Amateurs, Singing and Society in Edinburgh, 1750 -1830

The splendour of classical enlightenment Edinburgh supported a vibrant and musical and concert culture. Music, and particularly singing, spilt out of the concert halls and assembly rooms into gentlemen’s clubs, inns and taverns and even into the home. Singing was a sign of gentrified taste, of polite achievement, of belonging. Singing was not merely a pleasant pastime but was irrevocably linked with the social, political, moral and religious contexts of the period. This study proposes that Edinburgh’s vibrant musical life in the eighteenth-century owes more to singing and the espousal and subversion of vocal music than has ever previously been suggested. It also contends that for many in the ’Athens of the North’ their primary experience and consumption of music came not from the elite and private activities of the Edinburgh Musical Society, but with the singing that filled the theatres, public concerts and pleasure gardens. This study also outlines how singing and songs created ’emotional communities’ within institutions and how the consumption of fashionable vocal music created a ’community of taste’ among the cosmopolitan and fashion-obsessed population of Edinburgh.

Tom Edwards attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before graduating with degrees in music and musicology from the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD on the performance of vocal music in eighteenth century Edinburgh in February 2015. He currently lives in Sydney.