St Cecilia’s Hall
In recent weeks, Donal Hurley and I have reviewed concerts at St Cecilia’s Hall for the Edinburgh Music Review, and I’ve previewed the Sypert concert series taking place on Saturdays, 7th, 14th, and 21st June. The response to the reviews suggests that many Edinburgh music lovers are regular attenders at concerts in the hall, although its secluded position means that it’s still not as well-known as it should be.
St Cecilia’s Hall is a beautiful elliptical space seating 200. It is Scotland’s oldest purpose built concert hall, and as the home of the Edinburgh Musical Society it held regular concerts from until 1801, when it was bought by a Baptist Congregation. For the next 150 years it had various owners including the Freemasons, the Edinburgh School of Arts (now Heriot-Watt 1763 University) Dr Bell’s School, and the Excelsior Ballroom. Edinburgh University bought the building in the 1950s and in 1968 was opened as a centre for the study of musical instruments, offering a wide range of concerts and musical opportunities. In 2017 a redevelopment programme saw the creation of a new entrance off Niddry Street and additional gallery space, enabling the display of over 600 musical instruments.
Edinburgh University boasts that the Concert Room, and surrounding galleries, are the only place in the world that you can hear 18th-century music being played on 18th-century instruments in an 18th-century setting. The collection of musical instruments is one of the finest in the world, with 6000 items from the 1500s to the present day. Instruments from the collection are played in concerts in the hall and researchers come from around the world to study them. Tours and groups visits are regularly offered and can be arranged for visitors with different interests and knowledge levels.
The Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall and Museum promote and support this unique music venue and instrument collection. Membership costs £15 a year and among the benefits of membership are exclusive Friends concerts, copies of the award winning magazine ‘Soundboard’ and reduced prices for concerts organised by the Friends as part of the Edinburgh fringe festival
This year there are five concerts in the Sounds of St Cecilia’s 2025 – all at 3pm
Saturday 9th August Clair-Obscur
Apolline Khou, harpsichord, plays ‘Clair-Obscur pieces by J S Bach, Marin Marais and Silvius Leopold Weiss, works which revel in contrast between darkness and light.
On Wednesday 13th August Delights for Violin and Harpsichord
George Weir, violin and John Kitchen, harpsichord, play works by Bach. Handel and Corelli
Friday 15th August The Early Jazz Clarinet
Tom Gibbs, clarinet, Alex Handyside, guitar, and Timmy Allan, bass, pay homage to jazz clarinettists of the 1920s and 1930s
Wednesday 20th August L’homme Armé
Héloise Bernard, Eva Moreda Rodriguez and Eric Thomas explores music from the period of the Hundred Years War
Saturday 23rd August The Art of the Arranger
Gerry McDonald, recorder, and John Kitchen, harpsichord perform works by Vivaldi, Bach, Telemann and Corelli
Tickets priced £15/£5 for concessions are available from the Fringe Box Office now, or on the door. Friends’ tickets bought on the door cost £12
For more information on the Hall, Friend’s Membership and Sounds of St Cecilia 2025 see:
www.friendsofstceciliashall.com
I’ll finish with a lesser known fact about St Cecilia’s Hall , which I attended for the inaugural celebration of the Scottish Poetry Library, a Burns Supper held on 23rd January 1984. Here is the description from the SPL archive:
“On the night of the 23rd January 1984, 300 people fought their way through a blizzard to attend the opening party at St Cecilia’s Hall, to hear Naomi Mitchison, Sorley MacLean, Norman MacCaig and Alexander Scott read, and to try the now famous vegetarian haggis, created for that occasion by Macsween’s.”
If memory serves, Mr Macsween was originally sceptical about the concept of a vegetarian haggis, but reluctantly agree to provide plastic casings for two different recipes invented by members of the committee. As appropriate to the venue, I stuck to the authentic original!
