Who is this Woman Researching the Dundee Leng Medal Competition? Introducing Dr Karen McAulay

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

If you’ve found a link to my brief questionnaire on Facebook, and wondered who I am and what I’m up to, then maybe I should introduce myself properly?

So … McAulay is my name, but as soon as you speak to me, you’ll realise I’m not Scottish.  I’m the only member of our household that isn’t! However, I’ve lived in Glasgow since 1988 – more than half my life. 

I do have a connection with Dundee through the Friends of Wighton – I’m Honorary Librarian of the Friends of Wighton, who promote the Wighton Collection in the Central Library. It’s a very old, historical collection of Scottish music publications, and I’m just available in an advisory capacity – I’m not in any way employed by the city of Dundee. I do enjoy this connection with Dundee, though. I have often consulted the old music books since before I even started my PhD, so I appreciate their significance. I’ve written about them, and about Andrew Wighton, who was their original collector.

Since I started my career in a public library – in South Shields on Tyneside, as a music librarian – I rather like having this loosely continued connection with public libraries, too.

I do have another link with Dundee, through my writing.   I’ve written both fiction and non-fiction, and the fiction was for D. C. Thomson’s The People’s Friend, during my earlier years in Glasgow.  But since getting started on my research, I’ve only really written about music and social history (and occasionally, libraries!).

I’m a research fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. For most of my career, I was a music librarian at the Conservatoire, but I did a mid-career doctorate at the University of Glasgow, and a few years after getting my PhD, I started being seconded to the Conservatoire’s research department – basically, I split my time between the library and a research desk elsewhere.

Nowadays, I’m just doing the research part of my role – I retired from the library.

My research has always been into Scottish printed music of one kind or another – songs, fiddle music, old music in libraries, publishers who published Scottish music or Scottish publishers who published music.

My most recent research has been into Thomas Nelson’s, the Edinburgh publishers.  They published a set of four Scots Song books for school use, and one of the editors was in charge of music in Dundee schools – so not surprisingly, these books were used a fair bit! Anyway, that’s how I got interested in the Leng Scots Song prizes.  I’m keen to know what competitors remember of their experiences, and if they continued singing Scottish songs later in life.

I’ve had a great response so far. I’ll start having chats with people soon.  But if you would still like to get in touch, it’s not too late. Please just visit this link!

https://tinyurl.com/LengMemories

International Women’s Day: Rose Smith (and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The beginning bars of The Road to the Isles, in a piano arrangement by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.

This has become a two-post day? Well, it’s International Women’s Day. How can I not mention it?

I decided I would play music by women this morning. Rose Smith (one of the women I recently wrote about in the RMA Research Chronicle – you’ll be familiar with her name by now!) was a piano teacher, a composer, and an Episcopalian organist. She was born in Lanark, moved to Glasgow whilst still a child, and later lived with her husband and children in Rutherglen. Her composed songs were rather like those by Ivor Novello – I’ve acquired nearly all of what seems to be extant, but I think a lot is missing. She only self-published a few, and the rest – for variety show singers – may not even have been published at all.

There’s no surviving organ music, so there was nothing for it – I played her songs before morning worship today. I bet you she never played them in church! However, since no-one knew they were secular songs, there was no harm in it. They’re well-written pieces, and I do think it’s a shame they’re not known. I did recommend one to an RCS Finalist a few years ago, and it was performed with enjoyment and appreciation.

I have significant performance anxiety about recording my playing, but I did unearth a piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith, that I recorded for a student a few years ago. Be kind! This isn’t a perfect performance or a perfect recording, but does show how the songs go.

Quick piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith

For my outgoing voluntary today, I turned to a more well-known composer. I played Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s Eriskay Love Song, followed by The Road to the Isles.

Applause

I scored! I don’t usually get a round of applause after a voluntary.

I’ve got a new book of proper organ voluntaries by women composers, so I really must roll up my sleeves and learn some of them, but I suspect The Road to the Isles will prove hard to beat, as far as audience reaction goes …

The People’s Song Book No.2 (published by John Leng)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It stands to reason. If I’m researching the John Leng Scots Song competitions, then I might also be interested in this firm’s publications. Not, of course, that there’s any direct link between Leng’s trust fund and the firm’s later publications.  They published general material, magazines and newspapers, and only a handful of music titles.  However, this means that what music they did publish would be of a kind suited to the mass market. 

‘For the people’

Is it any surprise that, amongst the ‘Aunt Kate’s’ housekeeping and embroidery books, there might also be dance music and national songs? Which of course indicates their recognition of how popular national songs actually were.

The mythical ‘Aunt Kate’ enjoyed a song!

This week, I bought the second volume of The People’s Song Book, published in 1915. It’s quite an attractive little book, containing 32 Scottish, 33 English, 35 Irish and 34 Welsh songs.

There’s also a section with 32 of the now distasteful genre of ‘minstrel’ songs at the back – blackface minstrelsy, not the homegrown wandering minstrel variety. They are described more insultingly than that, as was the unfortunate custom of that era.

Curiously, these are indicated as a third series of English songs, lower down the page.  (The second series appeared after the Scottish songs.  Remember, this was the second book, so the ‘first series’ of English songs is presumably there.)

Today, we recognise the English and American origins of the minstrelsy repertoire, but I doubt the compilers were hinting at that.  I have written at some length about such songs in my recent monograph – what’s in the present book is no different to those in the collections I’ve already examined.

Notwithstanding this – because we have to recognise that the book is a product of its age, whatever our more informed modern opinion – it would be a strange scholar that acquired book 2, but wasn’t curious about book 1, so I’m excited now to be repatriating the first volume from Virginia.  Perhaps some expat took it with them in their trunk, or had it sent to them as a keepsake?  And now it’s coming home – it feels appropriate.

First song in the 2nd book – emigration!

The funny thing about Virginia  – on a completely unrelated note – is that, a quarter of a century ago, I attended a librarianship interview in Richmond. I didn’t succeed  – but I did start my doctoral studies at home in Glasgow, a year or two later.  None of what I’ve subsequently done, would have been done at all, if I’d become yet another emigrant like those of a century before.

And now a little national song book is making its way home to me.  I’ll be sure to make it welcome!

And More?

Book 1 may answer an intriguing question that arose yesterday. I’m impatient!

World Book Day

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
My two monographs, four contributed chapters, and a People's Friend paperback, on the dining room table, with a vase of daffodils.

Something you may not know is that my first book was by no stretch an academic one; it was actually a People’s Friend serial-turned-paperback, published in 1996.

And Her Family Never Knew

Fiction

Not many people know (there’s a theme here!) that I published 30 short stories and that serial, long before I made my second start at an academic career.  Writing helped finance my first maternity leave, and even enabled me to replace my car at the end of it. OK, it was a comparatively little-used Lada. But it had four gears compared to the previous Lada’s three, and more significantly, I’d earned it through writing. I was proud of that. I owe a big debt of gratitude to D. C. Thomson, who gave me these writing opportunities, and plenty of feedback along the way.

Writing Skills: Clarity

Our Ancient National Airs

I honed my writing skills. Clarity was one thing: a story must progress logically, and readability is crucial. I still try to avoid big words for big words’ sake, unless they are the obvious, unavoidable choice. 

And Writing about People

Writing about people was another skill, and I have continued to enjoy this in my subsequent work.  No, it’s more than enjoyable  – I love it! I’m never happier than when I’m writing about people whose lives I have researched; I feel as though I actually know them. Walking through Edinburgh, their ghosts surround me, and I’ve often reflected that I probably know as many deceased Edinburgh musicians and publishers as live ones!

I turned my PhD thesis (2009) into my first monograph (2013), then came a few contributed book chapters, amongst other writings:-

Book cover: A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland's Printed Music, 1880-1951
A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity

My second monograph was published at the end of 2024.  Research has never occupied as much as half my working week, with the exception of last year’s IASH postdoctoral fellowship, so I have to resist making unfavourable comparisons with other full-time academics’ output; mine doesn’t compare.  But, taken in context, I can hold my head up pretty well.

But enough of celebrating my books for World Book Day – I need to get back to the research that will ultimately, I hope, give rise to my third monograph. I’m making up for lost time …

Book Stack

  • And Her Family Never Knew
  • Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era
  • ‘Wynds, Vennels and Dual Carriageways: the Changing Nature of Scottish Music’, in Understanding Scotland Musically
  • ‘National Airs in Georgian Libraries’, in Old Songs, New Discoveries: Selected Papers from the 2018 Folk Song Conference
  • ‘Alexander Campbell’s Song-Collecting Tour: ‘The Classic Ground of our Celtic Homer’, in Thirsty Work and other Legacies of Folk Song
  • ‘Strathspeys, Reels and Instrumental Airs: a National Product’, in Music by Subscription: Composers and their Networks in the British Music-Publishing Trade, 1676-1820
  • A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951

Spanners in the Works

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Last year, there were spanners a-plenty. Family and domestic life presented sadness and major challenges respectively. Nonetheless, last year was amazing. My IASH Fellowship was more than a highlight  – it was a great big blazing beacon, giving me focus and purpose.

This year, we’ve had the rogue trader, in the guise of the unreliable painter and decorator. Then a succession of good guys (plasterers, windowsill-fixers, tilers …).  The round of home improvements is nearly finished now. (Let’s just get the kitchen lino replaced, then we can settle down to await the stone-masons.)

However, more challenges still remain in other quarters. There are so many spanners in the works, that it’s a blessing my work’s only a small part of my week.

I didn’t even want to knit or sew, this morning.  Until I finally decided that even if sewing didn’t raise my spirits, I would at least have a new jacket, if I just got on with it.  And in between the 8000 steps occasioned by unexpectedly role-playing Florence Nightingale, I did achieve my mission. Well, very nearly.

Here’s hoping I’ll be wearing it when I go into work on Thursday!  However, I’m still hoping I get to go to town at all. I’ve  never been what you’d call a Florence Nightingale. And I know I’m a disappointment (this comes across loud and clear!) when it comes to stroking brows and smoothing sheets.  I can handle disinfectant and laundry, but I’d never have made a nurse! Thursday is still something of an unknown quantity. Whether I’ll be Florence Nightingale or a research fellow is equally unknown.

Anyway, let’s see what the rest of the week brings.  I’m itching to get on with the research project, circumstances permitting.

Postscript

More gains than losses:- trip to town not achieved; however, recording device mastered; jacket completed Thursday evening; and invalid improving.

Athenaeum Award Research Project: Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Microsoft Forms icon. Cartoon person sitting holding a notebook or tablet.

And I’ve started. I’m inching towards the part of the project where I start interviewing people, to see what they remember about this long-running Dundee schools singing competition. I’ve created a Microsoft mini-questionnaire so that people can contact me, and a poster for displaying or sharing. I’ve shared news of my oral history research project via Facebook, Bluesky and Linked in. And folk are getting in touch! I am really excited to say that in less than a week, I’ve already been contacted by quite a lot of people. Best of all, they’re already sharing memories of the Leng Scots Song competition that are exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to hear about – which goes to show that I’ve plainly come up with a really good topic to investigate (if I might be so bold as to say!)

Here’s the link to the questionnaire:- https://tinyurl.com/LengMemories

This research is being funded by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

I Met Her, Take my Word for it

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

‘You’ll be home for lunch’, He said. It was halfway between a query and a command. ‘You have four hours …’ (Actually, that came down to three, once I got to the library. Two, allowing for a coffee and my return journey … )

The Authoress

Nonetheless, I held in my hands the two very poetry books that the author (‘authoress’, in those days) had donated to the city library service back in 1881, not that long after they moved from Lanark to Glasgow.  I’ll never know if she handed them in personally, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that she handled those copies at some point. 

I can’t show you them.  (I signed a library form, which said that I couldn’t share my photos on the internet.) But you can picture two small volumes, one dark green and one purple, a little over six inches tall, with gold-edged leaves, and a little gold-embossed lyre on the front cover of each. Slightly different in design, but very similar.

A bit like this unrelated, non-library book

These books are by the mother of one of the women I wrote about in my recent RMA Research Chronicle article.*  Only one has been digitized, but I wanted to see them both. I was enchanted to find she had written a poem about ‘my’ heroine, Rose, when Rose was just a small child.  It was worth the trip for that in itself.  Not that it really added any hard facts to her biography, but still a lovely thing to find.

Anyway, there we were.  Me, Mary Ann’s books, and a poem about wee Rose (amongst lots more poetry – I’m not writing here about everything I found!) – so yes, I think I can safely say I came as close as is possible to ‘meeting’ Mary Ann today. But as I said, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I handed the books back – it was a bit of a wrench, but hey, that’s what happens in a library – and the curtains of time softly closed behind me, leaving Mary Ann in 1881, and myself here in 2026.  I may be back – she and I could have more to talk about!

Book Image by Ruslan Sikunov from Pixabay

Clock Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

* Article, ‘Women Pursuing Musical Careers: Finding Opportunities in Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Scottish Music Publishing Circles’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 56, April 2025 [this date is correct], pp. 97 – 118

Technology! And into the 21st Century …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In my summer holidays, as a child, I would occasionally go to the grammar school with my father, who was Head of Modern Languages there. The school had a ‘language laboratory’ with multiple desks hiding tape-recorders, and a control desk at the front of the classroom. I’m not sure exactly what Dad had to do on these expeditions, but there was much winding of tapes, and whirring spindles, before he declared that everything was now satisfactory – and then we went home. Decades later, my mother’s recollection was that Dad really wasn’t very technically-minded at all, which came as a surprise to me. My hero had surely been at the very forefront of technological advances with this complicated, hi-tech studio?

When I got a cassette recorder, it seemed even more modern. No reel-to-reel tapes for this up-to-date teenager. It also seemed perfectly straightforward. But I really had very little need to record anything by the time the cassette recorder was discarded. I did get a tiny wee recording device a few years ago, but I hardly ever used it. Eventually I chucked it out. I think it got wet at some point – anyway, it wasn’t exactly trustworthy, and the recordings were awful.  I can record on my phone, sure. Or my laptop. Isn’t that enough?

For my new research project, however, I do need reliable, good-quality recordings. To that end, I got a Zoom portable recorder last month, and I must confess that I’ve waited until I had total solitude and no pressing tasks for a couple of hours, before looking at it.  (I couldn’t contemplate working it out whilst decorators tramped through the house – or family members grumped about the sheer inconvenience of what we were being put through in the name of renovation – or sundry other distractions, all challenging my concentration!)  Anyway, I started setting it up this morning. 

Now, I was shown a different model before Christmas, and was told about a similar one in January.  But it transpires that a new portable recorder in the hand is a very different kettle of fish to someone else’s already-set up gadget.

Right On!

A couple of helpful YouTube videos proved instructive. The first – aimed at school students, but I’m not proud – ended with a triumphantly American, ‘Right On!’ Right.

Mr Watson Rocks!

Followed by, on-screen, the caption, ‘Mr Watson rocks!’  Indeed you do, Sir.

Zoom H5 Basics

I may still need a couple more sessions studying this wonderful piece of wizardry … can I find any more by Mr Watson?

The Road and the Miles to Dundee (Cappuccino Concert Today, Research Later)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Today takes me to a Cappuccino Concert in the Wighton Heritage Centre at Dundee Central Library.

As Honorary Friends of Wighton Librarian, I like to show my face as often as I can, especially when the concert sounds exciting!

But I hope that whilst I’m there,  I’ll also be able to chat to friends about my new research project – Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories. You may recall that I blogged about the project a couple of days ago.

My research is made possible with the support of an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Already, several people have been in touch, and I’ll be responding next week.  I can’t wait to hear everyone’s stories, and it’s clear there are hundreds of people out there who participated in this competition!

Would you like to help me?  If so, I’d be very grateful if you could fill in a very short questionnaire, and I’ll get back in touch as soon as I can to arrange an interview with anyone who has a story to tell!

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO SHORT QUESTIONNAIRE

Image by joesoap1952 from Pixabay

Silver and Gold: Leng Medal Memories

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
A Silver Leng Medal for Scots song singing

Do you have schooldays memories of taking part in the Dundee-based Leng Medal Scots song singing competitions?  Perhaps you were a proud prize-winner of a Silver or Gold Leng Medal? 

Maybe you didn’t actually win, but the memories are still vivid? You might remember the song you chose, or which song book you sang from? Or you helped someone else polish up their performance?

Maybe you’ve never stopped singing Scottish songs?

Newspaper engraving of Sir John Leng (Illustrated London News, Saturday 10 June 1983)
Sir John Leng: Dundee benefactor

I’m on the staff of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as a postdoctoral research fellow, researching Scottish music.  Whilst investigating an old Scottish song book aimed at school pupils in the post-war era, I became fascinated by the initiative of Sir John Leng (1828-1906), who endowed the singing prize 125 years ago. He died 120 years ago, but his singing competition is still live and kicking all these years later.  Encouraging kids to sing Scottish songs was obviously a good thing!

Would you like to help me?  If so, I’d be very grateful if you could fill in a very short questionnaire, and I’ll get back in touch as soon as I can to arrange an interview with anyone who has a story to tell!

I decided to find out more, and I’m embarking on a project to talk to as many Leng medallists, entrants, teachers or adjudicators as possible.  The Sir John Leng Trust endorses this research, and is looking forward to hearing what I uncover. 

My research is made possible with the support of an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO SHORT QUESTIONNAIRE