Dr Karen McAulay explores the history of Scottish music collecting, publishing and national identity from the 18th to 20th centuries. Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, author of two Routledge monographs.
I’ve taken a couple of days’ leave whilst we’re having work done at home. I’m far too distracted by the banging and crashing around me to be able to sit and write scholarly thoughts. I just can’t!
‘Satan finds work for idle hands to do’ (Proverbs 16:27-29)
However, it appears I can quite easily go shopping on eBay. For some weeks, I’ve covetously watched a handful of old 78-rpm recordings, the sensible voice in one ear drowning out the sentimental voice in the other. The latter is whispering,
‘Look! He conducted that. You can listen to him actually conducting something he arranged! How cool would that be?’
Inner voice
That’s not the voice of a sensible, frugal scholar! Reader, I resisted the sentimental voice. I was being firm, resolute, and admirably sensible until a glorious thought occurred to me: when I’ve finished my book, publication will also entail a book-launch of some kind. And I’m sure to want to give talks about some aspect of the book topic. These records aren’t just artefacts – they’re multimedia soundfiles! Oh yes, indeed. How dreadful it would be, for my future self to remember the records that slipped through my fingers through misguided sensibility?
You also have to understand that my previous research was into an era when there were no sound recordings of any kind. So my present investigations into music between 1880 and 1950 mean stepping into the era when one could listen to recordings (gasp!), view projected slides and even access broadcast media. All very, very exciting at the time.
Broken Record
I did do a bit of bargaining, having resolved that I couldn’t have them unless I negotiated the price below a certain figure. The last shellac record I bought arrived in bits, so I hope that if these are travelling as a threesome, they might be a bit more robust – safety in numbers.
And I’m afraid I succumbed to a small music publication, too. (What am I going to do with all these scores when the book is written and they revert to being cheap, forgotten old titles again?!)
Having invested in my own personal domain, I thought I’d better make sure my bio was up-to-date. And then I remembered that my list of publications needed to be there too, so that became another page.
When I was contemplating a mid-career PhD way back in 2003, my then line-manager attended a meeting, and mentioned my intentions. An unnamed academic (luckily, I don’t know who!) thereupon enquired,
“What would a librarian want with a PhD?”
Anon
They didn’t know I was fulfilling an interrupted ambition of some twenty years earlier! (See my bio page.) But if the anonymous scholar saw my list of publications today, I like to think they’d agree I’ve made good use of the PhD …
I went on to get a postgrad Teaching in Higher Education certificate after that!
When my first book was published in 2013, my dear friend clarsach-player and composer Dr Karen Marshalsay played at the book-launch, performing a tune that she had written especially for me. ‘Dr Karen McAulay of the Books’ has been included in Karen’s album, The Road to Kennacraig– you can hear the tune here.
Karen’s playing ‘my’ tune at a gig in Crail on 18th February 2023 – clarsairs have a much more interesting and varied existence than librarians! – but I’ll have to content myself with listening to my CD or the digital rendition. I feel very privileged to have a tune named after me.
Quick update – you can now find this blog at KarenMcAulayMusicologist.blog. No adverts, and an easier hyperlink to remember. After all this excitement, I’ll go and put the kettle on. (We musicologists know how to enjoy ourselves!)
I was just tidying up some loose ends in the chapter I’ve been writing. There was a music professor called John Greig who looked after things at Edinburgh University in between Reid Professors. Friedrich Rieck got the job – Greig didn’t. Within a decade the press was reporting his taking up an organist post in London. Then acting as an external examiner for the London College of Music, and finally principal of his own college – the British College of Music – in 1908. He died within a couple of years of opening it, having funded it largely out of his own pocket, but with a handful of shareholders holding a tiny fraction of the shares.
A contemporary magazine said it was just a money-spinning exercise. Okay, but it did advertise from time to time, notwithstanding Greig’s demise, so it clearly continued at least a little while. I also found reference in an Australian source, suggesting it was went on being a money-spinner for a while.
Here’s the thing: on the face of it, it appears still to be offering music exams to this day. I found reference to a modern professor in the UK, who offers masterclasses to students wishing to take ‘British College of Music exams’; there’s even a masterclass coming up in Ochanomizu, Japan this month (February 2023). However, I suspect that the professor actually means ‘exams offered by British music colleges’ rather than an institution by that name. Capital letters and word order make such a difference!
I don’t really mind. It has absolutely nothing to do with my research, and I stopped before I fell any further down the Alice-in-Wonderland-type rabbit hole. Anyway, I don’t need to mention the institution in a book about Scottish music publishers!
My latest eBay purchase will teach me to look more closely at the photos. (Of which there were a lot, I might add.) But the words DESCRIBING the pair of books nowhere said that one was a staff edition, and the other Tonic Sol-Fa!
The cover title was correctly transcribed, although the seller hadn’t indicated that the one without the words “School edition – Staff” was, in fact, the School edition in Tonic Sol-Fa. Had I looked right through the photos, I would have got to the picture of the Sol-Fa title page and an example of the Sol-Fa itself. My mistake!
However, in this case it’s not too much of a problem – I’m more concerned with the contents of the books and their paratext, than actually playing or singing the music. And if I want to practise my sol-fa reading skills, well, I now have another book to practise with!
I took a 2-volume book of part-songs home over Christmas, in connection with my Scottish music publishers research.
Our heroine’s church in Paisley
Just two women had contributed to the collection. Researching one of them occupied much of last week’s annual leave! But I ended up with a respectable article for a local newsletter. Not peer-reviewed, not likely to hit the headlines, but it got all my findings sorted into a narrative which I can draw upon again later. And I enjoyed my week!
Moreover, I’ve just managed to get her a mention in Chapter 4 of my book. Her brother would think this most audacious! When she got a presentation, he stood up and accepted it for her … because …..
I still don’t know if this kind of post is helpful. To anyone who hasn’t many/any visible outputs, reading someone else’s list of what they achieved is probably the very last thing they need to brighten their day – and I apologise. You’ve probably achieved other, equally or even more important things, which didn’t take the form of words on a page!
From my vantage point, as a researcher who sentenced herself to a career in librarianship, not necessarily as a first choice but what seemed at the time to be a reasonable one, I look at other academics’ lists of achievements and struggle not to compare myself – although realistically I cannot achieve as much research in 1.5 designated days a week as the average full-time academic. My research line-manager is more than content, so maybe I should remind myself of that more often.
So, what have I achieved?
As a librarian, I have spoken at two conferences, a panel discussion and as staff training for another library, about EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) in our own library. I have a paper being published in an academic journal next year, on the topic of women composers in libraries; but my proudest achievement was actually in sharing a song by a Victorian woman teacher in the junior department of the Athenaeum, that I had discovered in a research capacity, and which a singing student eagerly learned and presented as one of their competition entries in a recent singing competition at RCS. Discovering something, having someone else declare it lovely, and hearing them perform it beautifully, is a very special privilege.
Still hatching
As a researcher, I have another paper forthcoming in an essay collection, though I can hardly list details here before it has even gone through the editorial process. And another magazine article which has been accepted for 2024. Can’t include that either. Nor can I yet include the monograph I’m halfway through writing. I’ve done a ton of work in that respect, but it doesn’t count in a retrospective list of successes!
I’ve also applied for a grant which I didn’t get, and a fellowship for which the deadline is just today, so no news on that front for a little while.
That leaves this little list, the last item of which appeared through my letterbox at the turn of last year, so I’ve cheekily included it here again.
Forthcoming
‘Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library’, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice. Arises from a paper given at the International Women’s Day Conference hosted by the University of the Highlands and Islands, 2022. Peer-reviewed and pending publication.
Arrived
‘Alexander Campbell’s Song Collecting Tour: ‘The Classic Ground of our Celtic Homer’, in Thirsty Work and Other Heritages of Folk Song (Ballad Partners, 2022), 180-192
‘Burns and Song: Four New Publications’, Eighteenth Century Scotland, no. 36 (June 2022),12-15.
‘Strathspeys, Reels and Instrumental Airs: a National Product’, in Music by Subscription: Composers and their Networks in the British Music Publishing Trade, 1676–1820, ed. Simon D. I Fleming & Martin Perkins. (Routledge, 2022), 177-197
Meanwhile, as an organist, I’ve completed my first year in Neilston Parish Church, which has been a very healing experience. I love it there! This Christmas has seen three of my own unpublished carols being performed, one in Neilston and two in Barrhead; and earlier in the autumn I contributed a local-history kind of article to the Glasgow Diapason, the newsletter published by the Glasgow Society of Organists. Another publication! Might as well add it to the list:-
‘Trains, Trossachs, Choirs and the Council: Neilston Parish Church’s First Organist’, in The Glasgow Diapason Newsletter
Confession time. Sewing is my relaxation of choice, often influenced by something I’m researching. This year’s project, a Festival of Britain canvas-printed linen piece, relates to the aforementioned chapter that I’ve contributed to someone’s book.
I know I would get more research writing done if I didn’t sew in my leisure time, but I need that for my mental health. Swings and roundabouts…
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 