I stand corrected. Donald Winch has reminded me that Smith spent more 
time in Kircaldy than in Edinburgh (though the opportunity to hear 
music of the European masters was even more restricted in the latter 
place); and Gavin Kennedy rightly rebukes me for not reading what 
Smith himself wrote. I will now read 'On the Nature of the Imitation' 
and see what evidence it contains of Smith's knowledge of the 18th C. 
repertoire.

On the more general point -- the point of this thread -- as to what 
musical compositions the 18th and early 19th C economists may have 
heard, I still believe I am correct in asserting that performance of 
the large-scale works of the contemporary masters, even the English 
masters, was virtually impossible in Britain outside London (and 
possibly Dublin) until well into the 19th C.

Anthony Waterman