Biography:David Young

Biographical notes
 David Young was an amateur violinist and composer, and a writing master in Edinburgh, and subsequently master of the grammar school in Haddington. He was also a professional music copyist, who was also responsible for compiling several important collections of Scottish tunes in the first half of the 18th century; the two parts of the Drummond Castle Manuscript (1734, AKA "Duke of Perth Manuscript", in private possession; a photocopy at NLS is catalogued as MS 21715), both surviving volumes of the MacFarlane Manuscript (c. 1740, NLS MSS 2084 and 2085), the Young-Bodleian Manuscript (c. 1740, Bodleian Library MS Don.d.54), and the McGibbon Manuscript (c. 1740, University of California, Berkeley). The latter MS contains Scots and Italian music, including embellishments of Corelli’s violin sonatas by McGibbon and McLean. Young was probably born in Aberdeen, Scotland, around the year 1707, and is likely the "Dav. Young" who studied arts at Marischal College, Aberdeen in 1722-6. He is known to have been active in Edinburgh from at least 1740 to May 1743, when he married Catherine Campbell. However, by 1745-7 he had returned to Aberdeen where the births of their three children were recorded. In 1748 he co-founded the Aberdeen Musical Society with John Gregory and five others, and served as the Society's first clerk. Its constitutional documents are in his hand.