a working part of the competitive international scene. Adjustment to this new state was painful. The number of composers in the city nevertheless grew, notable ones being David Dorward, John McLeod, Neil Mackay and Peter Nelson (Scots), Edward Harper and Nigel Osborne (English), Hafliđi Hallgrímsson (Icelandic) and Lyell Cresswell (New Zealand), as well as such younger figures as Kenneth Dempster and Jane Gardner.
The Edinburgh Festival – officially the Edinburgh International Festival of Music, Drama and the Visual Arts – was inaugurated in 1947. It usually begins in August and continues for three weeks. Its musical character has always been international in outlook. The idea of the festival grew from a suggestion by Rudolf Bing that an additional outlet be found for the Glyndebourne Festival (of which he had been the pre-war manager) when its opera productions were resumed after the war, and also from the desire to renew cultural contact with other countries. The first festival saw the deeply felt reunion of Bruno Walter with the Vienna PO, their first public concert together since the war. Bing was appointed artistic director and organized the first three festivals. He was succeeded by Ian Hunter (1950), Robert Ponsonby (1956), the Earl of Harewood (1961), Peter Diamand (1966), John Drummond (1979), Frank Dunlop (1984) and Brian McMaster (1991).
The festival came to be in a city imbued with a theological suspicion of display but blessed with a highly theatrical landscape. Besides its historical significance and distinctive architectural character, Edinburgh has the advantage for a festival of an adequate concert hall (the Usher Hall) and three principal theatres: the King’s Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival Theatre and the independently owned Playhouse Theatre. Opera performances are a main feature each year. The Glyndebourne Festival company used to perform regularly, as do most of the British companies, and productions have also been brought from all over Europe and America. The Edinburgh Festival Opera, an ad hoc ensemble for specific productions, was first formed in 1973. In 1988 the Playhouse was used for the first British production of John Adams’s Nixon in China.
Most of the principal European orchestras have taken part in the festival, as have several American orchestras and an annual succession of leading international soloists and ensembles. Direct commissions of new works have been few, preference being given to the repetition of contemporary works that have already made an impact elsewhere. The Edinburgh Festival Chorus was formed in 1965 (as the Scottish Festival Chorus) with Arthur Oldham as choirmaster, and has received widespread acclaim.
Some of the wider international contacts at which the festival has aimed were first established through dance: the 1950s saw performances by the Yugoslav Ballet, the first participants from Eastern Europe; the Azuma Kabuki Dancers, the first from Asia; and the Ballets Africains, the first illustration of an indigenous African idiom. Scotland’s musical heritage has been represented through the ceilidh, programmes of Gaelic songs and pipe music. The earliest festivals included displays of Scottish piping and dancing on the Castle esplanade, a forerunner of the Military Tattoo, which has become one of the most popular fixtures of the festival. The annual fireworks display is accompanied by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
An assortment of amateur and professional supplementary entertainments, collectively known as the Fringe, has been given each year since the festival’s founding. These have included operas by Mozart, Donizetti and Menotti (1963) and Milhaud’s ballet Le boeuf sur le toit (1966). Since 1979 a Jazz Festival and Folk Festival have run concurrently with the main festival events. The Film Festival organized a ‘Music for the Movies’ competition in 1991 and showed Abel Gance’s 1927 film Napoleon accompanied by the Wren Orchestra playing a score arranged by Carl Davis from the symphonies, piano works and theatre music of Beethoven. Although there have in recent years been some attempts to separate the ‘official’ festival from the other festivals and the Fringe, the success of Edinburgh’s cultural autumn calendar has been largely due to the juxtaposition of amateur and professional.
W. Tytler: ‘On the fashionable amusements and entertainments of the last century’, Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, i (Edinburgh, 1792)
C. Rogers: The History of the Chapel Royal in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1882)
A.C. Mackenzie: A Musician’s Narrative (London, 1927), 3–18, 63–96
K. Elliott and H.M. Shire: Introduction to Music of Scotland 1500–1700, MB, xv (London, 1957)
H.M. Shire: Song, Dance and Poetry at the Court of Scotland under King James VI (London, 1969)
D. Johnson: Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972)
P. Brett: ‘English Music for the Scottish Progress of 1617’, Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: a Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 209–26
K. Elliott: Introduction to The Complete Works of Robert Carver, Musica scotica, i (Glasgow, 1996)
Edinburgh Festival: a Review of the First Ten Years 1947–1956 (Edinburgh, 1957) [pubn of the Edinburgh Festival Scoiety]
G. Bruce: Festival in the North (London, 1975)
A. Moffat: The Edinburgh Fringe (London, 1978)
O.D. Edwards: City of a Thousand Worlds: Edinburgh in Festival (Edinburgh, 1991)
The Edinburgh International Festival: a Celebration of Fifty Years in Photographs (Edinburgh, 1996) [pubn of the Edinburgh International Festival]
A. Bain: The Fringe: 50 Years of the Greatest Show on Earth (Edinburgh, 1996)
E. Miller: The Edinburgh International Festival, 1947–1996 (Aldershot, 1996)
R. Wishart: Celebration! (Edinburgh, 1996)
For further bibliography see Scotland.
DAVID JOHNSON (1), NOËL GOODWIN/MICHAEL T.R.B. TURNBULL (2)