Box and Fiddle
Year 21 No 06
March 1998
Composers Corner
Robert MacKintosh
Robert MacKintosh, born in Tullymet about 1745, is the least documented of the great Scottish fiddler composers. He was an excellent performer and he was considered by contemporaries to be Niel Gow’s most serious rival. In 1773 he settled in Edinburgh, advertising himself as a musician. His charge for lessons was one guinea per quarter ‘for the public class’ and one guinea per month ‘for a private hour’. For three years ‘Red Rob’, as he was known because of his fiery hair, resided in Aberdeen and led a band there at the Gentleman’s Concerts. He then returned to Edinburgh and in 1803 moved to London, where he died in 1807.
He published four volumes of his music and the best of his tunes, Miss Campbell of Saddell and the strathspey and reel Lady Charlotte Campbell, show to the full his elegant style – and his fondness for the flat keys
Collectors’ Pieces
by Charlie Gore
Charlie Gore edited and published ‘The Scottish Fiddle Music Index’ in 1994. This was the first attempt ever made to index the titles of the 12,000 or so traditional tunes, songs, airs and miscellaneous music published in the printed collections of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The chief value of the Index to researchers, musicians and students of the tradition is that it has made it possible to locate any tune listed and to identify an accessible source for the music (mostly based on collections held at the National Library of Scotland).
Robert Mackintosh (born Tullimet c1745 died London 1807)
Known as Red Rob – Fiddler, Music Teacher, Composer and Band Leader.
If there are less-known contemporaries of Niel Gow who deserve equal praise – and there are plenty – ‘Red Rob’ Mackintosh must head the list. His compositions are elegant and masterly (even the accompaniments in his collections have style); he taught many of the great fiddlers of his day; his band was in unceasing demand at all the popular functions. His son, Abraham, followed him as a composer and teacher and there were descendents of the Tullimet Mackintosh family living and playing in the Atholl district up until the 1930s. He married Margaret Mill and they had 13 children, born between 1767 and 1797, of whom 3 were christened Robert and the two younger of these were alive at the same time. This must have been confusing!
His 4 collections and all but a handful of his fine compositions are nowadays almost forgotten. John Glen published a careful and probably accurate portrait of Red Rob in The Glen Collection of Dance Music (1891) and quoted an Edinburgh directory of the 1770s in which a concert is advertised referring the reader to “Robert Mackintosh, Musician, Skinner’s Close”. From there, he made several changes of address and from one of these (in the 1780s) he advertised violin tuition: “….admittance to the public classes at one guinea per quarter only. Any gentleman may have a private hour….at one guinea per month”. After an absence of three years, during which period he led the band in ‘the Gentlemen’s Concert at Aberdeen’, he was back in Edinburgh advertising violin lessons; ‘Apply at Bremner and Stewart’s Music Shops’.
He dabbled in what some experts call ‘art music’ but his dance tunes are undoubtedly his truest memorial. The first three books were published in Edinburgh, the last in London and three of them have a dedication; Vol 2 to Mrs Campbell of Lochnell 1793; Vol 3 to Mrs Oswald of Auchencruive (born Lucy Johnston of Hilton), 1796; Vol 4 to the Duchess of Manchester (born Susan Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Gordon), 1803. Red Rob left Edinburgh for London in 1803 and died there in 1807, the year Niel Gow died in Dunkeld. After a space od 200 years, it’s hard to guess at the motive for such a move, unless it was for the benefit of his career. Glen recorded that he conducted the orchestra of The Theatre Royal in a performance of ‘Jamie and Bess’ and lived at Little Vine Street, Piccadilly. At the time he may have been in his fifties and presumably in full vigour, an excellent violinist, looking forward to continuing his highly successful career as a professional musician and bandleader. There was continual demand for music at public balls and concerts in London, as the multitude of published dance manuals and advertised functions proclaim. In all probability he fell victim to something like typhoid or pneumonia, although the worry of supporting a wife and 13 children might be argued to have been hazard enough.
His son, Abraham was born 15 June 1769 and followed his father’s profession. He published three collections, the third of which is a re-issue of the second with very considerable additions. Many have associations with places and people around Newcastle area, where he practiced as a dancing teacher for a period. Take the jig Col. Ridley’s Quickstep or Miss Catherine Maxwell’s Scots Measure – proof enough, surely, that he should be rated as his father’s son! Red Rob’s brother James, a blacksmith at Tinereoch, near Tullimet, had five sons who played the fiddle. From these an unbroken line of musical Mackintoshes, some resident in Inver village, others farther afield, descends to the 1930s.
Mackintosh adopted the practice, shared randomly by others of his contemporaries, of titling his 6/8 dance tunes ‘Reels’. This puts a different slant on the meaning of the word ‘Reel’. Was it in fact a more general word meaning ‘dance’? Can a ‘Rant’ be differentiated from it? There is no precise answer. A ‘Strathspey Reel’ is a clearly defined dance tune with a dotted rhythm that distinguishes it from a reel. In the whole of the four collections there are 339 tunes in all the usual dance tempos (there are also quite a significant number of tunes outwith his published volumes attributed to him); in the four volumes, over 100 have ‘Reel’ in the title, but 18 of these are in 6/8 time and only 5 tunes have ‘Jig’ (or ‘Jigg’) in the title. Many commentators have set out lists of Red Rob’s masterpieces. The medley Lady Charlotte Campbell (Reel and Strathspey) and the beautiful slow strathspey Miss Campbell of Saddell are well featured in modern selections and still performed. Miss Margaret Graham’s (of Gartmore’s) Favorite (wrongly attributed to William Marshall by Jim Hunter and correctly attributed but wrongly named as the original tune for the dance ‘Lady Harriet Hope’s Reel’ in RSCDS Book 16) and Miss Douglas’s Strathspey (see ‘Lord Hume’s Reel, RSCDS Book 16) are reproduced here).
Copies etc from The National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh with the shelfmarks for Book 1-4 as follows :- GLEN 357(1); GLEN 357(2) or MH.72; INGLIS 291 (3) and GLEN 358 (for Vol 4). Other copies exist in NLS and in other major Scottish Libraries. NOTE; Red Rob spells his name ‘Macintosh’ only in Book 1. Any queries to Charlie Gore.
Box and Fiddle
April 2002
Robert MacKintosh
Robert MacKintosh, born in Tullymet about 1745, is the least documented of the great Scottish fiddler composers. He was an excellent performer and he was considered by contemporaries to be Niel Gow’s most serious rival. In 1773 he settled in Edinburgh, advertising himself as a musician. His charge for lessons was one guinea per quarter ‘for the public class’ and one guinea per month ‘for a private hour’. For three years ‘Red Rob’, as he was known because of his fiery hair, resided in Aberdeen and led a band there at the Gentleman’s Concerts. He then returned to Edinburgh and in 1803 moved to London, where he died in 1807.
He published four volumes of his music and the best of his tunes, Miss Campbell of Saddell and the strathspey and reel Lady Charlotte Campbell, show to the full his elegant style – and his fondness for the flat keys
Collectors’ Pieces
by Charlie Gore
Charlie Gore edited and published ‘The Scottish Fiddle Music Index’ in 1994. This was the first attempt ever made to index the titles of the 12,000 or so traditional tunes, songs, airs and miscellaneous music published in the printed collections of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The chief value of the Index to researchers, musicians and students of the tradition is that it has made it possible to locate any tune listed and to identify an accessible source for the music (mostly based on collections held at the National Library of Scotland).
Robert Mackintosh (born Tullimet c1745 died London 1807)
Known as Red Rob – Fiddler, Music Teacher, Composer and Band Leader.
If there are less-known contemporaries of Niel Gow who deserve equal praise – and there are plenty – ‘Red Rob’ Mackintosh must head the list. His compositions are elegant and masterly (even the accompaniments in his collections have style); he taught many of the great fiddlers of his day; his band was in unceasing demand at all the popular functions. His son, Abraham, followed him as a composer and teacher and there were descendents of the Tullimet Mackintosh family living and playing in the Atholl district up until the 1930s. He married Margaret Mill and they had 13 children, born between 1767 and 1797, of whom 3 were christened Robert and the two younger of these were alive at the same time. This must have been confusing!
His 4 collections and all but a handful of his fine compositions are nowadays almost forgotten. John Glen published a careful and probably accurate portrait of Red Rob in The Glen Collection of Dance Music (1891) and quoted an Edinburgh directory of the 1770s in which a concert is advertised referring the reader to “Robert Mackintosh, Musician, Skinner’s Close”. From there, he made several changes of address and from one of these (in the 1780s) he advertised violin tuition: “….admittance to the public classes at one guinea per quarter only. Any gentleman may have a private hour….at one guinea per month”. After an absence of three years, during which period he led the band in ‘the Gentlemen’s Concert at Aberdeen’, he was back in Edinburgh advertising violin lessons; ‘Apply at Bremner and Stewart’s Music Shops’.
He dabbled in what some experts call ‘art music’ but his dance tunes are undoubtedly his truest memorial. The first three books were published in Edinburgh, the last in London and three of them have a dedication; Vol 2 to Mrs Campbell of Lochnell 1793; Vol 3 to Mrs Oswald of Auchencruive (born Lucy Johnston of Hilton), 1796; Vol 4 to the Duchess of Manchester (born Susan Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Gordon), 1803. Red Rob left Edinburgh for London in 1803 and died there in 1807, the year Niel Gow died in Dunkeld. After a space od 200 years, it’s hard to guess at the motive for such a move, unless it was for the benefit of his career. Glen recorded that he conducted the orchestra of The Theatre Royal in a performance of ‘Jamie and Bess’ and lived at Little Vine Street, Piccadilly. At the time he may have been in his fifties and presumably in full vigour, an excellent violinist, looking forward to continuing his highly successful career as a professional musician and bandleader. There was continual demand for music at public balls and concerts in London, as the multitude of published dance manuals and advertised functions proclaim. In all probability he fell victim to something like typhoid or pneumonia, although the worry of supporting a wife and 13 children might be argued to have been hazard enough.
His son, Abraham was born 15 June 1769 and followed his father’s profession. He published three collections, the third of which is a re-issue of the second with very considerable additions. Many have associations with places and people around Newcastle area, where he practiced as a dancing teacher for a period. Take the jig Col. Ridley’s Quickstep or Miss Catherine Maxwell’s Scots Measure – proof enough, surely, that he should be rated as his father’s son! Red Rob’s brother James, a blacksmith at Tinereoch, near Tullimet, had five sons who played the fiddle. From these an unbroken line of musical Mackintoshes, some resident in Inver village, others farther afield, descends to the 1930s.
Mackintosh adopted the practice, shared randomly by others of his contemporaries, of titling his 6/8 dance tunes ‘Reels’. This puts a different slant on the meaning of the word ‘Reel’. Was it in fact a more general word meaning ‘dance’? Can a ‘Rant’ be differentiated from it? There is no precise answer. A ‘Strathspey Reel’ is a clearly defined dance tune with a dotted rhythm that distinguishes it from a reel. In the whole of the four collections there are 339 tunes in all the usual dance tempos (there are also quite a significant number of tunes outwith his published volumes attributed to him); in the four volumes, over 100 have ‘Reel’ in the title, but 18 of these are in 6/8 time and only 5 tunes have ‘Jig’ (or ‘Jigg’) in the title. Many commentators have set out lists of Red Rob’s masterpieces. The medley Lady Charlotte Campbell (Reel and Strathspey) and the beautiful slow strathspey Miss Campbell of Saddell are well featured in modern selections and still performed. Miss Margaret Graham’s (of Gartmore’s) Favorite (wrongly attributed to William Marshall by Jim Hunter and correctly attributed but wrongly named as the original tune for the dance ‘Lady Harriet Hope’s Reel’ in RSCDS Book 16) and Miss Douglas’s Strathspey (see ‘Lord Hume’s Reel, RSCDS Book 16) are reproduced here).
Copies etc from The National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh with the shelfmarks for Book 1-4 as follows :- GLEN 357(1); GLEN 357(2) or MH.72; INGLIS 291 (3) and GLEN 358 (for Vol 4). Other copies exist in NLS and in other major Scottish Libraries. NOTE; Red Rob spells his name ‘Macintosh’ only in Book 1. Any queries to Charlie Gore.
Box and Fiddle
April 2002