A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Reid Concerts

by George Grove

REID CONCERTS. These concerts have not reached their present high position without vicissitudes almost as unfortunate as those to which the Reid Professorship was subjected. The earliest under Professors Thomson and Bishop, considering the then musical taste of Scotland, were not unworthy of General Reid's munificent bequest. The £200 allowed out of the Reid Fund was wholly inadequate to the cost of a grand concert 400 miles from London. The Senate therefore decided that, besides this grant, all the tickets should be sold, and that the proceeds should assist Professor Thomson in giving a fine concert; and the following note was printed in the first Reid Concert Book^[1] in 1841:—'The Professors desire it to be understood that the whole of these sums'—i.e. the grant and the proceeds—'is to be expended on the concert; and that in order to apply as large a fund as possible for the purpose, they have not reserved any right of entry for their families or friends.'

This system was continued by Sir H. R. Bishop, and in 1842 and 43 the sale of tickets enabled him to give concerts which were at least creditable for the time and place.

Upon Professor Donaldson's accession, a plan was initiated by him which proved most unfortunate. He altered the system of admission by payment to that of invitation to the whole audience; and in consequence the Reid Concerts began to decline, and became an annual source of vexation to the University, public, and Professor. The grant, which under legal pressure afterwards seems to have been raised to £300, was then only £200, and therefore not only was it impossible to give an adequate concert without loss, but the distribution of free tickets naturally caused jealousies and heartburnings to 'town and gown,' and the Reid Concert became a byword and the hall in which it was held a bear-garden. Matters seem to have culminated in 1865, when a large number of students, who thought that they had a right of entry, broke into the concert-hall.

Such was the state of matters on Professor Oakeley's appointment in 1865. Finding it impossible after twenty years to return to the original system of Thomson and Bishop, he made a compromise, by giving free admissions to the Professors, the University Court, the students in their fourth year at college, and a few leading musicians in the city, and admitting the rest of the audience by payment. From this date a new era dawned on the Reid Concerts; the university and the city were satisfied, and the standard of performance at once rose.

In 1867 a practical beginning was made, by the engagement of Mr. Manns and a few of the Crystal Palace orchestra, with very good results.

Since 1869 Mr. C. Halle and his band have been secured, and each year the motto seems 'Excelsior.' The demand for tickets soon became so great that the present Professor organised two supplementary performances on the same scale as the 'Reid,' and thus, from concerts which on some occasions seem to have been a mere performance of ballads and operatic music by a starring party, the Reid Concert has grown into the 'Edinburgh Orchestral,' or ' Reid Festival,' an annual musical gathering on the completest and most satisfactory scale as to materials, selection, and execution—one which would do honour to any city either of Great Britain or Germany. To have achieved so splendid a result in the teeth of so many difficulties does honour to the tact, ability, and devotion of Sir Herbert Oakeley, and is sufficient, even without his popularisation of the organ, to perpetuate his name in Scotland.

[ G. ]

1. Remarkable as the first programme issued in Great Britain with analytical notes.