Francis George Scott

Francis George Scott (25 January 1880 – 6 November 1958) was a Scottish composer. 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 1925, he became Lecturer in Music at Jordanhill Training College for Teachers, Glasgow, a post he held for more than twenty-five years. 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. The Anglo-Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson has transcribed several of Scott's works for piano.Scott is often associated with the Scottish Renaissance. His daughter, Lillias, married the Scottish composer Erik Chisholm.