James Oswald (1710-1769) - Sonata of Scots Tunes

★ Follow music ► Composer: James Oswald (1710-1769) Work: Sonata of Scots Tunes Performers: Concеrto CaIеdonia Sonata of Scots Tunes 0:01 O Mother, what shall I do (Largo) 1:57 Ettrick Banks (Adagio) 3:54 She rose and let me in (Andante) 4:50 Cromlit’s Lilt (Largo) 5:51 Polwart on the Green (Andante) Painting: David Allan (1744-1796) - The Penny Wedding Further info: Listen free: --- James Oswald (Crail, bap. 21 March 1710 - Knebworth, Herts, 2 Jan 1769) Scottish composer, publisher, arranger and cellist. His father, John Oswald (?-1758), a skilled musician, was town drummer of Crail and later became leader of the town waits at Berwick-upon-Tweed; his brother Henry (1714-?) also became a professional musician. By 1734 Oswald was teaching dancing in Dunfermline. A sketchbook (Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s private collection, microfilm in GB-En) shows many features of his compositional style already in place. A set of tunes for scordatura violin (in The Caledonian Pocket Companion, x, c1760), dedicated to patrons in the Fife and Tayside area, was probably written at this time, along with the airs for violin and continuo The braes of Ballendine and Alloa House (in A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes, 1740). In 1735 he moved to Edinburgh, where his Collection of Minuets (1736) launched him as a composer and publisher; he was also kept busy as a cellist and teacher. The summit of his Edinburgh period was his Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (1740), which had an immense subscription list and included the Sonata of Scots Tunes, the fine Masonic partsong Grant me, kind Heaven and some excellent fiddle variations. In an advertisement in the Caledonian Mercury (8 May 1740) he announced that, after this book, he would set out for Italy, but instead he went to London at the end of 1741. Oswald’s first years in London were ones of consolidation. Much of his Edinburgh work was reprinted, and he experimented with writing in the London taste (e.g. Colin’s Kisses, 1742). In 1744 he married Marion Melvill; they had four daughters and adopted a niece. A lucrative teaching practice replaced the one he had left behind in Edinburgh. In about 1745 the first two volumes of The Caledonian Pocket Companion, a cheap collection of one-line tunes suitable for flute, violin or, indeed, any other instrument, were published. This work was to be the success of Oswald’s life; it ran to 12 volumes and many reprints, and copies were still circulating long after his death. In 1747 he was granted a royal licence to print his own compositions, and set up his own publishing office and shop in St Martin’s Lane. He also moved into theatre music and started the Society of the Temple of Apollo, which was to occupy him until about 1762. The activities of the society are shrouded in mystery. Burney believed it was simply a device to enable Oswald to write theatre music at cut rates, but this does not accord with other information: the society commissioned sonatas from Giuseppe Sammartini, Oswald published sonatas by one of its members, John Reid (1756, 1762), and meetings and concerts were held at a house in Queen Square (1755, 1761). By 1750 Oswald’s circle of patrons included the royal family. Kidson guessed that Oswald taught the royal children during the 1750s; certainly his appointment as Chamber Composer to George III on 31 January 1761, immediately on the 18-year-old’s accession to the throne, would suggest such a service. During the 1750s Oswald composed chamber music, some of it on a comparatively large scale. He printed the larger pieces under the pseudonym ‘Dottel Figlio’ (i.e. Nicolas Dôthel), the actual name of a composer and flute virtuoso living in Florence at the time. By 1764 Oswald’s wife had died, as had his patron and friend John Robinson-Lytton. He became close to Robinson-Lytton’s widow, Leonora, and having what was in effect a royal pension, he decided to sell his shop and publishing business and retire to the Robinson-Lytton country house at Knebworth; he married Leonora.