Remember un-conferences? They were popular a few years ago.
Well, now I’m co-ordinating a Scottish song event, but it’s for entertainment, and not remotely connected with my research. Does that make it an ‘un-research’ event? Anything I might say about these songs will have been learned during my research career. (I grew up in England – it wasn’t my childhood repertoire.)
Community Singing
It’s interesting, all the same. For a start, I am interested in community singing in an early-twentieth-century sense, but my own practical experience of secular community singing is limited. The forthcoming gig may well trigger new trains of thought. (Let’s discount leading congregational singing from the organ, which I’ve done for decades.)
Repertoire
The preparation has been interesting, too. We have collectively chosen the repertoire: some old, some from the 1950s and 60s, and some that our children would have learnt at school. It bears out my findings that the repertoire of favourite Scottish songs does change with every generation.
We’re also channelling Sir Hugh Roberton and his Orpheus Singers for a couple of choral items, but an even earlier choral arrangement felt too dated. You have to know about the west of Scotland’s intimate acquaintance with Roberton’s repertoire to appreciate why those settings go down so well to this day. Somehow, his particular brand of close SATB singing has endured in a nostalgic kind of way, where earlier settings have fallen by the wayside.
Authenticity
It gets better. We’ve debated different versions of the lyrics, and odd discrepancies in tunes. In other words, we re-enacted all the chatter about authenticity and correct versions that has been rolling on for, shall we say, 250 years or more?
And the Squeezeboxes?
I debated with myself whether to go all authentic with an accordion accompaniment in appropriate songs, but I don’t think I’m that brave. Singing a solo is brave. A couple of concertina tunes is positively reckless. But the accordion is probably getting left at home. (Although, if you listen carefully between now and then, you might catch me attempting a few strains of ‘The Song of the Clyde’ in private … Jimmy Shand I’m certainly not!)
This is a new adventure for me. More anon.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 