Erskine, Thomas A. / The Earl of Kelly

Erskine, Thomas A. / The Earl of Kelly – The Periodical Overture in 8 parts No. 17 (Edited by Barnaby Priest and Alyson McLamore / New print)

Published by Robert Bremner at the Harp and Hautboy, opposite Somerset-House, in the Strand
Issued: late 1766; price 2 shillings
Source: The British Library – h.3210.(23)
Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, basso [with bassoon cues], 2 flutes, 2 clarinets [or oboes], 2 horns [originally in E-flat]
Editors: Barnaby Priest & Alyson McLamore

COMMENTARY
Although Robert Bremner (c.1713–1789) had resumed publication of the Periodical Overtures in May 1766, and would continue to issue new symphonies for seventeen more years, he never returned to the regular timetable of monthly releases that he had maintained all through the first year of the enterprise. Moreover, after the first sixteen symphonies, newspaper advertisements are lacking for quite a few of the subsequent works, making it difficult to pinpoint when each was released. The first “undated” publication was Periodical Overture No. 17, which was issued sometime in late 1766. This was the second time in the series that Bremner published a work by his long-time colleague, Thomas Alexander Erskine (1732–1781), the sixth Earl of Kelly.

Erskine and Bremner had first collaborated in Scotland, before Bremner had left Edinburgh for London. In 1752, at age twenty, Erskine had embarked on a Grand Tour, but had ended up staying in Mannheim (and probably Paris) for almost four years, studying violin and composition with Johann Stamitz (1717–1757), leader of the celebrated Mannheim orchestra. Erskine returned to Kellie Castle, his family home in Fife, in 1756. Over the next several years, Erskine applied his mastery of Mannheim techniques to a set of six symphonies—his Opus 1—which Bremner published in 1761. Many of the continental effects were new to the British, to the extent that Bremner felt it necessary to explain what slashes through the stems meant: “N.B. A Minim or Crotchet once cut signifies Quavers, and twice cut semiquavers.” …

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