Composer · 1696 - 1756
William McGibbon
Biography
William McGibbon
(b ?Glasgow, early April 1696; d Edinburgh, 3 Oct 1756). Scottish composer and violinist.
He was long believed to have been born in Edinburgh, the son of the oboist Malcolm McGibbon (d Edinburgh, 29/30 December 1722; see Tytler), but it is more likely that Malcolm was his uncle and that his parents were the violinist Duncan McGibbon and his wife Sarah Muir, which would place his birth in Glasgow. Tytler states that he ‘was sent early to London … and studied many years under [William] Corbet[t]’, while Campbell records that he studied and worked in Italy. (Campbell gives c1745 as the date for this; assuming a confusion between the two Jacobite rebellions, the correct date would be c1715.) Thus it appears that he studied in London from about 1709, accompanied Corbett on his Italian travels from 1711 and settled in Edinburgh in the early 1720s.