James Oswald

James Oswald
(b Crail, bap. 21 March 1710; d Knebworth, Herts., 2 Jan 1769). Scottish composer, publisher, arranger and cellist.

His father, John Oswald (d Berwick-upon-Tweed, bur. 2 Oct 1758), a skilled musician, was town drummer of Crail and later became leader of the town waits at Berwick-upon-Tweed; his brother Henry (b Crail, 1714) also became a professional musician. By 1734 Oswald was teaching dancing in Dunfermline. A sketchbook (Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s private collection, microfilm in GB-En) shows many features of his compositional style already in place. A set of tunes for scordatura violin (in The Caledonian Pocket Companion, x, c1760), dedicated to patrons in the Fife and Tayside area, was probably written at this time, along with the airs for violin and continuo The braes of Ballendine and Alloa House (in A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes, 1740). In 1735 he moved to Edinburgh, where his Collection of Minuets (1736) launched him as a composer and publisher; he was also kept busy as a cellist and teacher. The summit of his Edinburgh period was his Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (1740), which had an immense subscription list and included the Sonata of Scots Tunes, the fine Masonic partsong Grant me, kind Heaven and some excellent fiddle variations. In an advertisement in the Caledonian Mercury (8 May 1740) he announced that, after this book, he would set out for Italy, but instead he went to London at the end of 1741.