Book History: Scottish Airs in London Dress

Before establishing the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project, which looked at Scottish fiddle tune collections largely from the Georgian era.  In that context, I read a paper at Musica Scotica in Spring 2014, about a couple of London-published music collections.  It has finally been published in Scottish Music Review Vol.5 (2019), 75-87, this week.

Sometimes when we look back at earlier work, we wonder if we’d have written it differently today, but I’m still pretty happy with this article.  If anything, I think it justifies my claim that the history of this kind of collection does indeed deserve to count as “book history”, even if it is music rather than literature. So, here it is for your enjoyment:-

Scottish Airs in London Dress: Vocal Airs and Dance Tunes in Two Eighteenth-Century London Collections

Wrapping Things Up

CFSH Bibliography

Followers of the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall research network are probably already aware that there’s an extensive bibliography of writings to do with legal deposit and copyright, most specifically historical music legal deposit and copyright – but also a bit of library history, book history, cultural history of various kinds, and bibliography.

It has been updated periodically, and is now in its 7th edition, but when the special issue of Brio (vol.56 no.2) rolls off the printing press, a significantly extended 8th edition of the bibliography will be posted on this website.  It’ll include every article and review in the special issue, and virtually every reference or footnote cited by each author of ditto.  I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that not one citation concerning historical music legal deposit has been missed, but the chances of having missed anything significant are probably fairly slender!

 

And … Send!

2019-08-08 10.06.13That’s it, folks.  Martin and I have given the Brio “Special Issue” proofs the final thumbs up, and they’ve gone off to the printer.  No going back now … your special issues are well and truly on their way.  (They look slightly different to those pictured here, but I won’t spoil the surprise!)

A different track: Cambridge legal deposit disrupted by 2nd World War

From an era a century later than our project’s focus, we encounter legal deposit again – at Cambridge University Library. The practical impact of the Second World War? A disruption in the supply of legal deposit music!

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This week, I have been busy laying out a small exhibition in the Anderson Room to commemorate the start of the Second World War.

I had a very clear idea in my head of what I was going to do – an exhibition based around some wartime favourites: There’ll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, Lilli Marlene, Moonlight Serenade, Bella Ciao, and the famous timpani version of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – Morse code for Churchill’s Victory V, the sound of the BBC broadcasting to Europe throughout the war years.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, and reflecting wartime conditions, the exhibition ended up being rather different to my original intentions. It is though, I believe, perhaps a truer reflection of the times.


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