Francis George Scott
Francis George Scott was a Scottish composer often associated with the Scottish Renaissance.
Born at 6 Oliver Crescent, Hawick, Roxburghshire, he was the son of a supplier of mill-engineering parts. Educated at Hawick, and at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, he studied composition under Jean Roger-Ducasse in Paris. In 1925, he became Lecturer in Music at Jordanhill Training College for Teachers, Glasgow, a post he held for more than twenty-five years. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow in 1957.
He wrote more than three hundred songs, including many settings of Hugh MacDiarmid, William Dunbar, William Soutar and Robert Burns's poems. MacDiarmid stated in an essay that his key long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle could not have been completed without Scott's help. Scott published six volumes of Scottish lyrics. In 1949, a complete performance of his Thirty-five Scottish and Other Poems was given in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The Anglo-Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson has transcribed several of Scott's works for piano.
Scott's daughter, Lillias, married the Scottish composer Erik Chisholm.
