Yesterday being Sunday – and Scotland isn’t out of the World Cup yet – I dug deep to find some more thematically appropriate music to play on the organ. I’m pleased to report that it IS possible to play, ‘Yes, Sir, I can Boogie’ in a sedate, dignified manner. Challenging, but possible. Likewise ‘Scotland The Brave’. After those, a calmer ‘The Rowan Tree’ and an organ setting of ‘Amazing Grace’ completed the World Cup set.
But AFTER the service … although I nominally stuck with a Scottish titled march, absolutely no-one would have known or recognise it. It was an indulgence of my research interests, I’m afraid! I played a piece of music by Edward E Harper. So … it was
- composed by an Englishman,
- who briefly lived in Scotland.
- His tune was called a Scots March (it doesn’t sound Scottish) –
- and it was in a collection published by Bayley and Ferguson, a Scottish publisher.
- The composer himself had emigrated to Canada by this stage. I don’t know when he composed it.
It gets more complicated.
- The copy I own was sold in AUSTRALIA,
- and taken to California by a talented scientist at the start of his career.
I repatriated it through eBay, so today the not-exactly ‘Scots March’ was played by an Englishwoman in Scotland, not that far from where the composer was once organist …
I have a problem now. Just supposing Scotland beats Brazil? I can find any number of traditional tunes, but what would I play as an outgoing voluntary?!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 