Anne Crowden

EDINBURGH was in the vanguard of university thinking when it created a residency for a string quartet in its music department, the Reid School of Music.

Its founder, General Reid, was an 18th-century composer of military marches, a selection of which were played annually by the Reid Orchestra on the occasion of his birthday.

He could hardly have imagined Anne Crowden, a later inheritor of his vision, who took a torch of culture to the new world and established the Crowden School in Berkeley, California.

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On the appointment of the Edinburgh Quartet in the early 1950s, Anne, the second violinist, burst into my world, as I am sure she burst into others before and since. She cut a radiant figure: under fine rowan-coloured hair her handsome profile was offset by thick turtleneck sweaters designed to keep out the icy winds. Anne’s large personality revolved round two axes: her sense of fun and her passion for music, combined with her love of the sheer sound of violin-playing which she inherited from the Waddell School of Music in Edinburgh.

Anne, the party girl who expressed forthright opinions and could not abide mean spiritedness, became the recipient of some Presbyterian disapproval from matrons in the Reid Orchestra.

The only party that Anne didn’t arrange was the spontaneous party that happened the evening she gave birth to her daughter, Deirdre.

Everybody was so happy. Alas, the break-up of quartets is as inevitable as death and taxes, so Anne joined the Netherlands Kammerorkest, under Szymon Goldberg.

She travelled extensively and, on a tour which ended in New York, Anne took the plunge and left the group to move out west to Berkeley. She stayed with my father, Colin, for a few weeks, and the rest is history.

Anne’s passions for the arts and her educational background came together in establishing the Crowden School in Berkeley. Exactly a year ago, the fruits of that passion visited Vancouver and her orchestra played at our music school in Langley. It was a sunny evening and the students performed wonderfully.

Anne allowed herself a few hours off and we spent the time in the bar of an expensive hotel overlooking Vancouver harbour. As we watched the cruise ships leaving for Alaska in the evening sun, she expressed her joy in her grandchildren and her pride in the school. Anne, who could not ever spare the time for illness, was concerned about some eruptions on her face. "Oh well, I’ll fix it when I get to Scotland."

After the concert under a brilliant setting sun, the children with their instruments climbed on to the bus. Anne was the last to step on. "Bye Ianovitch. One’s friends are dwindling, one can never be sure."

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No, indeed. I think of Anne, back in North Berwick, returned to Scotland for the last time. I hope she had time in those last weeks to stand on the beach, smell the North Sea and gaze out to the Bass Rock.

Up the coast lies the fishing village of Crail, with its tiny harbour protected from the fierce storms by deep stone buttresses. Her father painted this scene and his picture hung in Anne’s apartment in Berkeley.