(Please note: This is an edited version of a fuller survey with notes and sources. A description of the surviving musical instruments at Castle Fraser can be found here.)
There are many reasons why this collection of over 2,000 items of music is important. The range and size of the Collection that remains at Castle Fraser to this day, though sharing much with contemporary libraries, far exceeds anything else nearby. Further, the musical connections between the family and the world of professional music are very close, and the importance of women to music in domestic situations is made very clear. From the many copies that carry signatures, fingerings and other marks, and from the surviving correspondence between family members, we are able to trace who played what instruments, and who sang. From this internal evidence, we can deduce something of the importance that music played in the life of a geographically remote castle, in rural Aberdeenshire, in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
There is a discrete eighteenth-century part to the Collection, a more wide-ranging selection gathered in the early years of the nineteenth century, and a more limited and partial series of piano pieces and ballads from Victorian times.
Elyza Fraser, the last of the Fraser family, and her lifelong companion Mary Bristow, are responsible for the earliest items, and we can intuit that one of these ladies played the violin while the other was a keyboard player. A fascinating copy of an early edition (c.1738) of Handel's Organ Concertos arranged as solos, contains several pencilled ornaments, and gives the impression of being genuinely historical. There are collections of sonatas by Corelli, Handel, J. C. Bach, Boyce, Kammell, Giordani, Sterkel, Schroeter, Robert Barber, and Eichner. Three large collections of church music – Boyce's massive Cathedral Music, Arnold's Cathedral Music, and Garth's English version of Marcello's enormous The First Fifty Psalms published in 1757 – are evidence of a real interest in such repertoire and, for a family, such an interest was unusual. There are several sets of songs from this period including some by the Exeter composer William Jackson. It might just be that the set of Op. 7 Sonatas by the Genevan composer, N. Scherrer, is uniquely held. Manuscript copies made by Miss Bristow include canzonetts by Giordani, songs by Hook and some traditional Scottish songs, giving a small but invaluable glimpse of some of the music which particularly appealed to this lady.
Music from the era of cello-playing Charles Mackenzie Fraser and his wife Jane Hay (the tenth child of Mary Elizabeth, fourth and youngest daughter of the sixteenth Lord Forbes) and their fourteen children, is the most important from a musical perspective.
The heart of the collection comprises a set of parts of symphonies from the mid and late eighteenth century. There are 97 of an original collection of 209 works – the missing 112 seem to have been sold in a roup (auction) in the 1920s. Wilhelm Cramer, father of Johann Baptist and Francis, came to London in the 1770s, and it seems entirely credible that this collection of symphonies might have been stimulated by the close friendship between the Frasers and the Cramers. Wilhelm Cramer had played in the celebrated orchestra led by the Stamitz family in Mannheim and his elder son was a talented concert pianist who played to no less a person than Beethoven. The younger son was in great demand as leader of orchestras, not only in London but also in the provinces, and he rose to become the Master of the King's Musick in 1834. There is then no wonder that Charles felt he had to practise his parts before these honoured guests arrived to form the small orchestra referenced in family correspondence. In addition to these part-books, there also remain arrangements (questionably by the violinist and impresario Salomon, or perhaps even by the composer himself) of the twelve 'London' Symphonies of Haydn, arranged as piano trios. Though they are known of elsewhere, the presence of these with their violin and cello parts is something of a rarity.
Charles had two sisters, Marianne and Helen, who both lived in Hayes near Bromley in Kent, and a younger brother. Because of the death of their mother, all four children were brought up by their uncle Sir Vicary Gibbs, who was a major figure – Member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, and, from 1814, Chief Justice of Common Pleas. He had high social connections, not least with William Pitt the Younger, who lived about a mile away. Both of Charles' sisters were musical and their music came to the Castle when they died. Major composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century are well represented, and include works by J. C. Bach, Haydn, Pleyel, Mozart, and Beethoven, with Lessons, Sonatas and Concertos. There are volumes containing arias from operas still heard today, together with those which have dropped out of favour. These mainly come from the Italian bel canto repertoire, and several carry ornaments and apparent corrections – some inked in by what looks like a professional hand. There are unique contemporary ornaments in Haydn's English Cazonettas in an early edition on paper dated 1804. There is a considerable collection of classical symphonies and operatic overtures arranged for piano duet – with some very well-worn page turns. There are various tutors – especially two for the cello. It seems very probable that this was the generation that bought in music from elsewhere, including Trio sonatas by San Martini (c.1747), Maurice Greene's Forty Select Anthems (c.1770) and La Trobe's Selection of Sacred Music (1809-11). There are a few Catches, Canons and Glees from the late eighteenth century, and a volume of madrigals of Tudor times – The Triumphs of Oriana – which is presently in Parham, but really belongs to Castle Fraser.
Most of the music of the Fraser Collection is printed, but there are several instances of manuscript copies – perhaps a reflection of the expense of music at the time. There are also pieces which cannot be attributed, suggesting that they might have been written by a family member. Perhaps the Three Polonaises for Piano Duet in a Manuscript book of Jane Fraser is one example?
There are also three extant instruments including a rare organ by the London builder Thomas Elliot from 1814 – we still have correspondence concerning its specification between Charles and his sister Marianne. There is a fine Erard Grand Piano dating from 1858 which we know belonged to a later generation of the family and also a Square Piano by William Rolfe, very much of the type that the family might well have had, but a recent addition at the Castle.
© Roger B. Williams November 2019