Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie

Thomas Alexander Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie (1 September 1732 – 9 October 1781), styled Viscount Fentoun and Lord Pittenweem until 1756, was a Scottish musician and composer whose considerable talent brought him international fame and his rakish habits notoriety, but nowadays is little known. Recent recordings of his surviving compositions have led to him being re-evaluated as one of the most important British composers of the 18th century, as well as a prime example of Scotland's music.

His father Alexander Erskine, 5th Earl of Kellie, was incarcerated at Edinburgh Castle for supporting the Jacobites in the Jacobite rising of 1745. His mother, Janet Pitcairn, was the daughter of a celebrated physician and poet. Thomas attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and around 1752 left for Mannheim in Germany to study under the elder Johann Stamitz and returned to Scotland in 1756 as a virtuoso violinist and composer, nicknamed "Fiddler Tam".

He began propagating the modern Mannheim style, of which he was to become widely acknowledged as the leading British exponent. Six of his three-movement "Overtures" (Symphonies) were published in Edinburgh in 1761. James Boswell borrowed five guineas from Erskine on 20 October 1762, and on 26 May 1763 took him on a visit to Lord Eglinton's in London, where the overture the Earl composed for the popular pastiche The Maid of the Mill (at Covent Garden in 1765) became exceptionally popular. In 1767 the Earl returned to Scotland, where he became a leading light of the Edinburgh Music Society, acting as deputy governor, and as an able violinist directed the concerts in Saint Cecillia's Hall in Niddry's Wynd, Edinburgh.

An active Freemason, he was elected the fourth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Ancients at London in 1760 and served in that office for six years. He also served as the twenty-fourth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland from 1763 to 1765.

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