Dr Karen McAulay explores the history of Scottish music collecting, publishing and national identity from the 18th to 20th centuries. Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, author of two Routledge monographs.
I was chatting yesterday with someone who has had a lot of involvement with the Leng Medal Scots song competitions over the years. They shared with me a couple of lines of verse that summed up their own philosophy. When I looked it up to see who first wrote the words, I was gobsmacked to find it goes back to … 1588! The words are by courtesy of an old English composer, William Byrd, in his book of Psalmes, Sonets and Songs. [sic] Here are the lines of verse that were shared with me:-
Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learne to sing.’
You can see it in context on a blog dedicated to historical singing, ‘Cacophony! Reimagining Historical Voices‘. You might not agree with all Byrd’s reasons, but at least some of them still ring very true! Singing is good for you. It has mental, physical and social benefits.
In Dundee, Sir John Leng would surely have agreed wholeheartedly. With the added incentive of keeping the Scots song tradition alive!
At some point, I’ll be making a list of the songs that juvenile Leng Scots Song Medal competitors recall singing as their competition entries. It’ll be interesting to compare them against the lists I’ve compiled in connection with a number of Scottish song books. Some kids (a few) chose a song that was entirely their own selection. Most seem to have been offered and taught a short selection of songs, from which they then made their choice.
What goes into a published song book like the four Nelson’s Scots Song Books, though? It was a combination of the compilers’ choice and, occasionally, printer’s practicality.
73 Years Ago …
On this day, 4 June 1953, the then editor of the fourth song book had received the initial proofs from Aird and Coghill the printer, and wrote to James Easson (the Dundonian Music Supervisor collaborating with Herbert Wiseman), to say that they needed two more songs to fill five more pages. Pure practicality! Moreover, the editor was leaving for a new job soon, and was keen to get the publication as far advanced as possible before they left.
Reading the correspondence, it looks as though, in response, Easson supplied ‘Ae fond kiss’ (which ended up occupying three pages) and ‘Maggie Lauder’.
Job done? No. The printers said that ‘Maggie Lauder’ had been supplied incomplete. Moreover, another song, ‘As I came over the Cairney Mount’ was too short. Neither ‘Maggie’ nor ‘Cairney Mount’ appeared in the finished publication. It looks as though an abbreviated ‘I wish I were where Helen Lies’ (occupying one page) was supplied instead. (Three and one do not equal five, but it’s of no consequence now!) But it all goes to show how much to-ing and fro-ing took place before a book is published in its final form.
And has either song even been used as a medallist’s performed entry? I don’t know. I haven’t interviewed that many people! But I’ll be going through my transcripts, so who knows?
It’s time for another update on the research that the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has awarded me an Athenaeum Award to conduct.
By the end of tomorrow I’ll have interviewed some 25 or so Leng medallists who were awarded their silver and gold medals between the 1960s and 1990s. They went to a wide range of schools, though one or two schools have featured more than once. And they sang a wide range of songs. Some were nervous, some excited. Some knew they could sing – others were surprised to win – and all were overjoyed to be winners. I’ve been shown a lot of medals, proudly kept through the decades.
Interestingly, social media has been very helpful in augmenting my research findings. On Facebook, I’ve found folk in groups like Dundee Pals enjoy answering quick questions, and their answers are often highly informative. When I asked how many people had three or more family members with medals, the number of replies was quite remarkable!
The ‘Scottish Cringe’?
It wasn’t until last weekend when I conducted a face-to-face interview in Dundee, that someone mentioned ‘the Scottish cringe’. I guessed what that meant, and when it was explained to me, it was rather as I had guessed. It refers to the inferiority complex that many in Scotland have, having grown up in a Scotland that felt it was always subordinate to England, and looked down on by many politicians south of the border. I did look up where the phrase originated, but I only made a hasty search, so I’ll hold my tongue until I am sure of my facts. An article in Glasgow University Magazine last year provides useful context:-
In the context of my research into the Leng medal competitions, it occasionally led to pupils being encouraged to sing their songs in a refined, sanitised kind of accent – not exactly English, but certainly toned-down Scots. I’m sensing that this happened more amongst older medallists, and hopefully children now are encouraged to use their own natural accent – as they’d speak – rather than trying to put on something uncomfortably clipped and unnatural. Again, Facebook has been very helpful here – 38 comments in reply to my question! I’m bowled over.
“I was talking to a friend about the Leng medals yesterday and an interesting thing came up. Who was encouraged to sing their Scots song in their natural everyday accent? Did anyone get told to sing it ‘nicely’ in a posh concert-platform accent?!”
For the rest of this month, I’ll be going through my recordings and transcriptions, looking for interesting threads and making sure I have tabulated schools, songs and the names of long-remembered teachers! I’m also going to look at some archival material, which excites me considerably. Hopefully I could find further evidence of Mr Easson (and perhaps Mr Wiseman), the compilers of the Nelson Scots Song Books, around the time the books were published – and introduced into Dundee schools.
Excess Annual Leave Balance
I am taking annual leave in July. (If I don’t, I lose it, and that would never do.)
I won’t be capable of NOT blogging for a whole month, apart from which I do like to think that if someone comes back here after a couple of weeks away, there will always be something new for them to find. What it will be, I cannot yet say! (Additionally, as you’ll have noticed, I have a couple of research side-interests, so who knows what my month’s vacation might lead me to, if I feel the urge to investigate sudden bright ideas?)
Image: Head of a Boy Singing, by Merson(Creative Commons)
In search of a Victorian-era suffrage connection, I made a trip to Bridgeton. I sat on the rather beautiful carpet, studying suffrage organisations in Scotland. (We musicologists know how to have a good time!) But was there any mention of the women I was looking for?
No.
(Yes – I did jinx my trip by wearing Suffragette colours!)
However, I found an interesting fact about someone else. ( I subsequently spent several hours at home trying to fit this into what I already knew. And I couldn’t.)
However, it wasn’t a wasted trip. I saw several useful books I hadn’t previously known of. I’ve asked questions.
Barking up the Wrong Tree?
Indeed, armed with a couple more dates, I can see that there must have been many situations when women sympathised with the cause, but were not in a position to take an active part: caring obligations, age, disability or living too far from big cities like Glasgow or Edinburgh in terms of early organised activities. I could be looking, at least in one case, for involvement which would not have been feasible. (I shall not leave any stone unturned in terms of other lines of enquiry, all the same!)
Moreover, before heading home again, I crossed London Road for coffee and a flapjack. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing I’d had elevenses a short distance along the road (formerly called London Street) from where ‘my’ ladies once lived.
I suppose you win some, you lose some. It was a lovely day for an outing, anyway!
An exciting email from the Print Networks Council popped into my inbox this week, announcing a new publication. It contains a chapter that evolved from a paper I submitted back in the pandemic. Yes, I mentioned Mozart Allan’s Glories of Scotland in my book, ASocial History of Amateur Music-Making and National Identity, but I have treated it more extensively in this new chapter. It’s not every day that a musicologist gets to think about the Festival of Britain, book exhibitions, and post-war tourism. I thoroughly enjoyed both the researching and the writing of it – and I’m really looking forward to seeing an actual copy!
The latest volume in the Print Networks series has now been published; copies may be ordered via this link: https://www.peterlang.com/series/phc – where previous volumes in the series are also available.
38 years ago today, we (my husband and I, and the cat) moved from North Shields on Tyneside, to Springburn in Glasgow. I swear the vet hadn’t given Fergie a strong enough sedative for his journey, because he yowled every time we slowed down. Nonetheless, he staggered drunkenly from his travelling crate when we reached our new home.
I had a couple of music degrees, a librarianship qualification, and was a chartered librarian. I’d abandoned a PhD (on mediaeval English cantus firmus treatment in the Eton Choirbook, don’t you know?) a couple of years earlier – and I knew NOTHING about Scottish music. Research fellowships weren’t even on my horizon. I had only ever published small things in my capacity as a music librarian.
Where did the time go?!
We now have three adult sons and no cat. I completed another PhD and a teaching certificate, and gained Fellowship of CILIP. (I relinquished membership when I left the library.) I know ‘a bit’ about Scottish music, have published quite a lot, and added other fellowships to my CV.
No-one ever said, ‘You’ll live to regret abandoning doctoral studies …’
If you’d told the 1988 version of myself what I’d achieve in all those librarianly years, I doubt she’d have believed you. I really just wanted to make it up to myself for not completing the first doctorate.
It all started when we set off from North Shields, behind the removal van.
Our first tenement flat – the pink sandstone block, centre back (collage ‘interpretation’ of a vintage black and white photo)
Thanks to the kindness of a friend of a friend, I received books 3 and 4 of the Nelson’s Scots Song Book through the post today. Well, what else could I do but take a photo of them?! I’ve longed for ages to have the complete set, and now I do.
I have already learned something new. The first two books had little black-and-white line drawings wherever there was a blank bit of page, and apparently the pupils loved these. And then …
I think there was a bit of cost-cutting going on! But I don’t recall any correspondence with the editors James Easson and Herbert Wiseman to advise them of this. I’ll need to go back through my notes!
Suddenly – the pictures stopped!
Book 1 – published 1948; reprinted until at least 1960.
Book 2 – 1950; reprinted until at least 1964.
Book 3 – 1952. I don’t currently know if it was reprinted!
Book 4 – January 1955; reprinted at least in 1956. (The teacher’s book came out in 1954)
It’s a stroke of good luck that my recent research just fits into the scope of this conference, which is taking place at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 2-4 September this year. I’d agreed with my line-manager that I should attend, but I confess I needed a little nudge to actually complete my registration, since my head has been whirling with oral history interviews and the trip down south last weekend.
I’m going to give a paper at the conference, comparing the careers of two of my musical ‘heroines’. One featured in my recent RMA Chronicle article on ladies connected with the Scottish music publishing trade; the other has been mentioned by me elsewhere, but moved in completely different circles, in a different stratum of society. Anyway, the conference cut-off date of 1914 enables me to bring them together in my paper, so I’m looking forward to this opportunity to think about them again as I settle down to write it!
Since I work part-time (1.5 days a week), taking the day off effectively means taking nearly a week off. I’ve been home to Norwich for a fiftieth school reunion – fifty years since we left Norwich High School for Girls, GDST.
In fact, the weekend was significant in three different ways – as well as my school reunion, Dr Edward Harper’s Kilbarchan organ was inaugurated at St Marien, Prenzlau in Germany, and Old Gourock and Ashton Church celebrated its 250th anniversary. But I couldn’t be everywhere at once, so off I went to the reunion, whilst my husband went to the church where he had enjoyed being organist for a number of years. (I drooled over the Facebook postings about Prenzlau, where they seem to have had a fabulous series of concerts and talks in what looks like an absolutely stunning church. Dr Harper would doubtless have been highly impressed. And what lovely sounds were heard on the brief clips that were shared!)
Norwich High School front entranceThe imposing front staircase and a rather nice-looking pianoWell, what do you wear to a school reunion?! I agonized …From Newmarket Road, NorwichImpressive Skylight – I never noticed before!
I’m so glad I went to Norwich. I’m prone to focus on negative memories, but everyone was really welcoming, and it was great catching up with what everyone had done, and where they’d been. No-one else had a negative memory of one particular teacher who really did not like me! Then again, I’d kept in touch with the other member of that department for 25 years, and she’d even visited and stayed with us in Glasgow.
Old School Tie
I heard stories that I’d never heard before, and was reminded of things that I did vaguely remember. We were shown round the school, exclaiming over the changes and remembering the familiar. The archivist was there, and there were photos and other memorabilia to examine. That awful olive-green uniform!
It was surprising to find that several people had moved away from Norwich, but later moved back. That’s not going to happen for me. Someone who researches Scottish music or social history of Scottish music, is hardly going to remove themselves 400-odd miles south! Some people had continued with interests that they already had at school. Others had taken completely different directions, whether to the upper echelons of corporate life, arable farming or a whole lot of other avenues. I did appear to be the only semi-retired postdoctoral researcher! And if my Scottish music publishers didn’t evince a great deal of enthusiastic interest, then – yet again – oral history research certainly did. People are interested in oral history, interested in memories in general and particularly interested in memories of their school days and school music.
And the trip itself was a nice break. Indeed, I knitted a whole mansized sock on the various legs of my train/replacement coach journey, discovering that knitting can sometimes start unexpected conversations! People like reminiscing about that, too…
I’d better get back to my Leng Medal memories. Today, it’s time to contact people who remember participating in the 1990s – long after I’d left school myself!
Dr Edward Emanuel Harper has a lot to answer for. As I mentioned in my podcast, I was awaiting a book of American organ/ harmonium pieces, published in 1926, which included a number of pieces by Harper. It’s quite a small book, and arrived from California – in a huge box – yesterday. (An American organ is an instrument very much like a harmonium – a keyboard instrument powered by wind, often for domestic use. My own Welsh grandfather had one.)
American organ (Wikimedia)
As I suspected, they’re short, easy pieces. Amongst the 51 pieces are thirteen by Harper, along with pieces by eight other composers, some of whom would still have been living, and some dead. (Nine pieces were by an American woman of English parentage. That’s not part of today’s story – but kudos to Bayley & Ferguson for including her. All the other composers were men.)
However, even if the pieces in this book – the second book in a series of six – are predictably straightforward, I shall still play them over, just out of curiosity. There’s not a great deal to say about them, after observing that Harper liked chromaticism in the slower pieces, but he also contributed some more diatonic march-like items – and a ‘Scots Coronation March’ which is remarkably un-Scottish.
Notwithstanding the simplicity of the contents, the book itself had more surprises for me. And I fell down a rabbit-hole, as I investigated.
Transcontinental
I’ve written about Scottish music publications having been distributed across the diaspora, but this usually entails one transcontinental trip from the UK, whether commercially, as a gift or by a migrating owner. This copy has travelled thousands more miles than that!
Here we have a book from a Glasgow/London publisher, including pieces by Harper (now in Canada) and the Anglo-American lady, and a German composer who had died some sixty-odd years earlier. It was first published a hundred years ago. Obviously, I’ve no idea whether it was a new copy, ie still in print, when the late owner apparently acquired it in the 1950s (bear with me, I can explain how I think it was then), or if they were given it by someone else, and subsequently wrote their own name on it. The book was ‘printed in Great Britain’ (so I guess that probably means it was NOT printed by Aird and Coghill in Glasgow) – but it was sold to a previous owner, by a firm in Adelaide, Australia – Cawthornes Ltd.
How, I wondered, had the book got from Adelaide to California?
There are Doctors and Doctors …
The late owner’s name is on my copy. It was a distinctive name – so I looked it up, out of curiosity. In deference to their memory, I won’t name them, but the details proved really quite easy to find out, so it feels okay to share the barest outline of my discoveries.
The book had clearly belonged to someone in Adelaide. I can pinpoint the 1950s because the Australian owner gained their undergraduate and Masters degrees in Adelaide, having travelled thousands of miles across Australia to get there. They married there – indeed, their father conducted the ceremony. (This versatile pastor had also played the organ on an evangelical mission to a first nation community in his younger days.)
The newly-weds moved from Adelaide to California to further the career of the named individual on my American organ compilation – who became an eminent scientist. I do know, from the eBay vendor, that the book was one of a number of church-related music publications being disposed of. Although I don’t know for certain if the owner of the book was an organist, their name was on it. I like to think they played it. Does it matter? No, not really!
Of course, the singular, distinctive life-history of one single copy has no bearing whatsoever upon Edward Emanuel Harper, who was in his sixties in Canada by the time the book was published, and was long deceased by the time the book’s owner was a student in Adelaide.
The whole story is just a series of unrelated happenings during the course of its life. It just amuses me to think that an Anglo-Scottish book including short organ pieces by our second Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music Principal – a Doctor of Music – ended up being sold to an Australian scientist at the start of their career, remaining in their music collection as they gained their PhD in one American state and grew in stature and reputation in another – they were not the kind of medical doctor that we think of when we talk of hospital doctors, but certainly working very closely alongside them . I wonder if and when they last played this music?
Home Again
It would have left Britain between 1926 and around 1958, went to Australia and then the USA, but now, finally, it is back in Glasgow, flown back to the home town of the former Bayley & Ferguson, where it’s being pored over by another musical doctor – this time a PhD rather than a Mus.Doc.
That’s quite a life-story for a humble little book of Church Voluntaries!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 