Hamish MacCunn

Early years James MacCunn was born in Greenock, Scotland, the second son of James MacCunn and his wife Barbara, née Neill. It was a musical household: MacCunn senior, a prosperous shipowner by profession, was an amateur cellist; his wife, a former pupil of Sterndale Bennett, sang and played the piano. The parents encouraged the musical development of their second son, who, alongside his general education at the Greenock Academy and elsewhere, received private lessons from local teachers in violin, piano, organ, harmony and composition. When he was eight the family spent a full season in London, where the boy was allowed to attend all August Manns's many concerts at the Crystal Palace. In 1883, at the age of fifteen, he won a scholarship to the newly established Royal College of Music (RCM) in London. MacCunn resigned the scholarship in 1886 in what the music critic John Purser describes as "a fit of pique" because he felt he was not receiving the social status due to him. He left the RCM without taking a degree. Shortly afterwards he had a success with his concert overture The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, premiered at the Crystal Palace in 1887. The Musical Times commented, "The work – which is spirited and bold in conception and brilliantly scored – was finely played and enthusiastically received". Bernard Shaw, in his capacity as a music critic, called it "a charming Scotch overture that carries you over the hills and far away". Some of the composer's songs and other works were premiered at the house of the painter John Pettie, whose daughter Alison married MacCunn in June 1889. They had one child, Fergus, who became a soldier. Pettie portrayed MacCunn in his popular painting Two Strings to her Bow (1887). From 1888 to 1894 MacCunn was professor of harmony at the RCM's older rival the Royal Academy of Music and also took private pupils. This opera was Jeanie Deans, based on Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian and first produced in 1894 in Edinburgh, conducted by the composer. In 1896 Jeanie Deans received a London performance, and MacCunn composed another opera, Diarmid and Ghrine. The following year Manns performed MacCunn's new orchestral suite, Highland Memories, and the Carl Rosa company presented Diarmid and Ghrine at the Royal Opera House. conducting a wide repertoire of operas, including Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Carmen, La Juive, The Flying Dutchman, Tristan and Isolde and Martha. In 1902 he was appointed musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company at the Savoy Theatre, for the first production of Edward German's Merrie England, and the following year German's A Princess of Kensington. When the Savoy company dispersed thereafter, MacCunn, in the words of The Times, "had to accept work in various 'musical comedy' productions, which did not contribute to his artistic advancement". In 1915 he conducted The Tales of Hoffmann and Faust in Beecham's season at the Shaftesbury Theatre. From 1912 onwards MacCunn took opera classes at the Guildhall School of Music and continued to teach privately. Conducting and teaching took up much of his time, and he composed less in his later years. Liza Lehmann, and Gerrit Smith. His works written after 1900 include The Masque of War and Peace (1900) produced at Her Majesty's Theatre, another opera – The Golden Girl – and a piece for chorus and orchestra, The Wreck of the Hesperus (both 1905). In 1908 his Pageant of Darkness and Light was performed in London. ==Works==