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.
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, ASocial 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.
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.
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!
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 project a couple of months ago, and I posted an 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!)
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)
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:-
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.
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.
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 …
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that my RMA Research Chronicle article was now available online as open access. Today, it’s actually in the published issue. Receiving this email is a great start to the day:-
“your article, ‘Women Pursuing Musical Careers: Finding Opportunities in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scottish Music Publishing Circles’, has now been published in Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle! You can view your article at https://doi.org/10.1017/rrc.2025.10009 “
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Writing about Tourism
What’s this?, I hear you ask. Why would a musicologist write about tourism? Well, it’s like this: one of the song book titles that I explored in last year’s monograph, The Glories of Scotland, really deserved more space than I could give it in a monograph devoted to a nation’s music publishing. However, the opportunity came up to contribute a chapter to a Peter Lang Publication, Print and Tourism: Travel-Related Publications from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, edited by Catherine Armstrong and Elaine Jackson.
Today, I received the final proofs, which means that the book itself can’t be very far away. I really enjoyed writing this chapter – you could say that it’s decidedly more about publishing history, and tourism, than conventional musicology – and I really look forward to it actually being published.
My chapter (19 pages):-
‘The Glories of Scotland in Picture and Song’: Jumping on the Festival of Britain Bandwagon?’
The Glories of Scotland – Mozart Allan’s souvenir songbookBack cover of The Glories of Scotland
Published online today, 12 January 2026, in the RMA (Royal Musical Association) Research Chronicle, by Cambridge University Press, on Open Access:-click here.
Writing this article was enormously fulfilling. I had encountered these ladies whilst researching my latest monograph, and I became convinced that they deserved profiling in their own right, and not merely as bit-parts in the larger picture occupied by their husbands, fathers and brothers.
The kernel of the abstract states that, ‘This article focuses on a group of Scottish women who did not make their names solely as art music composers or stellar performers, and for whom piano teaching was only part of their musical work. Four were related to the Scottish music publishers Mozart Allan, James Kerr, and the Logan brothers; the fifth published with Allan and Kerr, and also self-published.’
And all had fulfilling portfolio musical careers. Read on, and I’m sure you’ll agree!
Remembering my fruitful walk on 3 January 2023, I looked outside today – yes, the third of January again – saw the sun shining (athough the temperature was literally freezing out there), and decided to go on another research-and-exercise outing. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ve been exploring the story of a Victorian Glasgow music professor, so I headed for St George’s Cross by subway, to see a former church where he had once been organist. He had started his tenure in an earlier building, which was burned down in a fire, but a new one was built in a mere two years, so he must have resumed duties at that point. I already knew that, as with organist Maggie Thomson’s Paisley church, this Glasgow church had likewise now been converted into rather classy flats.
St George’s-in-the-Fields, Glasgow
Unperturbed, I headed next to the Mitchell Library, and up to the fourth floor where the old music card catalogue lives; it has never been digitized. This eminent individual certainly composed enough, but mostly in a light-music vein, and not published by any of Glasgow’s bigger music publishers. However, I was still surprised to discover that he is completely unrepresented in the card catalogue.
Ottoman Coffeehouse
To drown my sorrows, I headed next to a celebrated Turkish coffee shop in Berkeley Street. (The premises had once been a club for Glasgow musicians, and our hero had been included in a song-book that they sponsored; clearly I needed to have a coffee there in his honour.) Foiled again! There was a queue out to the pavement, just to get inside the cafe. Back I went to the Mitchell Library cafe, to get my coffee more quickly!
It was still bright and sunny outside, so my next port-of-call was India Street (on the opposite side of the M8, near Charing Cross station). This had been both of professional significance and latterly home to our hero, and although I knew modern developments had taken place, I still hoped that I might be able to walk the length of the street. Thwarted! Scottish Power sits squatly and solidly across the line of the road, and pedestrian access is blocked by ongoing building works before you even get to it.
I could have headed into the city centre to gaze at the Athenaeum, but I’ve passed it hundreds of times, and there are plenty of pictures on the web – it wouldn’t have felt like much of a discovery. Sighing – for the mere glimpse of a road sign at the wrong end of India Street had not exactly thrilled me – I headed for the bus home.
But fate had one more twist for me: whilst I was looking on the travel app to find out when the next bus was due …
… the next bus sailed past my stop.
I decided that maybe walking briskly to the Subway would be quicker than waiting for another bus. At least the Subway dates from the era when our hero was in his prime and doing well.
‘How did you get on?’, I was asked, when I got back home. I was forced to admit that, apart from St-George’s-in-the-Fields, I had really seen virtually nothing.
On the plus side, my FitBit is as happy as Larry. Finally, it said, she has realised that Christmas is over, and it’s time for the healthy living to resume!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 