Scan 44
Groves Dictionary Of Music And Musicians,vol.3, 1907
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1Perth. During this time, while working at a house ten or twelve miles distant, he resolved to hear Templeton, who was singing at the Perth Theatre. He started after leaving off work, running all the way, and clearing the distance in two hours. Having no money to pay for admission, he stood throughout the whole performance, in the pelting rain, with ear to key-hole, and then took to the road again to be ready for work at six in the morning. He afterwards worked as a journeyman in Edinburgh and London, but returned to Perth to start business on his own account. He had, however, the never-ceasing desire to become a public singer, and made frequent visits to Edinburgh to receive singing-lessons from Edmund Edmunds. Having secured an appointment as precentor in Nicolson Street United Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh, he struggled hard to support himself and family by occasional concert giving, teaching, etc., in Edinburgh and neighbourhood.
3In January 1859 he received his first important engagement, for the Burns centenary at St. George's Hall, Liverpool. In the autumn he gave twelve concerts in Buccleuch Street Hall, Edinburgh. Every programme being different, he tested about 150 songs. Professor Aytoun and Robert and William Chambers were in the habit of attending; they became his personal friends, and gave him many friendly hints and great encouragement at the outset of his career. In 1860 he made short tours in Scotland, and 1861 went as far as the Orkneys. In the summer of 1862 he made his first appearance in London, at the Hanover Square Rooms. Four concerts were given, and the programmes contained selections from 'The Gentle Shepherd,' 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' etc., etc. The veteran John Templeton was present upon each occasion, and was one of the first to offer his warm congratulations. In December of the same year Kennedy gave a long series of concerts in the Egyptian Hall. After tours in the south of England and in Scotland he returned to London in 1864 to give a series of concerts in Store Street Hall, with fresh programmes, which included selections from 'Waverley,' and an entertainment called 'The Farmer's Ingle.' His eldest daughter, Helen, scarcely in her teens, had now become his accompanist. At one time or another his eleven sons and daughters all assisted in the entertainments. In the summer of 1866 he visited Canada and the United States, and sang in every city of importance North and South. For the next twenty years he toured at home and abroad, travelling through Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, and revisiting Canada several times. One of his first acts when at Quebec in 1867 was to visit the grave of John Wilson, the Scottish singer, who died there in 1849. He had photographs taken of the tombstone, and arranged that the grave should be tended and cared for in perpetuity. Kennedy's last appearance in public was at a 'Burns Night,' in Sarnia, Oct. 4, 1886. The last concert given by the 'Kennedy Family' was at Stratford, Ontario, on the following evening. Kennedy being too ill to appear, his daughters carried out the programme, the Mayor of Stratford taking the chair. Kennedy probably hastened his end by resolving to revisit the grave of Wilson with the shadow of death almost upon him. He went out of his way to do so, and died in a few days. The body was embalmed and brought to his native land by his widow; a public funeral took place from his own house in Edinburgh to the Grange Cemetery. An interesting sketch, David Kennedy, the Scottish Singer, by his daughter Marjory (Mrs. Kennedy Fraser; see below), was published in 1887. It contains also a condensation of three books, previously published, entitled Kennedy's Colonial Tour, Kennedy in India, and Kennedy at the Cape. One son and two daughters perished at the burning of the Théâtre des Italiens at Nice on Mar. 23, 1881. His eldest son was David (b. Perth, 1849; d. Pietermaritzburg, Dec. 5, 1885). His youngest daughter, Jessie, married Tobias Mathay (q.v.). Only a few years before his death Kennedy was at Milan receiving valuable hints from Lamperti; a true lover of his art, he ever felt the necessity for constant application and study. Among the Scottish singers who gave similar entertainments to those of Wilson and Kennedy, the Fraser family deserves mention. Its head was John Fraser (b. Renfrewshire, c. 1794; d. Mar. 1879). He and his daughters attained considerable merit in their line.
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7(2) Marjory (Mrs. Kennedy Fraser) (b. Perth, Oct. 1, 1857), is the most distinguished of David Kennedy's children on account of her important work as collector and editor of Hebridean Folk-song. She, like the other members of the family, shared the travels and the musical activities of the father, whom she accompanied on the piano at the age of 12. He began her training as a singer, which was completed under Mathilde Marchesi in Milan and Paris. Her marriage to A. J. Fraser, a mathematician and schoolmaster of Glasgow, took place after her father's death, and, her husband dying not long after, she pursued her artistic career through many lecture-recitals on various aspects of song. Ducoudray's collection of Breton songs stimulated her interest in folk-song, and in 1905 she first visited the islands of the Outer Hebrides. Her own collections of Hebridean song, her extensive studies therein, and the numerous lecture-recitals by which she has brought these songs before the general public, have accomplished for the folk art of the Hebrides a popularity comparable to that achieved by Cecil Sharp for the folk-songs of
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