The First Violin in Edinburgh

feliksa_janiewicza_3.jpg, default, View from the exhibition 'Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz', 2022, Georgian House, Edinburgh, photo: Pako Mera

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Many have heard of Felix Yaniewicz, yet relatively little is known about his life. As it happens, he spent several decades in the capital of Scotland, actively shaping the musical life of the city.

‘Talking about Mr. Sullivan, he composed a fantastic score for the new Macbeth. Mama heard it’.

‘Oh, indeed. Mr. Sullivan invited me to a rehearsal; marvellous music. It only annoys me that they’ll have that old trollop Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Then again, one does need a vixen for that part’.

‘Being “The Scottish Play,”’ Elgie went on, ‘they want to take it on tour to Edinburgh next summer …’ His eyes fell on me, and I knew at once where he was going. ‘The Scottish Theatre Company is short of musicians, so – well, they offered me a place there’.

Catherine and my father looked at him blankly, as if they had heard an unfinished sentence. Elgie had to spell it out for them, not a trace of humour on his face.

‘I want to go’.

Their stares progressed from vacant to disturbed. Catherine carefully put down her cutlery. ‘Elgie, my dear, you cannot be serious’.

‘I am. It is a great opportunity. I will be first violin!’

Father snorted. ‘First violin in Scotland! My, oh my, what an achievement! I’d rather you played third triangle in the bloody Whitechapel parish’.^[1]

This is a dialogue imagined by Oscar de Muriel, author of a series of detective-fantasy novels, set in Victorian Edinburgh and narrated by Inspector Ian Frey (Elgi’s half-brother). Ian is having a bit of a bad time – his fiancée has left him, and his superiors seconded him to Edin-bloody-burgh, as his father calls the northern city. But is Edinburgh really such a bad place to live for someone who’s a detective and a musician?

As we can conclude from the rich collection of detective stories set in and around the capital of Scotland (cf. the anthology The Edinburgh Mystery and Other Tales of Scottish Crime, ed. Martin Edwards, British Library; London, 2022) – it is a perfect place for a detective. But the city first named ‘Castle Rock’ can also make a good home for a musician – as evidenced by the last part of the rich life of Feliks Janiewicz, or Felix Yaniewicz, as he began to spell his name once he settled for good in the British Isles.

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In the photo: Trustee of the National Trust for Scotland, David Mitchell, Director of ‘The Friends of Felix Yaniewicz’, Josie Dixon, Director of IAM, Barbara Schabowska and Consul General in Edinburgh, Łukasz Lutostański, at the opening of the exhibition 'Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz', 2022, Georgian House in Edinburgh. photo: Pako Mera Photography / Forum

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Most people have heard of Yaniewicz yet know little about his life. Violinist, composer, impresario, publisher, distributor of musical instruments. A protégé of Stanisław August Poniatowski and Izabela Lubomirska, an acquaintance of Haydn, Mozart, Solomon, Paganini, and Angelica Catalani (whom he managed to bring, for a high fee, to perform in Bath and with whom he had a long musical partnership). Apart from a few 1960s academic articles, a small publication by Mieczysław Szlezer (Feliks Janiewicz. Polski skrzypek – zapomniany przez swoich, doceniony przez obcych [Polish violinist – forgotten by his compatriots, appreciated by foreigners], Academy of Music in Kraków, Kraków 2017; in addition to reliable information based on verifiable sources, this also contains plenty of dubious speculations) and an unfinished series of Yaniewicz's works published by the Musica Iagellonica publishing house, little work has been devoted to this Polish-Lithuanian musician. Recently, his great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Josie Dixon, has begun efforts to restore his name. Inspired by the discovery of a square piano from the shop of her ancestor, restored and described in The Consort by Douglas Hollick, she persuaded several institutions (including the Adam Mickiewicz Institute) to fund an exhibition dedicated to Yaniewicz.

Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz is presented at the Georgian House, a building owned by the National Trust for Scotland. This is not one of Yaniewicz's places of residence (the last one, at 84 Great King Street, is marked with a commemorative cornerstone, and at Warriston Cemetery we can visit the grave where he is buried along with his wife Eliza, née Breeze’.

But its décor perfectly matches the theme of the exhibition – there’s even a portrait of a woman holding some music and dressed in the style of regency above the piano in the drawing room.

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View from the exhibition 'Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz', 2022, Georgian House, Edinburgh, photo: Pako Mera Photography / Forum

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The exhibition is rather small: it comprises three display cases with exhibits, a few paintings, some sheet music (unfortunately facsimile, not originals), a short introductory film – importantly, containing extracts from two recitals played on the renovated square piano – and the instrument itself. The displays contain a few private items, among them silver cutlery and a seal with the motto ‘Pro Lithuania’, a gold snuffbox, correspondence, a family autograph book with a fragment of a letter from Paganini, the text of the aria ‘Ombra adorata aspetta’, written down by Angelica Catalani herself, and a sonnet dedicated to Felix’s youngest daughter, Paulina, on her wedding day…

The undisputed star of the exhibition, however, is the square piano, with which it all began. It is suspected that this beautifully decorated instrument – with paintings, brass rosettes and wooden fretwork – was produced by Muzio Clementi, and Yaniewicz and his partners (different at different stages of his activity) dealt only with distribution and advertising. (Editor’s note.)

Thumbnail — View from the exhibition 'Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz', 2022, Georgian House, Edinburgh, photo: Pako Mera Photography / Forum

The same applies to the lyre-guitar, also presented at the exhibition. The main difference between these instruments, however, is that the piano has been restored to a playable state. The lyre-guitar’s strings have not survived and it is uncertain that the instrument would survive being strung to playable tension.

One of the most beautiful objects featured in the exhibition is an inlaid wooden case for two violins. Yaniewicz owned a Stradivarius and Amati – and both of these instruments rested right next to one another for years. It is not known today which specific instruments belonged to the musician and whether they survived. The Stradivarius was reportedly sold around 1845 for £60 into other private hands. A slightly disintegrated piece of rosin has been preserved in a box labelled by his granddaughter indicating that it was Yaniewicz’s.

L. De Longastre’s 1799 portrait depicts Yaniewicz in a fashionable hairstyle inspired by ancient Rome (we can compare his combed hair with Napoleon’s slightly thinning mane in Andrea Appiani’s portrait from 1805). One could say, half-jokingly, that the hairstyle can be seen as an indicator of one’s musical preferences. In this spirit it was portrayed some years later (ca. 1820) by Edward Francisco Burney (the nephew of musicologist and critic Charles Burney) in the painting Amateurs of Tye-Wig Music (Musicians of the Old School), which hangs today in Tate Britain (and in another hall of this gallery, we can see the aforementioned Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth in a John Singer Sargent portrait!). Burney’s canvas is a parody of popular concerts, devoted primarily to the music of Georg Friedrich Handel, full of references to specific people, publications, and 19th-century musical events, and more generally – a whole group of opponents of modern music, i.e., Luigi Boccherini, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven or Giacchino Rossini. Yaniewicz, a founder member of The Philharmonic Society, established in 1813 to promote this kind of work (editor’s note), was himself a classical composer and usually chose such music for concerts he organized. Most of the repertoire of the first Edinburgh music festival, which he initiated and where he served as the orchestra’s concertmaster and sometimes a soloist, also featured the music of the new school.

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View from the exhibition 'Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh: The Story of Felix Yaniewicz', 2022, Georgian House, Edinburgh. In the photo: Yaniewicz & Green square piano, photo: Pako Mera Photography / Forum

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Searching for musical curiosities around today’s Edinburgh, we may find another important trace of the popularity of classical music in Scotland – although also criticized in its time.

In March 2022, the National Library of Scotland opened a small exhibition of particularly valuable objects from its collection. Among them, we can find sound recordings – for example, works performed on the violin, recorded on wax cylinders, as well as publications of sheet music – for example, the first edition of 25 Scottish Songs op. 108 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This collection of folk studies and popular melodies (the only opus of its kind in the output of Eroica’s author) was created on the initiative of the publisher, George Thomson. The earliest songs, including the moving The Sweetest Lad Was Jamie with words by William Smyth, were completed by Beethoven in 1815 – the same year in which the first Edinburgh festival took place. In addition to this first edition, the Library also holds Beethoven’s letter to Thomson written in French. Of course, it addresses, among other things, the fee. Contemporary artists were also invited to create new works inspired by old treasures – Beethoven’s letter was revived in the work of Hannah Lavera, who wrote, in response, the poem Weather Fronts (available online: www.nls.uk/treasures/neu-treasures/hannah-lavery/poem/).

When looking for other musical archives, we can also visit the National Museum of Scotland. We will see the harp ‘Queen Mary’ manufactured at the turn of the 14th and15th century. Did the instrument belong to Mary Stuart? The legend says yes: she gave it in the early 1560s to Beatrix Gardyne of Banchory, a famous harpist known as the ‘Sappho of the North’. It is suspected, however, that the harp bears this name because, in the 16th century, it was decorated with the image of Queen Mary – perhaps in the form depicted on a coin minted in her time.

The culmination of our musical walk around Edinburgh could be a visit to St. Cecilia’s Hall, the first Scottish building built specifically to house music performances, which today houses, among other things, a rich collection of instruments. In Yaniewicz's time, concerts were no longer held there, they moved to a more fashionable part of the city, in Corri’s Rooms on Leith Walk. The Assembly Hall opened in 1787 (to which a typical concert hall, with almost 800 seats, was added only in 1843 as in Yaniewicz’s time the Assembly Rooms were for dancing rather than concerts).

Festival concerts were held in Parliament Hall and in Corri’s Rooms, and of course music was also played in private salons – just like the one in the Georgian House, where we can now admire the piano bearing the signature of the Polish-Lithuanian musician.

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