F.C. Lemming

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

He is mentioned in the Cape for the first time in 1802, and left the colony in 1817.

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 worked closely with Mr Bertrand, the ballet-master, on a number of projects and they were both founding members of Boniface's amateur company Honi Soit qui Mal y Pense. He thus composed, directed and played the music for a number of the ballets and pantomimes for Boniface, 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]

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

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