Music

George Hogarth (Number 19) studied both law and music at the University of Edinburgh, and became a solicitor in 1810. His wife, Georgina, was the daughter of George Thompson, an amateur music collector, who in the 1790s had commissioned Beethoven, Haydn and other German composers to compose piano accompaniments for Scottish songs. George was a cellist and there often would be musical evenings at his house, playing with others, including George Thomson who wrote: ‘let Mr Hogarth know that I have got the music he wanted, and two or three pretty things for the Piano Forte, Violin and Violoncello, which I hope we shall enjoy together in a short time. No concerts of one hundred performers are to be compared to our own little domestic parties!’ Hogarth also was keen to expand Edinburgh’s musical life and in 1815 helped organise the first Edinburgh Music Festival. It is recorded that the second in 1819 consisted of six concerts attended by over 8,500 people. A fourth festival took place in 1831 and included three concerts by the famous violinist, Paganini. Hogarth also was the music critic for The Harmonicon magazine. When the twenty year old German composer, Felix Mendelssohn (portrait by the English miniaturist James Warren Childe) visited Edinburgh for four days in 1829, he stayed with the Hogarths. Mendelssohn also dined with Finlay Dun, a fellow composer, (see below) who lived at Number 33.

John Lorimer (also Number 19), an advocate, also was a keen amateur musician, being a member of the Edinburgh Amateur Choral Society, established in 1854. The Choir’s conductor was Adam Hamilton who, in 1872, was asked to become the musical director of a new amateur music group to be formed in Leven. An advert was placed inviting the local people in Fife to take part in ‘the practice of Vocal Music, particularly music of the higher class.’ Around 150 people joined and the rehearsals began in the church school. However, not all was plain sailing as a letter was sent to Adam Hamilton asking ‘if it would be too much trouble to select a good piano for rehearsals.’ Hopefully a better tuned piano was found for the group’s first ever performance, The Creation by Haydn. The Leven Amateur Musical Association is still performing 140 years later. By coincidence, a further resident at Number 19, Dr George Keppie Paterson also was an enthusiast for choral singing. He was the consulting obstetrician and physician for maternity welfare at the Livingstone Dispensary in the Cowgate, and there he organised a choir in his dispensary. Juliet White, who ran Miss White’s Boarding School (see Number 33) for almost twenty years, was a subscriber to the concerts of the Edinburgh Professional Society of Musicians and it may well have been through this activity that she met her husband, Finlay Dun, a composer and musician. He was the son of Barclay Dun, a well-known dancing master in Aberdeen. Dun studied the violin in Paris under Pierre Baillot, a renowned violinist, and, later, played viola in the orchestra of the San Carlo Theatre at Naples, and studied singing with Girolamo Crescentini, a noted Italian castrato. When Dun returned to Scotland he taught the violin, composition, and singing, as well as performing in a range of concerts and events. Among his many compositions was the music for An Ode to Sir Walter Scott which the concert reviewer said: ‘does Mr Dun much credit as a composer’, but his name is best known for the collection of Scottish songs which he edited.. (Page from Dun's music for Roslin Castle)The finances of musicians are all too often precarious and while Mr Broatch earned £60 per annum as the organist at the Albany Street Chapel and further sums from performing in concerts and acting as a concert organiser, when he appeared in the Bankruptcy Court in the 1880s he confessed his grasp of business was poor. He explained that due to illness over the winter he had not worked at all, which was why his finances were in a bad way. He confessed that his inability to pay his rent had caused him great regret for he had never owed money before. The court heard that his liabilities were £102 but he had no assets. Broatch offered to set a portion of his future earnings towards paying off his debts and the court agreed.