Hamish MacCunn

Hamish MacCunn
Portrait of Hamish MacCunn, 1889, by John Pettie
Background information
Birth name	Hamish MacCunn
Born	22 March 1868 Greenock, Scotland
Died	2 August 1916 London, England
Genres	Romantic
Occupations	Composer, Conductor

Hamish MacCunn (22 March 1868 – 2 August 1916), Scottish romantic composer, was born in Greenock, the son of a shipowner, and was educated at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers included Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

MacCunn's first success was with the overture The Land of the Mountain and the Flood in 1887 at the Crystal Palace, and this (which remains far and away his best-known piece) was followed by other compositions, with a characteristic Scottish colouring. From 1888 to 1894 he was a professor at the Royal College of Music.

In 1888, he married Alison Pettie, daughter of John Pettie, RA, who had painted MacCunn's portrait several times. They had one son. John Pettie was an enthusiastic musician, who helped MacCunn build up his career by organising concerts of his work. The production of his opera Jeanie Deans at Edinburgh, soon followed. He was for some years conductor to the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and subsequently to other companies. His opera Diarmid was produced at Covent Garden in 1897.

His other music includes cantatas, overtures, part-songs, instrumental pieces, and songs, all markedly Scottish in type. He had a genuine love of Scottish folksong, and although he lived in London he was a lifelong champion of Scottish music and of the country’s musical life.

A hectic programme of composing, conducting and teaching brought about a gradual deterioration in MacCunn's health, and he died aged only 48.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Biography from the British Musical Society
• MacCunn Collection, University of Glasgow
• Digitised scores can be viewed through the Five Centuries of Scottish Music collection hosted by AHDS Performing Arts
• Free scores by Hamish MacCunn in the International Music Score Library Project

See also: McCunn