Spread Too Thin?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is another of my cross-posts from the Facebook Glasgow Music Publishers page. But I’ve updated the update!

Apologies for the silence here. In recent weeks, I’ve given two conference papers (one on Stationers’ Hall music, and one on old Scots songs and a Lowland pipe tune); I gave another talk (about Scottish song-collector Alexander Campbell) last Sunday late afternoon. Was I happy with my talk? Yes, until I had given it! This self-doubt is really quite a handicap.

I have just had the luxury of a long weekend, but – well, it hasn’t been luxurious. As well as the Sunday talk, there was the usual domesticity and the church organist duties. We expected the roofer to start work today, too, but it rained – and you don’t remove a VERY large skylight in the rain! Not to worry – I turned one of my conference papers into a journal article and submitted it this evening. I’ve just realised I’m a coward. I submitted an article to a journal I’ve not submitted to before, and now I’m struggling NOT to judge it too harshly, probably before the editor has even checked their email inbox!

I really do have to get back to work on a book chapter – although neither it nor the rest of this frenetic activity has been about Glasgow music publishers! (I just hope their ghosts aren’t feeling neglected, or heaven help me come Hallowe’en!)

Why Provenance Matters in the Library

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Some reading for me, later on this evening! I’ve been made aware of a potentially interesting article by Alice Wickenden:-

Things to Know before Beginning, or: Why Provenance Matters in the Library

(Inscription: the Journal of Material Text – Theory, Practice, History, June 2020)

A question to you, my reader

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I asked a question on my Facebook page, Glasgow Music Publishers 1880-1950. Maybe folk don’t realize I genuinely would like to hear their thoughts! Here it is again, for anyone who doesn’t use Facebook:-

So, now. Has any particular topic really resonated with you, or has there been anything you wish I’d expand upon? I have the opportunity to write a longer piece (not immediately, but in the foreseeable future) and I’m trying to decide what to focus on!

(Confession – the image is of cards by Dundee printers, Valentines. I missed out on the eBay auction, but snaffled the picture earlier …)“

Follow my Leader! Napoleon, Victoria and Albert …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m just leaving this thought here, as a general observation. I was reading recently about Victoria and Albert, tartan and the phenomenon of “Balmorality”. It would be glib, and wrong, to pronounce that everyone loves tartan, but a lot of people certainly do.

Today, I’m reviewing a book about James Macpherson’s Ossian and its pervasive influence on culture not just in Scotland or Great Britain, but on the continent, too. Again, the actual facts are far more nuanced than this bald statement, but it is clear that, because Napoleon was an enthusiastic fan, a lot of people followed him.

So, there’s a parallel, isn’t there? How often has the approval, or disapproval, of a head of state led to a craze for something cultural, be it the warp and weft of a type of cloth, or the exploits of a misty distant hero?

Image: Child in a Scots Costume, sourced via Art UK. Painting by W H Prape, and now curated by Enfield Museum Service

Revisiting the Achievements of Song-Collector Alexander Campbell

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I recently wrote a blog-post about Alexander Campbell, for the Romantic National Song Network. Campbell was one of “my” song-collectors, who occupied a good bit of my time whilst I was writing my PhD thesis and subsequently my book. (And I learned a whole lot more about his “trip-advisor”, Sir John Macgregor Murray, when I was writing a paper for that seminar at the Sorbonne last year!)

Here’s the link to the blogpost, which went live this evening. Get yourself a cuppa and settle down for a read …

https://rnsn.glasgow.ac.uk/song-collector-alexander-campbell/

Image:- Lanrick Castle Gatehouse, entrance to Sir John Macgregor Murray’s home (Campbell’s trip-advisor!)

Post Script! By the way, James D Hobson has just posted a great blogpost, A Guide to the Georgian Coaching Inn. Read about the kind of experience Alexander Campbell may have had, on the occasions he travelled by coach or stayed at an inn!

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

So they say! Very well, but whatever the era, and the differing nuances in the contents, there’s no denying tartan was often used as a cover for books of Scottish songs, Scottish poems, stuff by Robert Burns, stuff by Walter Scott (there was a firm specialising in miniatures, like this picture of Scott’s The Lady in the Lake ballad, no music here) …

A Crossroads

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It’s my research day. I faced a choice: write a lecture for November, work on a book chapter for January, or get back to the Scottish music publishers project. I feel as though I’ve been away from the project for quite a while, writing papers on other things, so today is going to be a project day. I know the other things are important, but I need to reconnect with my main preoccupation, if it is to become a book at some stage in the future.

So … the question of the tartan book covers …..

[more anon!]

Video-Conferencing

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Here’s another quick update, for the benefit of those who don’t follow the Facebook pages for The Claimed From Stationers Hall or Glasgow Music Publishers projects!

Next week, I’m giving a paper (well, I’ve already video-recorded it, but it’s being given next week) at a conference of cataloguing and metadata librarians. What else would I talk about but legal deposit music in libraries?! So this time, it’s called ‘The Cinderella of Stationers’ Hall: Music (and Metadata) in Georgian Legal Deposit Libraries’.
In a spirit of sheer whimsy, I’ve incorporated a picture of Cinderella as very pale background for the title page of my powerpoint – a volvelle picture from my favourite childhood book. This was a French picture-book of Cinderella, given to me by my late father when he taught on a teaching exchange in France. He died before I got my PhD, and wouldn’t half have been surprised to find his gift to seven-year old me, used as illustration for a perfectly serious presentation about a postdoc research project! You see it here in its technicolour glory. The conference will see it faded to near obscurity, but I know it’s there. A tribute to Pa!

A CAUTIONARY TALE: DO NOT LET IMAGINARY READERS LOOSE IN YOUR LIBRARY!

The first of my research papers to be video-recorded last weekend was a paper about some very old tunes, which appeared in one version in Scottish sources, and in a different but apparently related version in Borders ones. This is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society conference in a few weeks’ time. Well, with all these old sources on my mind, I inadvertently made things more difficult for myself at work today. We were ‘practising’ a new lIbrary lending procedure for when the students return, and it involved setting up fake readers and fake book requests, to make sure the routine worked in practice. I used fake names associated with my research paper, because I was sure they were unlikely to crop up as real people on our system. And then I started getting my imaginary readers to request genuine books as part of this practice session. I shouldn’t have done it – those imaginary readers had very specific requirements, ALL concerning some aspect of the Scottish Borders, Northumbria and Cumbria.

They had me running all round the library tracking down books from every corner, high and low. If I had had any sense, I’d have picked books from one single shelf! My Fitbit tells me I have walked further than I’ve done in months, today, and to judge by the calories expended, I’ve carried more weights ditto. That will teach me to use my imagination ….

Empty!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

You know what happens when you empty a plastic carton, and it sort of collapses in on itself? After a weekend in which I recorded not one, but TWO conference papers, did sundry domesticity and not much else, I feel very much deflated!

Imagine my – ahem – joy that I have a day actually Working-At-Work tomorrow for the first time in six months. Just when I feel as though I could do with a quiet day at my home-desk with copious cups of tea …

But the good thing is that, apart from a third conference paper on a different topic, and a book chapter to start work on, I am currently up to date! I may yet get back to my late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish music publishers. Although the book chapter just might be rather time-consuming. Nonetheless, it’s a nice topic and will make a pleasant and RELATED change to my main focus, so I can’t complain too much.