The Trumpet-Major, a Splendiferous Helmet, and – oops!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I took it into my head to do some spare-time research into the father of one of my musical heroines, last night. In truth, I already know enough for my purposes, but I thought it would be nice to see if I could find out any more.

Victorian Militaria? Don’t Even Go There!

He was a Trumpet Major, right? And then a drill sergeant in Scotland, in retirement. I wondered what his uniforms looked like – an illustration might come in useful in a presentation one day, so why not find out? I googled. I searched eBay. Did I want to buy a hat badge? Well, tempting as it was, I thought I probably did not. And I searched beyond eBay. Then I came to a magnificent, shiny helmet with a scary-looking spike on top. It was for sale – but I didn’t want to buy the thing, just to read the vendor’s description to see if it really was the kind of headgear he might have worn either in active service or in ‘retirement’. I clicked. And – because I wasn’t using this laptop but another one – I was prevented from seeing the item at all. Apparent a shiny nineteenth century helmet counts as weaponry. Well, I know the spike looked terrifying, but it was on top of a piece of headgear. No matter – I don’t want to get myself in trouble, so I didn’t persist, and quietly tiptoed away from the beautiful shiny, silver distraction. I can’t even find the same picture today – even on my own laptop – so I can’t show you it. All I can say is, look at pictures of Victorian militaria at your peril!

Instead, I bought a book about his regiment. This is how I end up learning so many weird and wonderful facts!

Where and When?!

Today, I decided I’d try another line of enquiry. Since I’ve been unable to trace the death of the Trumpet Major’s wife, I wondered if the family might have arranged for her to be buried beside him in Lanark. But can I trace his grave? I cannot. I could try a bit harder, or I could return to Lanark and physically look at gravestones – but I’m not making any plans just now. It’s their music and poetry that interest me, really, not their final resting places.

Or might she have gone to live with one of her children? She certainly wasn’t with Rose in 1901, though Rose and her husband were presumably living with her at the time of their marriage in 1898, since the address is the same, and it was usual to marry at the bride’s family home. This makes me think she might have died between those years. Or she could have died somewhere other than Glasgow. One son had married in England, for a start. It’s a puzzle. Inconsequential, but infuriating!

Maybe another day will bring another search inspiration. Until then – as I said, I really do know quite enough for my purposes!

*picture from eBay

Hunting for Heroines

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

(Or should this be, ‘Holding out for a heroine?’) I love looking for the places where my Scottish music heros and heroines lived and walked. No particular reason – I just like to visualise where they lived. In fairness, it may tell me nothing more pertinent than to inform me that they lived in a very luxurious, upmarket neighbourhood – or one that has seen better times – or indeed, one that may never have been particularly swanky! If they were a church organist or a teacher, or supplied music to dance musicians, it’s nice to see how far they lived from their work. In any case, it’s an innocent enough obsession, and sometimes I manage to find a coffee whilst I’m out prowling!

Out we went into deepest Lanarkshire earlier this week, in search of the birthplace of one of the two women I’ll be talking about at the conference in a couple of weeks.* We couldn’t stop for a photo, in a busy street, but I’d seen it on Google maps in any case.  We had a coffee just round the corner in the main street. (I believe it’s under Turkish ownership, which might explain the intriguing illustrations of quadrilles in different national costumes, on the walls! Look carefully – there’s a Marcia Persiana amongst them.)

Quadrilles, illustrations found in an antique shop by the cafe owner

But I didn’t expect, a couple of days later, to find myself looking across at one of the addresses that our budding composer occupied in Glasgow. Buildings change, and it looks as though this one has been reduced to two storeys since our heroine lived there with her mother and a couple of siblings in the 1890s. So … you may or may not be looking at the tenement flat where they lived, but you’re definitely looking at the tenement!

It’s just along from the Fabric Bazaar and the famous Barras market.  Since Piping Live has been on, and yesterday it was the second day of the World Pipe Bands Championships at Glasgow Green, there was a distant, constant sound of drones, and kilts swinging round every corner.

Yes, even in the fabric shop, the reason for my outing in the first place. No kidding.

*The Royal Academy of Music’s September conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914. My paper has possibly my longest ever title-

‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

Top companies your searchers work at

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Clip of the LinkedIn section listing the top companies my searches work at

Linked in won’t tell me much, without my paying for Premium membership, which I’m not going to do. Still they’ll tell me the top three companies my searchers work at. Frankly, I’m surprised by their names. I’m particularly surprised that IQVIA (a real company) has looked me up again, considering I have spoken to a real, live person – well, I assume she was real and live – to point out that I am absolutely not who they are looking for. So, why have they looked me up again? Didn’t they remove me from their list of hopefuls, as I rather strongly suggested?

This is Who I am Not

I am not, never have been, never will be a medic of any description. Do they really think that just because I have a PhD and am a post doctoral research fellow, I must therefore be a medical researcher?

I was not a straight-A-in-every-subject all-rounder: I have one narrowly-passed O-Level in Physical Chemistry. That’s is my sole scientific credential. The other ten O-Levels, and all subsequent qualifications, are non-scientific.

This is Who I am

I work in a Conservatoire! (To anyone in the USA, it would be called a conservatory.) I’m a musicologist, and my historical research crosses over into social history.

Anyway, to make things easier for them, I have improved my profile. Before tonight, perhaps it was a little ambiguous – to headhunters not familiar with what a Conservatoire is all about:-

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project.

And now?

This is What I do

Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Athenaeum Award for Leng Medal Memories research project into a Dundee Scots Song Competition 🎵.

  • I haven’t said I’m ‘Open to’ work of any kind, because I’m semi-retired, live in Glasgow with an elderly spouse, and could only possibly entertain part-time research which did not entail relocation.
  • I don’t wish to Enhance my profile using AI.
  • I shall, however, Add a section to help clarify that medical research is really, truly not my forte! I’ve linked to my publications list, and featured the paper I’m giving at the Royal Academy of Music’s September conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914:- ‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

Having written my conference paper and devised a PowerPoint, it’ll be back to transcribing oral history interviews on Thursday. The kind of thing you’d expect a musicologist/social historian to be doing, in fact!

Dawn-Break Research

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’ve got the weirdest of headaches.  My head and I got home from A&E at 5 am yesterday. (No explanation, but both serious potential diagnoses ruled out.)

Wristband off – I’m free!

Even Google Health (aka Fitbit) was sorry for me:-

Thanks, Google Health!

Yesterday, weird headache or not – it’s not a foggy migraine, but a frequent, painful distraction – I was determined to make a start on my conference paper.  Miraculously, between twinges, I had suddenly hit upon a good way to begin it, and in desperation, I decided that some simple maths would enable me to make a start, even if I have to tidy it up later.

  • How long would I be speaking?
  • How many words a minute?
  • How many headings?

Armed with that framework, I got started, and actually made reasonable progress, considering how tired and uncomfortable I was. I completed several headings.

So, wouldn’t you think I’d have slept well last night?  I achieved nearly five hours – I suppose that was at least substantially better than the night before.

Morning insomnia is the most frustrating thing. It has afflicted me for years. But if getting back to sleep at 5.20 am is nearly impossible, then return to slumber with the weirdest of headaches is utterly impossible. I didn’t try: I sought medication, made a cup of tea and took it back to bed. But now I was awake, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep.

Duvet-Top Research (the Latest Trend?)

Combining Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Bed in Summer’ and ‘The Land of Counterpane’, out came my phone for some duvet-top research. (There’s just one golden rule: do not touch any audio or video clips, for obvious reasons!) 

I’ve been looking into a Victorian-era London music publisher. What did he publish with a Celtic connection? Who published with him? Did they know each other? This gets intriguing. I can see today’s going to be a day of lists and charts.

Great Western Bridge, at Kelvinbridge

But not before the outing to a secondhand bookshop that I promised myself as a reward for yesterday’s efforts – because it looks as though the only way to find what I’m looking for, is to look in places that don’t have an online presence – just me, leafing through old music.

Just off Great Western Road…

I’m sure to find a decent coffee-shop somewhere nearby!

(Later) The smell of fresh grass … but not a whiff of any interesting scores. Oh, well.

Cover image by madartzgraphics from Pixabay

4 August 1899: On This Day

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Two wedding rings

On this day in 1899, the late publisher James S. Kerr’s daughter Maude took possibly the worst decision in her life – she married Benjamin Disraeli Wigton, Second Officer of SS Britannia.

Anchor Steam Liner Britannia between Glasgow and Bombay

A descendant hinted that they may have been distantly related. That was not the problem. (He also spent some time in an asylum in the West of Scotland, for which we can’t condemn him, obviously.) The bridegroom, with perhaps the most memorable Christian names I’ve ever encountered, went on to marry other ladies in Australia AND New Zealand. However, he was certainly more than a bigamist. It must have been comparatively easy to get away with, in those days. But with such a conspicuous name? Breathtaking audacity!

Maude [Maud] Speirs Kerr divorced him not long after her mother died, and went on to make herself a new life in America. Did she deliberately wait until Mary had died before taking this step? Who knows!

The Scotsman, 17 Oct 1910 – only one extra wife was mentioned here!

Back to Work Now

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Busy Lizzie plant on garden table, with cup of coffee

I’m back at work after a month’s vacation (I confess that I was rather lazy), and now I must get back both to my Dundee Leng Medal research, AND to writing a paper for a conference at London’s Royal Academy of Music: Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914.

Recent Summers

'Don', one of the IAML Cambridge Congress mascots, clad in academic robes

I’m reminded by this, my own blog, that I was attending the International Association of Music Libraries’ Congress in Cambridge, this time in 2023. I particularly enjoyed hearing the talks about early film music. 

I wasn’t speaking on that occasion.  No, my input was merely in various social media aspects: I was running the social media campaign for and during the event, and I’d created a trio of conference mascots – Cam, Bridge and Don – whom I employed in social media posts. (I don’t know what happened to the first two, but Don was given to a wee girl at church, and has enjoyed a comfortable retirement in a family setting.)

IAML Cambridge 2023 programme logo

I’d also come up with the IDEA behind the conference logo – a chap on a punt, incorporating the IAML abbreviation. Well, it was Cambridge! I hasten to add – I wasn’t the artist. The IAML Cambridge Congress feels like a long time and another lifetime ago!  I was already aspiring to a new part-time research existence, but envied another delegate who already had theirs’ lined up, being a tiny bit closer to retirement age than I!

And by this time in 2024? I’d retired from librarianship, but I was rather busy on final tweaks to my second monograph. And 2025 saw a rather unsettled summer, which we’ll gloss over.

Miss Marple – my Alter Ego?

Anyway, this year, I decided it would be a proper vacation, even if I didn’t spend it travelling or sunbathing. I achieved this moderately successfully. However, last weekend I decided I’d ease myself back by having another go at some detective work which had failed on all earlier attempts. My earlier research had focused on this individual’s daughter. Now it was the parent who intrigued me. But again, I drew a blank, after I don’t know how many hours. I cannot trace documented evidence of youthful musical activity by this individual, although I know that she was her daughter’s first singing teacher – and I have my own hunches about some of the books they might have used!

This is not to say that I found nothing. I know where the mother was born – no more than a couple of miles away from where I’m sitting today, in a large house that is no longer there.* It would be fair to say that the neighbourhood has gone down significantly since then! I know where she subsequently grew up (an even larger house in a very nice neighbourhood, again a couple of miles from where I’m sitting today, but on the other side of the M8 motorway). I know where her parents came from, too. And I traced her mother’s retiral from the family business. I even found a blogpost about a family grave in the Glasgow Necropolis.

However, the sad fact is that if a wealthy young woman was musical, but there’s no newspaper documentation of her ever performing publicly, then there really isn’t very much to go on. Try as I will, I can find no mention of her at school, or singing, being a soprano or a contralto, ‘contributing’ (a common word in Victorian reportage of musical events), or even venturing into playing the piano/pianoforte. Her older brother and sister took part in a fund-raising bazaar hosted by the local church, but there’s no mention of ‘my’ subject there either.

I have visions of myself standing dolefully outside the large house that’s still standing, or on the corner of the street where the other house stood, or even in Glasgow Necropolis, literally trying to communicate with ghosts past, in my efforts to intuit how much music occupied her childhood and adolescent years. It would make not a scrap of difference, though!

Ah, well. Back to more pressing topics. Perhaps I have to give up on my Miss Marple endeavours.

*By this evening, I had realised that my bus route to work actually passes the junction where Flora’s mother was born. It’s a curious coincidence, to add to the vacant site a bit further along the route, where James S Kerr’s first music shop was located.  Who knew the no.23 bus had such  historical links?!

You Can Please Some People Some of the Time

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

… But you can’t please all of the people all of the time. So (apparently) said John Lydgate in the fifteenth century. (Thereby proving the veracity of another old adage: ‘There’s nothing new under the sun’.)

I play a wide range of organ music. I throw in a generous pinch of Scottish songs – although not to excess, I think – and cover a range from Baroque to modern. Not wildly modern – Messiaen is beyond me! And I realise that what I consider ‘middle of the road’ may not be the middle of everyone else’s. However, my conscience is pretty clear – because I do try to please everyone at some point or other! So, it is a little hurtful to hear adverse comments. I do rather wish this hadn’t been relayed to me.  (I mean, why? Was it well-intentioned? Was it a direct quotation or paraphrased?)

She always plays such miserable stuff!

I genuinely feel that’s a harsh and rather unjustified criticism. I disagree with it!

However, I got some new organ music last week, and eagerly took it to church to try out yesterday (Saturday) morning. I’d found Robert Gower’s organ arrangement of Amy Beach’s Scottish Legend, op.54, which by any stretch of the imagination should have been perfect. I like to play music by women composers; I like Scottish-influenced music; and I like turn-of-the century harmonies. The American Amy Beach, currently enjoying a deserved new fame, lived from 1867-1944. I haven’t yet looked into why or when she wrote this particular Celtic-inspired piece, but I do know that it was originally one of the Two Piano Pieces, op.54:-

IMSLP piano original

From my perspective, it looked like a perfectly good, gentle and tuneful piece, and I was looking forward to working on it.  However, when I tried it at the organ, I felt only disappointment.  It sounds like a ‘Coronach’ – a Gaelic funeral song, or dirge. So how will that go down? No-one can say it’s a happy, upbeat tune!

It’s reminiscent of, but slightly more cheerful than the contemporary Coronach by pianist, organist and composer Edgar Barratt (1877-1928). This, too originated as a piano piece:-

Edgar Barratt, Coronach (piano)

Here’s the organ transcription of Barratt’s piece:-

Barratt- Coronach (organ)

Edgar Barratt was the son of English organist John Barratt (b.1848), who by 1881 at latest had moved to Paisley to be the Abbey organist. I haven’t yet discovered where Edgar Barratt trained, although I know his brother William Augustus studied composition at the Royal College of Music. Perhaps I don’t need to know. Anyway, I’m surmising they may have spent most of their childhood in Paisley. Edgar had clearly absorbed the Scottish idiom when he wrote his Coronach. Stylistically, his piece, and Amy Beach’s, sit alongside pieces like Hamish MacCunn’s Land of the Mountain and the Flood, even if they’re on a smaller scale.  There has long been a fondness for Scottish-sounding music!

But, to get back to Beach’s piece – that ‘miserable stuff’ comment echoed in my ears – months after it was relayed to me. I put the music back in my briefcase and headed home without giving it a second try.

Repair, Design

I found myself driving behind a van belonging to a whirlpool spa bath firm, with a slogan on the back: ‘Repair, Design’, and a couple of other skills.  I misread it as, ‘Despair, Resign’, and reflected that it felt like a summary of my mood.  Now, this is evidently plain lunacy.  Why should I  despair, for fear a little organ piece strikes a sombre note?

Anyway, I’m starting to like it. I’ve played the piano recording a couple of times. I’ll have another go at the organ arrangement on the piano at home, before I go back for my next practice session.

I think I should stop caring so much what other people think!

Blog post image from IMSLP

Friday Afternoon, and I’m Feeling Mischievous

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
image by Nitish Gupta from Pixabay - woman holding LinkedIn sign

Headhunted!

I’ve had a series of phone-calls from the in-house talent team at IQVIA today. This is apparently because I am looking for clinical manager roles. I can see one tiny problem. No, more than one!

AM I?

I’m semi-retired, and geographically tied to where I am. I can’t relocate.  And whether or not I would take on more work is hardly the question, because I haven’t activated LinkedIn’s looking-for-work function. Quite apart from the elephant in the room – that job title.

They were Persistent!

I ignored the first call. Told the second and third that I hadn’t asked them to contact me. Finally, I asked the fourth caller – Amelia – why she thought I was suited for a role as clinical manager, and she said it was because of my LinkedIn profile.

Have I ever intimated that I have medical qualifications? I have not. I told Amelia very firmly to remove me from their database because I am utterly unqualified for a clinical manager role. (I’m not even entirely sure what a clinical manager does!)

However, if I get any more calls, I can’t promise that I won’t enjoy myself stringing them along and wasting a bit of their time. I’ll share my age and qualifications. I’ll tell them about my specialisms, and bring them up to date with my latest research. It’ll be most amusing – well, to me, at any rate.

After all, my insights into the history of Scottish music publishing might be exactly what is needed to cure someone’s duodenal ulcer …

On This Day in Past Summers

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

WordPress has a habit of reminding me what I posted ‘on this day’ in previous years. Today’s reminder has been quite interesting!

2019

… seems a long time ago! I was in Killin, speaking at the Clan Gregor Weekend. Sir John Macgregor Murray was an interesting historical figure whom I’d encountered in passing during my doctoral research. A decade later, I’d been invited to give a research paper about him at the Sorbonne, and it turned out that Clan Gregor was also interested in my research, so I gave an after-dinner talk there, too.

The paper eventually became a peer-reviewed article in vol.13 no.1 (2026),  pp.50-63 of the Folk Music Journal, ‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’.

2022

I gave a lightening paper at a HoPIN webinar. HoPIN is the History of the Printed Image Network, so my paper was probably rather unfamiliar territory for researchers more familiar with images than old sheet music.

2023

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

I was revising my second monograph prior to submitting it to the publisher. And looking forward to taking up my Ketelbey Fellowship in the History Department at the University of St Andrews. (By the end of the fellowship, I’d be working on revisions to the book!)

2024

I had not long retired from librarianship, but now I identified as semi-retired. So for the research fellow part of me, it was full-steam-ahead on indexing the second monograph, and my ‘vacation’ was somewhat busy. I was also contemplating an emergency visit down to Norfolk – I can’t remember if I actually went that time, because there were several such crises, some resolving sooner than others.

2025

Again, my vacation was far from relaxing. I was back from a trip to Norfolk, and in Glasgow we were having a new bathroom fitted. Meanwhile, we knew that a family bereavement was very imminent. I got the sad news on the final day of the bathroom re-fit, with a houseful of plumbers and electricians around. The news and our domestic circumstances will always be combined in my memory!

2026

Down-time

It’s more like a vacation this year, I guess. It’s warm and sunny. The garden’s looking moderately tidy, and I’m not rushing to meet a deadline.  If I feel unsettled and vaguely guilty for my laziness … well, maybe I’m just out of practice!

Anyway, I know I’ll be busy enough when my holidays come to an end.

Holiday Reading: Old Boys in Top Hats

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Busy Lizzie plant on garden table, with cup of coffee

I’m still managing not to reply to work emails – I merely glance at my inbox and delete anything irrelevant – and I haven’t touched my interview transcriptions this month. From that point of view, I’m succeeding at this ‘having a holiday’ July. However, my eBay purchases arrived earlier this week, and I could hardly not look at those, could I?

Holiday Purchases!

Prospectus, 1913-14

The school prospectus for 1913-14 contained no mention of James Easson in its examination results. He’d have been 17 or 18 by then.  He was also absent from the ‘List of Distinctions gained by Former Pupils’ – but he wouldn’t have had time to get any before the Great War began. I already knew that he served in the war, was invalided out in 1917, and got his Royal Academy of Music certificates in 1918 and 1921.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I discovered that the school provided instrumental and vocal instruction – but the teachers’ names weren’t those of the men with whom Easson studied; maybe he had private tuition.

The other alumnus in whom I was mildly interested – the one at the Scottish publishers whom Easson and Wiseman had initially considered, before signing a contract with Nelsons – did appear in the prospectus. He had attained Second Class Honours in Rhetoric, English Language and Literature at Edinburgh University during 1912-13 and graduated with an M.A.

APER: Fifty Years of Progress 1898-1948

This guy also appeared in my other purchase – a jubilee publication celebrating the Association of Publishers’ Educational Representatives.

It was pleasing to spot a contribution from one of the older editors at Thomas Nelson’s, too. By 1948, he had retired to Cornwall – he’d been living there most of the time before retiral, anyway.

Unfortunately, although I read this book from cover to cover – and it was interesting, showing the important role that the educational representatives held, liaising between publisher and schools – it soon became evident that a lot of people, some of them reps, and others with different roles in education, had been commissioned to write a few pages to celebrate the organisation’s 50-year jubilee. By the end of it, I was in no doubt as to the nature of their role. I’d also noted that there were lists of members and important officials – but the book had no direct bearing on my own research. There were some amusing anecdotes, and I was reminded that Thomas Nelson’s educational representatives always wore top hats when they were out visiting schools. It distinguished them from ordinary travelling salesmen. 

Top hats in the 1890s (and still in 1948!)

As that retired editor joked, school staff were unlikely to refuse admission to a smartly-dressed gent in a top hat!