Hamish MacCunn

Hamish MacCunn (22 March 1868 – 2 August 1916), was a Scottish composer and conductor who lived in the later part of the romantic period.

Birth

He was born in Greenock.  His father was a shipowner.  He soon showed a great talent for music. In 1883, he got a scholarship to study  at the Royal College of Music, which had only just been founded. His teachers there included Sir Hubert Parry and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.
Works
MacCunn became a professor of harmony at the Royal Academy of Music from 1888-1894.  He also taught at the Guildhall School of Music.

MacCunn composed several orchestral works as well as operas,  but he had to spend more and more time conducting in order to earn money.  For a time he conducted the Carl Rosa Opera Company.  He conducted Wagner’s opera Siegfried and the first performance in English of Tristan and Isolde.

In 1887, he conducted his overture The Land of the Mountain and the Flood at the Crystal Palace.  This was a very successful piece, and it remains the only composition of his which is still often performed.  The music has a Scottish feeling and sounds quite similar to the music of Mendelssohn.  Although he composed other pieces which were similar in mood, none of them were as successful as this one.

In 1888, he married Alison Pettie, daughter of the painter John Pettie who had painted MacCunn's portrait several times.  They had one son.  John Pettie liked music and helped MacCunn in his career by organizing concerts of his music.

He died aged only 48.

References
New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, edited Stanley Sadie, 1980; 

Other websites
Biography from the British Musical Society 

Category:1868 births
Category:1916 deaths
Category:20th-century British composers
Category:Romantic composers
Category:Scottish musicians
Category:People from Greenock