Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914. Conference 2-4 September 2026: Website

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Old photo of a woman

I’m looking forward to my trip to London for this conference this week, and I’m grateful both for the invitation to give a paper, and for the support from my home institution, in the form of a Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Athenaeum Award. I thought it would be worthwhile sharing the link to the event again, now that the programme has been finalised.

Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914

The organisers have shared the following information:-

The final programme can be accessed directly here:

View the full conference schedule.

A more comprehensive programme, including all presenter abstracts and biographies, is accessible as an Exposition on the Research Catalogue platform.

My paper is on the final afternoon, Friday 4th September:-

‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

ABSTRACT

Although I’ve encountered few women’s names in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish music publishing, I recently published an article about the five women that I did find. (Two were English by descent, but they all grew up in Scotland.) Meanwhile, in other unrelated research, I encountered a London-born Scotswoman with a completely different background, who made her career as a high-flying soprano recitalist. The common thread was their family background and/or support. In today’s paper, I’d like to focus on Rose Buchanan Smith (1870–1942), one of the Scottish-born Englishwomen, and Flora Woodman (1896–1981), the London-born Scot. The cut-off date of this conference, 1914, is significant for both women: it’s the latest possible date for Kerr’s fourth book of Kerr’s Merry Melodies, in which I first encountered Rose’s name; and the year of Flora’s concert debut in London’s Bechstein Hall.

One cannot generalise about women’s musical careers on the strength of two women’s stories. Nonetheless, when there are comparatively few stories substantial enough to draw any inferences from, those that do survive must perforce carry more weight. In my research, I have realised that it is sometimes surprisingly useful to attempt comparisons between individuals whose lives were entirely unconnected. How did these women curate their careers? What influence might their parents have had? Might their mothers have had a particular influence or been especially supportive? What about marital status? Did being a Scottish-born Englishwoman, or a London-born Scotswoman, have any particular effect on their careers? Did they make use of professional networks? And was the advent of new technologies reflected in their musical activities? I shall outline the resources to which I had access, in tracing their path from adolescence to late middle-age, and demonstrate the importance of families to a young Victorian or Edwardian woman establishing a musical career.

This project has been supported by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Athenaeum Awards.

Image by chenspec from Pixabay

NEWSFLASH! Print and Tourism (Peter Lang, 2026)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
book cover - Print and Tourism

Yes, I’m on holiday! So I’ll keep this brief, but I have to share this: the postie has just delivered my author’s copy of Print and Tourism: Travel-Related Publications from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century / ed. Catherine Armstrong and Elaine Jackson.

My contribution is Chapter 8, The Glories of Scotland in Picture and Song: Jumping on the Festival of Britain Bandwagon (pp.187 – 205). It enabled me to write more about this Mozart Allan publication than I was able to justify in last year’s monograph about Scottish music publishers. I’m very happy indeed to have this chapter in Vol.7 of the Printing History and Culture series.

Published Peter Lang, 2026

  • ISBN 9781-80374-2441 (print)
  • ISBN 9781-80374-246-6 (ePub)
  • DOI 10.3726/b20937

Ways to Sing a Scots Song

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Gadie burn, from Wikimedia. Stanley Howe / Upstream Gadie Burn

Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories, Update No.5

Whilst I had intended to conduct perhaps 50 interviews in connection with my Leng Medal Memories research, I haven’t amassed quite that many – but the interviews have generally been nearer to 30 minutes than the 15 minutes that I innocently projected, so I’ve probably got easily as many recorded minutes as I initially aimed for!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been editing my interview transcriptions, and correcting any auto-correct infelicities. (Teams and TurboScribe both struggle a little with Scottish place-names and song titles.) One of my interviewees sang, ‘O Gin I were Whar’ Gadie Rins’ in the late 1960s. I knew the name of the song, but I couldn’t put a tune to it, so I Googled it. (As you do!) Spellings vary – as you’ll see.

Well, I found Kenneth McKellar singing it with a small classical chamber ensemble. (Lovely bassoon part, I must say.) The YouTube version was a 1995 Lismore remastered recording. I haven’t tried to establish the original date, though I believe it was recorded for the BBC in the late 1950s or early 1960s. But this setting was so delicate and precise that it was hard to imagine a youngster of eleven or twelve singing it quite like this. Quite apart from the fact that the Leng Medal competition has always been unaccompanied!

My next dip into YouTube found tutor Irene Ross talking about it and then singing it, with a ukelele, for Feis Rois followers. This is livelier and more authentic, but perhaps just a wee bit more ‘folky’ than might have been performed at a music competition by children of my own generation. But I could be wrong!

However, if the folk sound is what you’re looking for, then that interpretation is itself quite sedate compared to an invigorating 1999 recording by the Old Blind Dogs! Actually, I love this – one of my great frustrations in life is that I’ve been so embedded in the more classical side of music-making that I can only enjoy listening to this and would have huge difficulty trying to sing or play in anything like this idiom. I’d love to – but I can’t!

Oh well, I have to get back to these transcriptions, so I’ll stop here for now. Energised, you might say!

Image: Stanley Howe / Upstream Gadie Burn, from Wikimedia.

My Leng Medal Memories research is funded by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Print and Tourism (Peter Lang, 2026), with a Chapter on Mozart Allan’s ‘The Glories of Scotland’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

An exciting email from the Print Networks Council popped into my inbox this week, announcing a new publication. It contains a chapter that evolved from a paper I submitted back in the pandemic. Yes, I mentioned Mozart Allan’s Glories of Scotland in my book, A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and National Identity, but I have treated it more extensively in this new chapter. It’s not every day that a musicologist gets to think about the Festival of Britain, book exhibitions, and post-war tourism. I thoroughly enjoyed both the researching and the writing of it – and I’m really looking forward to seeing an actual copy!

The latest volume in the Print Networks series has now been published; copies may be ordered via this link: https://www.peterlang.com/series/phc – where previous volumes in the series are also available.

Print and Tourism (the latest in the series)

Eagerly Anticipating this Conference: ‘Women and Musical Histories 1789-1914’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It’s a stroke of good luck that my recent research just fits into the scope of this conference, which is taking place at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 2-4 September this year. I’d agreed with my line-manager that I should attend, but I confess I needed a little nudge to actually complete my registration, since my head has been whirling with oral history interviews and the trip down south last weekend.

Women and Musical Histories, 1789–1914

I’m going to give a paper at the conference, comparing the careers of two of my musical ‘heroines’. One featured in my recent RMA Chronicle article on ladies connected with the Scottish music publishing trade; the other has been mentioned by me elsewhere, but moved in completely different circles, in a different stratum of society. Anyway, the conference cut-off date of 1914 enables me to bring them together in my paper, so I’m looking forward to this opportunity to think about them again as I settle down to write it!

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories, Update no.2. Uplifting Conversations

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
A Silver Leng Medal for Scots song singing

After some years researching the history of printed Scottish music and Scottish music publishing, I’m currently using oral history (talking to people about their memories) to find out what they recall about Dundee’s Leng Medal Scots Song Competitions. Did participation lead to a lifetime of music and song? Or stage fright?!  What do people remember?

I began the Athenaeum  Award funded project a couple of months ago. I posted the first update a month ago. It feels like time I posted another one, so here goes!

You’d be surprised how many people remember their music teachers. You’d also be surprised how many people have kept their Leng medals! For gold medal winners, Mozart Allan’s Morven Scottish song book was a prize for a number of years,  certainly into the 1970s. From the late 1990s, the prize changed to Wilma Paterson and Alasdair Gray’s lavish Songs of Scotland, published in 1996.

Are there any gold medallists out there from the 1980s or 1990s? What was your prize book? Have you still got it?

What I find so enjoyable about this project, is how uplifting these conversations are! Participants talk with such enthusiasm and affection about singing in school – not just in the Leng Medal competitions – and about other musical activities that enriched their childhood. Sir John Leng would be astonished at the impact his endowment has had.  I wish he could be a fly on the wall!

I haven’t nearly finished my interviews yet – as a part-time researcher, I’m just slowly and steadily making progress. Indeed, I’m heading to Dundee tomorrow for some face-to-face meetings. And then on Thursday, I’ll see about sending out some more meeting invites.

(If today’s posting is the first you’ve heard of my research project, then you can find out more about it here, and you can get in touch with me here. It’s not too late!)

My Leng Medal Memories research is funded by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Kilbarchan to Southport to Ottawa to Vancouver: Organist on the Move

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

So, we’ve talked about the church organ which has been relocated from Kilbarchan  (near Paisley in the west of Scotland) to Prenzlau in Germany.  Well, the first organist to play the instrument in Kilbarchan, went on to travel a whole lot further than that.

Edward Emanuel Harper

I’ve collated a lengthy document about the Glasgow Athenaeum’s second Principal. He was only with us a couple of years, of course. After that, he was Kilbarchan’s organist a little bit longer.

The family went briefly back to Southport, before heading to Ottawa – for a year – and then settled in Vancouver.

My notes are full of clips from newspapers. I traced his first Canadian year as an organist in Ottawa – and some snippets of genealogical data in Vancouver. But nothing of his teaching, and no trace of a large compositional output. I’ve looked at library and archive catalogues. Even a promising entry to his ‘archive’ leads to one piece, contributed anonymously by post in 1971. I’ve seen a digital copy of it. It was self-published.

So What?

You might ask  – I’ve already asked myself  – why I need to know? (Apart from the fact that these little research questions tend to take on a life of their own!)  And I think it’s because Harper was plainly a gifted individual  – a PhD from Dublin, an LRAM, a brilliant proponent of Chopin, sought after as an organist and recitalist, and a prolific composer.

So where is his Canadian output, in manuscript or published?

And what led him to resign from the Athenaeum, seen by many as a ‘plum’ job? Our records are missing for that era. Did we let a genius slip away? Or were there difficulties that history has graciously concealed?!

Image: St Andrew’s Church, Ottawa (Copyright: Jamie McCaffrey, Flickr)

Kilbarchan to Prenzlau

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It was 2018 when the BBC posted the story of a magnificent three-manual organ built by Hill and Son, which was being taken out of Kilbarchan West Church – no longer needed after a merger – and transported to Prenzlau:-

‘Wonderful’ church organ sent to Germany

The Hill organ at Kilbarchan West Parish Church (photo from Kilbarchan West website). *

It has taken a while – Covid got in the way – but in May 2026, there’s going to be an organ festival to celebrate the inauguration of the organ in its new home.

Festival website

Former Athenaeum Principal Inaugurated Kilbarchan Organ

Well, I’m excited, even though I don’t think I can justify going all that way. (Or can I?) You see, I’ve been researching the second Principal of the Glasgow Athenaeum – Dr Edward Emanuel Harper, who was only with us for two years, 1902-1904. After that, he left. There are no records extant to say why he left. But within a few months, by September 1904, he had been appointed organist of …

Kilbarchan Church.

He played the inaugural recital for the new Hill & Son organ.

British Newspaper Archive: Paisley & Renfrewshire Gazette – Saturday 22 October 1904

I won’t tell you his whole story here – I already mentioned him, only a few weeks ago. By 1909 he had gone back to Stockport, accepted a job offer in Canada, been widowed before they had even moved to Canada, but still moved his young family to Canada as planned, and started a new life. And then another new life on the opposite side of Canada a year later.

Part of his fascination for me is his elusiveness, I must admit. Why did he leave the Athenaeum? What persuaded him to return to his home-town, or to cross the Atlantic? I do know a little about what happened when he got there. And I’ve traced his publications in the UK, but can only find only one published in Canada. Why? It’s hard to imagine he didn’t publish any more.

But most pressingly – do I want to go and hear the rebuilt organ which was, originally, only a few miles away from Neilston, where I am currently organist? After all, I’m not researching organ-building, or organ music. And  Harper wasn’t a Scot, or published in Scotland – but he WAS briefly our Principal.  I’m drawn to the story and the connections  …

* The original Kilbarchan church was more recently known as Kilbarchan West Parish Church, before it combined with Kilbarchan East. At that point, the united congregation elected to use the East Church.

International Women’s Day: Rose Smith (and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The beginning bars of The Road to the Isles, in a piano arrangement by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.

This has become a two-post day? Well, it’s International Women’s Day. How can I not mention it?

I decided I would play music by women this morning. Rose Smith (one of the women I recently wrote about in the RMA Research Chronicle – you’ll be familiar with her name by now!) was a piano teacher, a composer, and an Episcopalian organist. She was born in Lanark, moved to Glasgow whilst still a child, and later lived with her husband and children in Rutherglen. Her composed songs were rather like those by Ivor Novello – I’ve acquired nearly all of what seems to be extant, but I think a lot is missing. She only self-published a few, and the rest – for variety show singers – may not even have been published at all.

There’s no surviving organ music, so there was nothing for it – I played her songs before morning worship today. I bet you she never played them in church! However, since no-one knew they were secular songs, there was no harm in it. They’re well-written pieces, and I do think it’s a shame they’re not known. I did recommend one to an RCS Finalist a few years ago, and it was performed with enjoyment and appreciation.

I have significant performance anxiety about recording my playing, but I did unearth a piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith, that I recorded for a student a few years ago. Be kind! This isn’t a perfect performance or a perfect recording, but does show how the songs go.

Quick piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith

For my outgoing voluntary today, I turned to a more well-known composer. I played Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s Eriskay Love Song, followed by The Road to the Isles.

Applause

I scored! I don’t usually get a round of applause after a voluntary.

I’ve got a new book of proper organ voluntaries by women composers, so I really must roll up my sleeves and learn some of them, but I suspect The Road to the Isles will prove hard to beat, as far as audience reaction goes …

‘February Article of the Month’ – Delighted!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Pink Scottish heather plants

What do you know? I’m delighted to discover that my article is February Article of the Month in vol.56 of the RMA Research Chronicle!

Women Pursuing Musical Careers: Finding Opportunities in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scottish Music Publishing Circles