Print and Tourism

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I have contributed a chapter to a forthcoming collection on Print and Tourism, which is being published by Peter Lang.  The completed manuscript will soon be going to the publishers, which is very exciting.  You might ask what a musicologist was doing, writing about print and tourism?  Well, it won’t be long before all is revealed. 

I had enormous fun writing this chapter, and I think folk will enjoy reading it.  It’s different.  Well, that’s hardly surprising, given the subject matter, but I’ve placed it in a wider cultural context than my usual more musicological offerings, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it in print.

A Question for You: What’s significant?

The topic arose from a book I acquired during lockdown.  Ironically, it was only a couple of weeks ago that it dawned on me that not only would we need to buy the essay collection for RCS’s library, but we’d also need a copy of the book which inspired it! I can’t think why that didn’t occur to me sooner, but it is on order and on its way, so I’ll be cataloguing it very soon. We’ll have it well before the essay collection is finally published!

So, your challenge is this: Can you work out what is significant about this map?!

I would never, ever have dreamed, when I went to Exeter to start my first, unfinished doctoral studies on mediaeval English plainsong and polyphony, that I would end up completing a different PhD thirty years on, and writing and being published on such a very different topic!

Knowing When to Stop

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The mystery teacher – photo from British Newspaper Archive

There are times when our insatiable curiosity leads us ‘up the garden path’, aren’t there? For me, it’s when I decide to pursue the life history of characters that really aren’t central to what I’m researching.

Take this weekend: I’m currently researching the pedagogical output of a Victorian Edinburgh music teacher, and I discovered his daughter collaborated on some of his publications. (This is confirmed by a letter that her sister wrote to a music journal later.) The collaborations appear to have been before she married.

I found a newspaper article about a story she had written for a women’s magazine called The People’s Friend in 1906, and this gave me her married name, but also informed me that she was working as a head teacher in a village quite a way from Edinburgh. It was definitely her – it named her father and his achievements.

Oh, my goodness. I wrote a number of stories for that magazine myself, some decades ago, so that made me sit up and look, straight away!

More interestingly, though – for a married woman still to be working, was a red flag in itself, because it was usual for a woman to stop working when she married. I traced her marriage certificate on Scotland’s People, and only noticed at the last minute that there was an amendment attached. She divorced her husband – whereabouts unknown – in 1912. Perhaps she had found it expedient to continue working, notwithstanding having a young child, if there had already been marital discord for a while. But who knows?!

I found the mother, a nine-year old son and a servant living back in Edinburgh in 1911. The census described her just as a teacher – no mention of headship here.

Really, my only interest at this point – whether or not she continued to collaborate with her father after she married – was my curiosity about a woman working as a teacher after marriage. Not long ago, I researched a late Victorian woman called Clarinda Webster, who was a music teacher, head teacher and ultimately a divorcee, so there was a human interest in finding someone else whose circumstances might have been vaguely similar …

After a few hours delving into Ancestry, Scotland’s People and the British Newspaper Archive, I made myself stop. I don’t know where this woman and her son ended up. Maybe they left Scotland or emigrated, who knows? At the end of the day, it doesn’t make any difference to my research into pedagogical music publications in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.

On the other hand, stories of working women professionals in that era continue to interest me, whether musicians, teachers or both. It wouldn’t take much to convince me to keep looking…

Reunited! Moffat and Kidson’s Nursery Rhymes

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

You’ll remember that I recently treated myself to an Edwardian book of children’s songs published by Augener, partly because I’m interested in the compilers, but mostly for the delightful cover? I subsequently discovered it was the sequel to an earlier book, British Nursery Rhymes. Well, I couldn’t have the second without the first, could I?

The sequel: Children’s Songs of Long Ago

Luckily, my interests are generally quite inexpensive! I will take them to the piano at some point – and look more closely at the contents, from the point of view of repertoire.

D’you know, just about every bit of research I’ve done has involved examining repertoire. Starting with 13th century Gregorian chant – not many people know I was initially a mediaevalist! I’ve come a long way.

A Fellow Back in 1901

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is the third week of my Ketelbey Fellowship, and I arrived at St Andrews in pouring rain yesterday morning. Fortunately, it had subsided to a drizzle by the time I made my way to Martyrs Kirk, where materials from the Library special collections can be consulted. I didn’t get wet enough to risk dripping onto rare Victorian pamphlets! (I only know they were Victorian by the fact that the earlier numbers included God Save the Queen rather than the King – so they were published before January 1901.)

I had a ball! They each began with an editorial introduction – I love these. They’re so informative about the thinking behind whatever is in the book. Intriguingly, the editor seemed not to be the prime contributor, but all was revealed when I did some Googling later. Good old Baptie (Musical Scotland) informed me that the editor had two middle names, and used them as a nom de plume. No mystery after all! Moreover, one particular collaborator, more involved than most, was …

His daughter.

I didn’t quite get through the pile I’d called up, but I’m making good progress. And I encountered some interesting glimpses into social and political history. What’s more, if ever I needed proof that little girls’ education had a subtle difference to that of little boys, I found it today. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I know it happened. But I wasn’t expecting to find this in a Sol-Fa song book!

It is such a luxury to have a desk in an office just a couple of minutes from a big university library. This morning, I snatched a quick coffee before I went back for another session with more of these instruction books. What’s more, I feel more a dedicated researcher here, compared to being ‘the librarian that also does research’ in Glasgow. It’s easier to focus, somehow. And tonight, I’m going to a research seminar, so I’ll get to meet some more historians then. Good times.

Find me at KarenMcAMusic.threads.net

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

What’s all this about? Everyone perhaps having to pay to be on Twitter? No, Sir! I’m not actively leaving just yet, but if failure to pay results in accounts disappearing, then I’m afraid I will disappear from Twitter.

I’m on Threads: KarenMcAMusic.threads.net – maybe I should be asking my Twitter followers to follow me there?

And of course, I’m here on my blog.

I know – a blog is not the same as the casual, friendly conversations we used to have on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see what we’re all doing in a year’s time!

‘You can’t Judge a Book by its Cover’ (can you not?!)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I know you shouldn’t go on first appearances, but sometimes we do. (Why else do we make an effort with our appearance at interviews?!)

But I won’t spend my Saturday philosophizing. I just want to share my latest gorgeous ‘treat to self’, and a couple I bought earlier…

The above children’s book is a sequel! Yes, of course I have just bought a copy of the first book. Watch this space!

Lovely covers, and in Tonic Sol-Fa for easy reading!

Aspiring to be a ‘Jolly Good Fellow’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Week 2. My second visit to St Andrews this autumn literally flew by. I borrowed AND returned a book from the library; continued my literature search; finished reading a fascinating series of letters in a journal; had myself a library induction (setting a good example, since I’m always urging newcomers to attend their library induction!); and met some members of the Institute of Scottish Historical Research for lunch.

If in doubt, ask!

This last was the challenging bit. How do you identify a historian? They don’t have obvious ‘tools of the trade’ like musicians or artists. I hovered outside the hostelry, peeped in and couldn’t decide who was a historian, and finally solved the problem by asking at the bar! The bartender seemed to find this an entirely reasonable question, thankfully.

Image by 1195798 from Pixabay

Guys, Guys! Stop Squabbling! (A Musical Debate)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Old school classroom

The year is 1943, and the music teachers are debating.

An editorial in a music journal was followed by a heated discussion. It was all about the best way to get kids reading music – and believe me, they didn’t unanimously approve of the new, fashionable trends! One enlightened individual asked whether anyone had asked the kids what they thought. The editor remarked that we didn’t ask what they thought about learning maths, so why ask them about learning music? There was even some gloomy muttering about Beveridge and the welfare state …

On the whole, it was a gentlemanly conversation – and I can use that word, because the correspondents were, by and large, men. Not entirely – there was a lengthy contribution from a woman teacher training instructor, too.

After publishing a selection of responses over the three months following his editorial article, the editor attempted to sum up the arguments in the following three issues. He named and shamed those he disapproved of, stating quite openly, that someone’s opinion was frankly a load of nonsense! (I’m summarising – these are my words, and not the journal editor’s.)

The second, summarising editorial was supposed to be the end of his [lengthy] summary. But it took yet another editorial before he finally did finish it!

In actual fact, they almost all agreed that things weren’t as good as they had been, forty years earlier; precisely when the rot set in, was open to debate. Moreover, everyone blamed it on the politicians and inadequate time allocations.

Plus ca change …?

My New Favourite Journal

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Victorian classroom, children seated around piano.

Pursuing one particular aspect of my recent research that fascinated me, I’ve turned up a number of useful references that I now need to sift through. I’ll still be working on this task in St Andrews this week.

History AND Music AND Education AND Scottish

The literature search has certainly had its challenges. Searching on History AND Music AND Education AND Scottish, just won’t cut it in this situation!

In one chapter of the book I’ve just finished writing, I’ve written about Scottish music publishers and some of the materials they produced for Scottish music education. Now, I need to move on beyond my book: I want to know how much their resources were used or disseminated beyond Scotland, and I want to catch the pedagogues talking about them! The tricky part of this search is in ensuring I get a historical perspective – I’m not looking at how the history of music is taught today, but a particular aspect of the history of teaching music.

One journal in particular wasn’t an obvious resource when my main focus was on Scottish music publishers. However, now I’m thinking even more deeply about their educational materials, I’ve just found a journal that looks distinctly promising:-

And I’m also going to be combing some resources on English music education, in the hope that some Scottish resources or pedagogues get at least a passing mention. If they’ve been mentioned, then I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If not, then I have a blank canvas, and that in itself is exciting.

Celebrating Milestones

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting to buy myself something to mark a significant milestone – admit it, you do it too! Getting my second book submitted on time was certainly an important occasion for me. So, too, was commencing my Fellowship at St Andrews.

My gaze strayed to my eBay ‘Watch List’! I had ‘liked’ a lot of items. Some of them might, arguably, have been even more useful a month or two earlier, but I went through that list carefully. It was all printed matter, whether music or ephemera. I made a couple of offers (one has been accepted already!), then checked I couldn’t easily access the most desirable of the other publications some other way. That still left a handful of items I could definitely justify getting!

They will all be useful in the research I am now embarking upon – an extension of one particular aspect that enthralled me in my book project.

But one particular songbook – which I resolutely did not buy during the book-writing – sneakily snuck into my shopping basket! I had been telling it all along that it couldn’t be included, since it wasn’t published by a Scottish publisher. But although my specialism is Scottish music, there’s nothing to stop me buying something published by a contemporary English firm. And it is very pretty, as well as not being expensive! I’ll show you when it arrives.

Indeed, there are several English-published titles by ‘my’ Scottish educationalists that I now need to examine alongside the things they published in Scotland! But there’s a difference between treating myself and going overboard, so I deferred looking for those until another time. There will be library copies of quite a few of them.

Now, how do I explain the postie paying us more frequent visits for the next week or so?!

Image by Petra Reuter from Pixabay