OK. We’re thinking about ‘classical’ music. 🎶
Art music, if you like.
If you’re a serious classical composer, wanting to convey your Scottish identity – but also aspiring to avoid clichés – how do you do it?
- No ‘Scotch snaps’
- No ‘modes’, flat sevenths, or gapped scales
- No Scottish song or fiddle melodies
- No titles derived from Robert Burns or Walter Scott’s literary output
- Oh, okay, you can have a clarsach, fiddle, whistle or pipes if you absolutely insist!
Why am I asking you this riddle?
I read in an old newspaper that a certain composer had truly captured ‘Scottishness’ in his music. I didn’t know the piece they were referring to. Did he evoke Scotland in his soundscape? How?
We say that Sibelius’s music evokes Finland. To be truthful, many of us have probably just accepted that it’s a ‘Finnish sound’, making us think of steep valleys, tall pines, and vast echoing lakes. Fair enough. We’ve heard something, and learnt to associate it with a set of visual images.
So what would evoke Scotland? Can we look at some Romantic-era tone-poems and point to elements that sound Scottish, or could only be Scottish?
What are your thoughts about this 🤔
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 