A lively tour of 18th-century Edinburgh

Abstract

Somewhere between a popular history and a scholarly monograph, this book surveys the history of the Edinburgh Music Society, a genteel music club that lasted from the mid 1720s to the mid 1790s. Its legacy includes St Cecilia’s Hall, the second dedicated concert venue to be built in Britain, completed in about 1763. The society also left a staggeringly rich store of documents, letters, memoranda and miscellanea, with a breadth and completeness many historians of London musical life would envy. Its membership was full of lawyers, who preferred thorough documentation of even the smallest expense; the aristocratic connections of its directors ensured extensive holdings of papers found their way into the libraries of important collectors such as Elizabeth Montagu and the Innes of Stow. One of these sets of papers are the titular Accounts of Incidents produced by the society’s ‘servant’ (hired secretary), Thomas Sanderson, giving detailed records of the day-to-day expenses of running a music society. The pages of these accounts reproduced in facsimile in Hillman’s book provide fascinating data: the cost of postage for printed music from London to Edinburgh; the value of violin rosin; the volume of candles purchased for rehearsals and concerts.