F.C. Lemming

(17**-18**) A music teacher, composer and musician in Cape Town, who participated as musician and musical director in theatrical productions.

Biography

He was possibly of Danish extraction and his name is first mentioned in 1802. He left the colony in 1817.

He may have taken a South African woman with him, for there is a report in the South African Commercial Advertiser (Wednesday 26 October 1836) of a Mrs Frederica Rosina Heyns, "the Consort of Mr. F.C. Lemming, of the King's Orchestra, and native of this place", who had recently died in Copenhagen.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

He is named as one of the members of a German Music and Drama Society (begun in 1802), and gave frequent musical concerts in the African Theatre, the Good Hope Theatre and other venues, possibly with his own Musicaal Liefhebberygezelschap. He is especially acgtive in this respect in 1816-17. From 1812 onwards Lady Cradock , wife of the Governor, was his patroness.

He was a founding member of Boniface's amateur company Honi Soit qui Mal y Pense and composed, directed and played the music for a number of the ballets and pantomimes presented by the company, including Het beleg en het nemen van Troyen (11 September and 9 October 1813), Sapho (22 June, 1815), De Verhinderde Dansparty, of Het Orchest onder den Tafel (29 July 1815),

[JH & TH]

Sources

South African Commercial Advertiser - Wednesday 26 October 1836[1]

Bosman, 1928: pp 137-139, 145, 149, 175 and 520.

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