Erskine, Thomas A. / The Earl of Kelly

Erskine, Thomas A. / The Earl of Kelly – The Periodical Overture in 8 parts No. 13

Published by Robert Bremner at the Harp and Hautboy, opposite Somerset-House, in the Strand
Issued: 15 May 1766; price 2 shillings
Source: The British Library – h.3210.(20)
Instrumentation: 2 violins, viola, basso, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns [originally in E-flat]
Editors: Barnaby Priest & Alyson McLamore

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COMMENTARY
We do not know why—after a two-year hiatus—printer Robert Bremner (c.1713–1789) decided to resume publication of his Periodical Overtures. We can surmise that the first two opus numbers had continued to enjoy sustained sales in the interim, motivating Bremner to move forward with more issues in the series. In any event, he inaugurated the “revival” of the series with a work by a 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.”
The Edinburgh Musical Society was quick to program Erskine’s new symphonies, and even fans of the older Baroque approach to composition grudgingly acknowledged that Erskine’s Mannheim style “pleases by its spirit and a wild luxuriancy, which make an agreeable variety in a concert” and that his music had “seduced the public ear.” It is tempting to speculate that it was due to the popular reception of the Mannheim approach that Bremner had included so many works by Erskine’s teacher Stamitz among the first twelve Periodical Overtures. Bremner had also reissued Erskine’s Op. 1 symphonies after his move to London, suggesting that they had been a profitable publication in Scotland. The fact that Bremner launched “Opera Terza” of the Periodical Overtures with a new symphony by “Lord Kelly” was likely another indication of the Scottish aristocrat’s sustained musical popularity. The 15 May 1766 advertisement for Periodical Overture XIII that appears in a surviving copy of The Public Advertiser is not fully legible, but it clarifies that Bremner had elected to maintain the two-shilling pricing that had been the norm in his two previous opuses. …

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