MUSIC AT KILRAVOCK
MALCOLM, Alexander.
A Treatise of Musick, speculative, practical and historical. Containing an explication of the philosophical and rational grounds and principles thereof; the nature and office of the scale of musick; the whole art of writing notes; and the general rules of composition. With a particular account of the antient musick, and a comparison thereof with the modern …
London, J. Osborn and T. Longman, F. Fayram, and E. Symon, 1730.
8vo, pp. xxiv, 608, with seven leaves of folding plates at the end (diagrams and engraved music, some printed both sides, last plate cropped at right edge with slight loss); a fine copy in contemporary calf; ownership inscription to title-page (‘Jo. Clephane’, physician, of Kilravock), armorial bookplate of his brother-in-law Hugh Rose Young of Kilravock.
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A Treatise of Musick, speculative, practical and historical. Containing an explication of the philosophical and rational grounds and principles thereof; the nature and office of the scale of musick; the whole art of writing notes; and the general rules of composition. With a particular account of the antient musick, and a comparison thereof with the modern …
First London edition of the first history of music in English by a British author; it is a reissue of the Edinburgh-printed first edition of 1721 with a cancel title-page and the dedication removed.
Assembling material from Descartes, Mersennes, Kircher, and others, Malcolm covered ancient music, equal temperament, directions for tuning a harpsichord, harmony, counterpoint, etc., providing ‘one of the most valuable treatises on the subject of theoretical and practical music to be found in any of the modern languages’ (Hawkins, General History 1776).
Shortly after this London edition was published Malcolm emigrated to New York as master of a grammar school, later moving to Maryland; he probably later took part in the first performance in America of an opera with orchestral accompaniment, in Maryland in 1752.
Kilravock had a reputation for music-making, and among the children of Hugh Rose, 17th of Kilravock and Elizabeth Clephane was Elizabeth Rose (1747–1815), head of the family from 1782 and an important hostess and accomplished musician. She sang glees along with her father and brother, and was proficient on the violin, spinet and guitar, and when Robert Burns visited in 1787 and 1788 she afterwards sent him copies of the music for two reels he heard there (see Cosmo Innes, Genealogical Deduction of the Family of Rose of Kilravock, 1848). Her manuscript reel-book recently sold at auction.
Gregory, p. 163; RISM B/VI/2, p. 530.
