Author: ERSKINE (Thomas Alexander) Earl of Kelly (or Kellie):
Title: Minuets &c. Composed by The Right Honourable Thomas Earl of Kelly.
Description: Edinburgh [no publisher], 1836. FIRST EDITION. Folio, 280 x 225 mms., pp. [iv], viii, 32 pp. of engraved music on recto only, engraved plate between the music on pp. 21 and 22, engraved portrait of Kelly [sic], engraved title-page, contemporary annotation on p. v, contemporary quarter morocco, plain boards (soiled); corners worn. With the small bookseller's sticker of Kenneth Mummery, Bournemouth in the lower corner of the front paste-down end-paper, and a note in a 20th century hand, "only 60 copies printed." Thomas Alexander Erskine, sixth Earl of Kellie or Kelly (1731 - 1781) was born in Fife and studied music in Edinburgh, where he was a member of the Edinburgh Musical Society in 1750, and he became its director in 1757. New Grove describes him as "arguably Scotland's greatest composer." Charles Burney said of him that he "'possessed more musical science than any dilettante with whom I was ever acquainted." This edition of his minuets was prepared by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe and is dedicated to Mrs. Sharpe of Hoddam, his mother, who died earlier in 1836. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the hand-written limitation notice, but the only copies of this work that I have been able to locate are in the British Library, Glasgow University Library, NLS; Yale, Harvard, New England Conservatory of Music.

Keywords: music Scottish prose Scottish


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