Women’s History Month 2024 – Musicians

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Victorian or Edwardian woman descending stone staircase

I’ve written quite a bit about women in musical history, so I’m adding something to the top of this post every couple of days during Women’s History Month – mostly flashbacks to women musicians I’ve researched, but some other discoveries too. (I’ve been shifting things around to a more chronological order, but I’ve always added the new bit first!) You’ll find more musicians than composers in this posting, just because of my own recent research.

Sometimes I look at the history of women musicians from the point of view of good library provision for our readers, whilst at other times my own research interests are foremost.  It just depends on the day of the week, because I currently occupy two roles in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. For 3.5 days a week, I’m a librarian. For 1.5, a postdoctoral researcher.

15. The Ketelbey Fellowship

It’s a whole year since I learned that I had been awarded the first Ketelbey postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of St Andrews.  Scholar Doris Ketelbey was a significant figure in the history of the department.  I felt highly honoured to have been the first Ketelbey Fellow from September to December 2023.

14. Representation of Women Composers in the Library

I couldn’t resist adding the open access article I published about my EDI activity in our own Whittaker Library:-

‘Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library’, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice. Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023): Special Issue on Breaking the Gender Bias in Academia and Academic Practice, 21-26. (Paper given at the International Women’s Day Conference hosted by the University of the Highlands and Islands, 2022.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.56433/jpaap.v11i1.533

Logo of the JPAAP https://jpaap.ac.uk/JPAAP

13. New Books for the Library

Susan Tomes – Women and the piano

It’s a privilege to shape a library collection, so I’m pleased to have just ordered and catalogued several relevant books this month.

  • Susan Tomes, Women and the Piano: a History in 50 Lives (Yale University Press, 2024) Read more about it on the publisher’s website, here. In actual fact, it’s the fourth title by this author that we now have in stock. So if readers like this, they might like the earlier three, too!
  • Margaret C. Watson, Women in Academia : Achieving our Potential. (Market Harborough : Troubadour, 2024). Not a book about women in history, but very much for women in the present day!
  • Gillian Dooley, She played and sang: Jane Austen and Music (Manchester University Press, 2024). Back to history again.
  • Women and Music in Ireland / ed. Jennifer O’Connor-Madsen; Laura Watson & Ita Beausang (Boydell Press, 2022)

Moreover, there’s a new Routledge book coming out this summer – I have ordered it for the Whittaker Library. Of course, I may have retired from the Library by the time it arrives. This just means I won’t need to catalogue it! I’ll still be a part-time researcher, so I’ll be able to read it:-

12. Jessy McCabe’s Petition

It’s some years now, since a single-minded schoolgirl decided action was necessary. In 2015,  Jessy McCabe noticed that Edexel had no women composers in the A-Level Music syllabus, and successfully petitioned to rectify this, via Change.org.  I found out about her impressive initiative when I was beginning to start serious work on building up our library collection to include more music – contemporary and  historical – by women and people of colour. 

Jessy is now a Special Needs teacher.  I’m sure she’ll go far.

11. Forgotten Women Composers

Part of academia entails sharing research outcomes beyond the ‘ivory walls’.  It’s called public engagement, and that’s the opportunity I seized when my old friend The People’s Friend magazine commissioned me to write a feature back in 2020.

  • The sound of forgotten music: Karen McAulay uncovers some of the great female composers who have been lost from history’, in The People’s Friend, Special Edition, 11 Sep 2020, 2 p. (Dundee : D C Thomson).  I blogged about it at the time (here).

10. Late Victorian Women Musicians

Torn pages of old music, some handwritten and some printed

Since my more recent research has focused on the late Victorian era and the first part of the twentieth century, you’ll not be surprised to find that I found some interesting Scottish women musicians of that era! They are forgotten today – but I’ve done my bit to raise their profiles!

9. In Praise of Music Cataloguers! Introducing Miss Elizabeth Lambert

Before I started the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall music copyright network, I had spent some months researching the wonderful late 18th and early 19th century music copyright collection at the University of St Andrews. A key resource was the handwritten catalogue in two notebooks, largely compiled by Miss Elizabeth Lambert (later to become Mrs Williams, when she married and moved to London.)

I just love the fact that this earnest young woman (I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m pretty sure she must have been earnest!) created a useful resource which would help everyone get maximum use out of the music repertoire that other libraries were less than impressed by. So we had Elizabeth cataloguing the collection, and numerous men and women, friends of the professors, making use of it. I blogged about her, and eventually wrote an article for the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, mentioning her again.

8. Was there a Harp at St Leonard’s School?

Image by Sue Rickhuss from Pixabay

Some time ago, I blogged about an instruction manual for harp, which the Bertrams borrowed from St Andrews University Library:-

The library’s copyright collection of music was a boon for middling class women like headmistress Mrs Bertram, her teacher daughters and their pupils.  It does lead one to wonder if they had a harp at the school.  I checked their borrowing records for more evidence. They certainly borrowed several volumes which included harp music.

7. Students but not at University? Educating Young Women

It’s time to turn to piano teacher Mr T. Latour. I’d like to refer you to my June 2018 blog post about women in St Andrews using pedagogical musical material in the early 19th century. Possibly the self-same young ladies attending, or having attended Mrs Bertram’s school?! The illustration features a young woman – probably just approaching or about marriagable age – at an upright piano. The abundant floral arrangement atop the piano (quite apart from sending shivers down the housekeeper’s spine every time the young pianist played too enthusiastically) suggests a well-to-do household. Following Latour’s instructions, the pianist has elegantly flat hands …..

Title page of T. Latour's instruction manual, Ladies' Thorough Bass.
T. Latour – Ladies’ Thorough Bass
Instructions 'on the position at the piano-forte'
Latour advises on the seating position, and how to hold ones hands elegantly

6. Not my work – but very timely for WHM 2024]

I’m not posting anything relating to my work today, but I saw mention of a great new article by Dominic Bridge the other day, so I thought I’d share details here. It’s a fascinating read. The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies is part of the Wiley Online Library:-

5. Jointly authored with Brianna Robertson-Kirkland: ‘My love to war is going’: Women and Song in the Napoleonic Era

We published this article in the Trafalgar Chronicle, New Series 3 (2018), 202-212. My own observations were based on music I had found in the Legal Deposit Music at the University of St Andrews, whilst Brianna had already founded EAERN (Eighteenth-Century Arts Education Research Network) jointly with Dr Elizabeth Ford, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

4. Forgotten Female Composers

Back in 2018 when I was awarded the AHRC networking grant for the Claimed from Stationers Hall network, I drew up a list of women composers from the Georgian era. There were more than one might have expected – perhaps they only composed a handful of pieces, in many cases, but nonetheless – they composed. You can find the list on a separate page on this blog, here. And you can read more about it in the blogpost I wrote in July 2018,

3. Mrs Bertram

This lady ran a girls’ school at St Leonard’s in St Andrews. This was NOT the famous and long-established private school that has long stood there, but an earlier enterprise. And Mrs Bertram and her daughters subsequently moved to Edinburgh, to the disappointment of parents of daughters in St Andrews!

The photo portrays a Mrs Bertram of Edinburgh. Chronologically,  she could well be ‘our’ Mrs Bertram, and a scholarly bent is suggested by the pile of books at her hand.

2. The Accomplished Ladies of Torloisk

I almost forgot about the musical Maclean-Clephane ladies of Torloisk, which is a stately home on the island of Mull. But how could I forget about them, considering I published a lengthy article about them some years ago?! Luckily, a book of letters by Sir Walter Scott crossed my library desk, and even though it didn’t contain those particular letters, this did remind me of his musical friends in Torloisk!

1. Esteemed Academic introduces Composer Harriet Wainewright

Today, I’d like to introduce a woman composer who predates most of the individuals I’ve encountered. Professor James Porter applies his considerable intellect to produce this in-depth article:-

  • ‘An English Composer and Her Opera: Harriet Wainewright’s Comàla (1792)’, Journal of Musicological Research Feb, 2021. Published online: 16 Feb 2021.

Zip File Zipped! Could this be it?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Well, folks, I have a preface, revised introduction, seven revised chapters and a revised conclusion … all in a zip file. I finished my revised book manuscript last night, ready to go off this morning. And it feels – Strange. I wondered if I’d feel triumphant when I clicked ‘Send’. But, at the moment, it’s cautious relief with a side of exhaustion. Let’s put the kettle on.

I did my PhD part-time, in my spare time, between 2004-09. Then there was more spare-time work turning it into a monograph, published in 2013.

From 2012-15, I was part-time RA to a major AHRC grant (but still 80% a librarian), and then – there’s a common thread here – I was awarded an AHRC networking grant (which I did part-time) on a different topic, before my hybridity changed to 85% librarian as I started research for this, my second monograph. The initial draft was submitted last summer, a decade after the first book was published.

It was with some envy that I read about an academic starting their research leave this year. I’m sure it’s well-deserved. I’m just wistful, because, apart from being allowed a month for writing up my PhD (yes, I know – we all know – it took much longer than that!), I’ve basically taken annual leave whenever I needed it. That’s what happens when you are more of a librarian than a researcher.

Apart from a brief visit home last summer, I didn’t take a proper break, because I was writing. I only took a week’s pause for Christmas, before jumping back into book revisions. It’s not surprising I’m knackered.

I can’t pretend I’m a full-time academic. I cannot, and should not, compare myself with people in a fully academic role. I’m mostly a librarian – admittedly, an academic librarian – but I’ve been a research fellow (part-time plus some annual leave), and I’ve just finished writing a second scholarly monograph (ditto). Given the time constraints, and the fact that I can’t be researching or writing when I’m being a librarian, I’m modestly proud of that.

Never Mind the Partridge …

Exhausted but provisionally exhilarated … it’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas. After the obligatory drummers drumming, etc, etc, never mind the partridge! 

Greetings card showing partridge in a pear tree
Partridge in a Pear Tree (greetings card from Motor Neurone Association, image courtesy of Advocate Art)

And a book, with best wishes, from me.

Cover Image by Circe Denyer from Pixabay

Thoughts on Sharing and Generosity

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I woke at 4 am again today. Could I get back to sleep? No.  As I rode into town on the bus,  I reflected that many of my wakeful thoughts had revolved around scholarly sharing. My mind seemed to bring out a series of issues, examining them one by one.

Tell me Everything

The breathless, ‘Tell me all you know’? Flattering, endearing, and with a piquant irony, considering one of our academic colleagues asked, more than two decades ago, ‘what does a librarian want with a PhD, anyway?’  Indeed, it was around that time that I overheard two graduate librarians opining that librarians don’t actually need degrees at all.  Another academic told a colleague that they were ‘only a librarian.’ (Postscript. That librarian subsequently went on getting postgraduate qualifications too!)

So it’s nice that, as the postdoctoral librarian approaches retirement, she is acknowledged to be possessed of Useful Knowledge. Even if it’s scholarly knowledge, which now sits in books on the library shelves. 

Quote (Unattributed)

Then my thoughts turned to the individuals whom I  would characterise as academic vacuum cleaners, noting your pearls of wisdom and later quoting them, unattributed. I know it’s good to share, but it leaves a bitter taste when your sharing is taken advantage of, whether it’s scholarly research or professional assistance.  On the other hand, if we acknowledge help given, it reflects well on both the sharer and the sharee! 

The problem is that I’m a librarian AND a scholar. And as librarians, we’re accustomed to sharing. I sometimes find it hard to decide where a line has been crossed.

I Can’t. Please Can You …?

Similarly, we librarians share our expertise about referencing, but there’s perhaps a subtle difference between our, ‘this is how you reference’ advice, which I gladly and willingly do all the time – and, ‘can you sort my references?’  As a scholar, I don’t ghost-write articles for publication.  Should I, as a librarian, ghost-format references?  Would I be colluding in giving the impression that the author has done a superb job with all that technical detail?! Or do other librarians do this without a qualm? I just don’t know what’s the norm here.

This is Not a Question, But

There are also times when sharing is not so good, though.  An interrupted talk where anecdotes are shared, uninvited, whilst you’re in mid-flow.  Or ‘Questions’ afterwards, that are not questions so much as demonstrations of knowledge. 

Worth a Try!

And best of all, requests for sharing that simply overstep the mark!  Now you’re wondering what I mean, aren’t you?!  Well, you won’t believe this one.

I was expecting a research question, in one particular email that I received a while ago.  But that wasn’t what was being requested, on this occasion.

‘You have a sewing machine, don’t you?  Can you show me how to sew curtains?’ 

[Meaning, ‘Can you sew them for me …?’]

Clker-Free-Vector Images from Pixabay

The Doctor doesn’t have time to sew other scholars’ curtains. Helpful, I am, but not a mug!