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.
Thanks to the kindness of a friend of a friend, I received books 3 and 4 of the Nelson’s Scots Song Book through the post today. Well, what else could I do but take a photo of them?! I’ve longed for ages to have the complete set, and now I do.
I have already learned something new. The first two books had little black-and-white line drawings wherever there was a blank bit of page, and apparently the pupils loved these. And then …
I think there was a bit of cost-cutting going on! But I don’t recall any correspondence with the editors James Easson and Herbert Wiseman to advise them of this. I’ll need to go back through my notes!
Suddenly – the pictures stopped!
Book 1 – published 1948; reprinted until at least 1960.
Book 2 – 1950; reprinted until at least 1964.
Book 3 – 1952. I don’t currently know if it was reprinted!
Book 4 – January 1955; reprinted at least in 1956. (The teacher’s book came out in 1954)
Dr Edward Emanuel Harper has a lot to answer for. As I mentioned in my podcast, I was awaiting a book of American organ/ harmonium pieces, published in 1926, which included a number of pieces by Harper. It’s quite a small book, and arrived from California – in a huge box – yesterday. (An American organ is an instrument very much like a harmonium – a keyboard instrument powered by wind, often for domestic use. My own Welsh grandfather had one.)
American organ (Wikimedia)
As I suspected, they’re short, easy pieces. Amongst the 51 pieces are thirteen by Harper, along with pieces by eight other composers, some of whom would still have been living, and some dead. (Nine pieces were by an American woman of English parentage. That’s not part of today’s story – but kudos to Bayley & Ferguson for including her. All the other composers were men.)
However, even if the pieces in this book – the second book in a series of six – are predictably straightforward, I shall still play them over, just out of curiosity. There’s not a great deal to say about them, after observing that Harper liked chromaticism in the slower pieces, but he also contributed some more diatonic march-like items – and a ‘Scots Coronation March’ which is remarkably un-Scottish.
Notwithstanding the simplicity of the contents, the book itself had more surprises for me. And I fell down a rabbit-hole, as I investigated.
Transcontinental
I’ve written about Scottish music publications having been distributed across the diaspora, but this usually entails one transcontinental trip from the UK, whether commercially, as a gift or by a migrating owner. This copy has travelled thousands more miles than that!
Here we have a book from a Glasgow/London publisher, including pieces by Harper (now in Canada) and the Anglo-American lady, and a German composer who had died some sixty-odd years earlier. It was first published a hundred years ago. Obviously, I’ve no idea whether it was a new copy, ie still in print, when the late owner apparently acquired it in the 1950s (bear with me, I can explain how I think it was then), or if they were given it by someone else, and subsequently wrote their own name on it. The book was ‘printed in Great Britain’ (so I guess that probably means it was NOT printed by Aird and Coghill in Glasgow) – but it was sold to a previous owner, by a firm in Adelaide, Australia – Cawthornes Ltd.
How, I wondered, had the book got from Adelaide to California?
There are Doctors and Doctors …
The late owner’s name is on my copy. It was a distinctive name – so I looked it up, out of curiosity. In deference to their memory, I won’t name them, but the details proved really quite easy to find out, so it feels okay to share the barest outline of my discoveries.
The book had clearly belonged to someone in Adelaide. I can pinpoint the 1950s because the Australian owner gained their undergraduate and Masters degrees in Adelaide, having travelled thousands of miles across Australia to get there. They married there – indeed, their father conducted the ceremony. (This versatile pastor had also played the organ on an evangelical mission to a first nation community in his younger days.)
The newly-weds moved from Adelaide to California to further the career of the named individual on my American organ compilation – who became an eminent scientist. I do know, from the eBay vendor, that the book was one of a number of church-related music publications being disposed of. Although I don’t know for certain if the owner of the book was an organist, their name was on it. I like to think they played it. Does it matter? No, not really!
Of course, the singular, distinctive life-history of one single copy has no bearing whatsoever upon Edward Emanuel Harper, who was in his sixties in Canada by the time the book was published, and was long deceased by the time the book’s owner was a student in Adelaide.
The whole story is just a series of unrelated happenings during the course of its life. It just amuses me to think that an Anglo-Scottish book including short organ pieces by our second Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music Principal – a Doctor of Music – ended up being sold to an Australian scientist at the start of their career, remaining in their music collection as they gained their PhD in one American state and grew in stature and reputation in another – they were not the kind of medical doctor that we think of when we talk of hospital doctors, but certainly working very closely alongside them . I wonder if and when they last played this music?
Home Again
It would have left Britain between 1926 and around 1958, went to Australia and then the USA, but now, finally, it is back in Glasgow, flown back to the home town of the former Bayley & Ferguson, where it’s being pored over by another musical doctor – this time a PhD rather than a Mus.Doc.
That’s quite a life-story for a humble little book of Church Voluntaries!
‘You’ll be home for lunch’, He said. It was halfway between a query and a command. ‘You have four hours …’ (Actually, that came down to three, once I got to the library. Two, allowing for a coffee and my return journey … )
The Authoress
Nonetheless, I held in my hands the two very poetry books that the author (‘authoress’, in those days) had donated to the city library service back in 1881, not that long after they moved from Lanark to Glasgow. I’ll never know if she handed them in personally, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that she handled those copies at some point.
I can’t show you them. (I signed a library form, which said that I couldn’t share my photos on the internet.) But you can picture two small volumes, one dark green and one purple, a little over six inches tall, with gold-edged leaves, and a little gold-embossed lyre on the front cover of each. Slightly different in design, but very similar.
A bit like this unrelated, non-library book
These books are by the mother of one of the women I wrote about in my recent RMA Research Chronicle article.* Only one has been digitized, but I wanted to see them both. I was enchanted to find she had written a poem about ‘my’ heroine, Rose, when Rose was just a small child. It was worth the trip for that in itself. Not that it really added any hard facts to her biography, but still a lovely thing to find.
Anyway, there we were. Me, Mary Ann’s books, and a poem about wee Rose (amongst lots more poetry – I’m not writing here about everything I found!) – so yes, I think I can safely say I came as close as is possible to ‘meeting’ Mary Ann today. But as I said, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
I handed the books back – it was a bit of a wrench, but hey, that’s what happens in a library – and the curtains of time softly closed behind me, leaving Mary Ann in 1881, and myself here in 2026. I may be back – she and I could have more to talk about!
On Wednesday, I was more than happy to attend as an advisory board member for the first board meeting of the University of Sussex’s PromiscuousPrint research project. The website explains what it’s all about:-
A research project about what UK copyright libraries left out in the nineteenth century. Funded by the European Research Council. Hosted by the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab. Led by Dr Hannah Field.
Dr Field is the principal investigator of PromPrint; she is an associate professor in Victorian literature at the University of Sussex. She’s joined by doctoral researcher, Tiffany Murphy, also at the University of Sussex, and two Digital Humanities scholars, Dr Nicolas Seymour-Smith and Dr Milan Terlunen (also at Sussex).
It’s rather nice to have the opportunity to think about copyright libraries again. My own Claimed from Stationers Hall network feels quite a while ago now! (Remember?)
I forgot to add .. the decorating delays are apparently our fault for having so much stuff. It’s my books and music in the dining room that the painter’s alluding to. (He has no idea about Himself’s collection, many of which were originally secretly delivered to his workplace so that I wouldn’t see them, and are now scattered in various parts of the house.)
Last November, one of the electricians also innocently asked why I had so many books. I answered lamely, ‘Well, so I could write these two.’ Which didn’t seem terribly convincing to me, but seemed to satisfy him!
Scholar
Former librarian
Organist
Writes books about music books …
I don’t feel guilty about the books, but I really must reduce the collection before my family have to clear the house once I’m gone! Some are going on eBay, others to the charity shop.
Yesterday, I highlighted the 85th anniversary of the Blitz that destroyed Paternoster Row on Sunday 29th December 1940 – and with it, Thomas Nelson’s London premises.
Today, 30th December, we leap forward to 1954. The Second World War had ended nine years earlier. The country was picking itself up again, and James Easson and Herbert Wiseman had published four books of Scottish songs in the series, ‘Nelson’s Scots Song Book, primarily for school use. I’ve done a lot of research into this series, during my Heritage Collections visiting Fellowship at IASH in the University of Edinburgh, so I’m sure you’ll understand that I won’t be saying much about it today – all will be revealed in due course! However, I can reveal that Easson seems to have written a letter to his editor on 30th December 1954, with the expectation of compiling a fifth book. The letter is no longer extant, but the carbon copy of their reply survives.
‘All good things must come to an end’, as the saying goes. And an IASH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is a thoroughly good thing. I handed back my keys with sadness today, but I have had a great year. (The Fellowship was technically six months, but I was graciously permitted to hang around, retaining the use of my office for the rest of the year, which was wonderful, and enabled me to continue data-gathering in the Library’s Heritage Collections.)
19th meets 20th century Looking back …Last glance from bus stop St Patrick’s Square
If you are looking for a next step after your PhD, or if like me, you’re making a change of direction – or need a spell concentrating on a particular research question in the Humanities – do consider applying.
I devoted my time to examining the archives of the Edinburgh publishers, Thomas Nelson. I initially entitled my project, ‘From National Songs to Nursery Rhymes, and Discussion Books to Dance Bands: investigating Thomas Nelson’s Musical Middle Ground’, but the nursery rhymes turned out to be poems, and weren’t what I had in mind! The rest? Yes, I researched them.
I found quite a bit of correspondence between Thomas Nelson’s editors, authors and compilers, which was gratifying. I was able to trace material in journals that I would not have had access to, had I not been in Edinburgh; there’s the excellent University Library collection of actual and digital resources, and the National Library of Scotland just down the road.
I have deferred commencing any significant written work until I had explored all the potentially relevant materials in the files. I believe I’ve now reached that point. As a result of conducting this research, I have ideas for extending my research in new directions, and I’m contemplating writing another book, so I need not only to explore potential audiences, but also to start working on a book proposal
However, I have also applied for and recently won an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to enable me to conduct an oral history project. This work, to be conducted in 2026, will hopefully enable me to write a final chapter for my proposed monograph. (I’ll be blogging about this before too long, but there are things I need to do first, before I spill the beans!)
I have benefited from being part of a research community, hearing other scholars’ papers and discussing our research; and attending researcher development sessions. I was able to focus on my new direction as a researcher – important, after so many years as an ‘alt-ac’ researcher working in professional services. In this regard, I have also been in a position to submit some other unrelated work for publication, and I spoke at a conference at the University of Surrey in June, all of which gives me a sense that my research is gathering momentum.
Today, my last day, I took a cake to the University Library’s Heritage Collections; went to IASH’s Christmas lunch; and mulled over aspects of my ethical approval submission for my next project. (Oh, and drank quite a bit of coffee!)
Thank you so very much for a great year, IASH!
IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities)
It’s not as though I’m unaccustomed to what I’ve been doing in odd moments for the past few days. Over the years, I’ve opened dozens, indeed hundreds of old song books and other music publications, trying to read their prefaces, annotations and harmonic arrangements as though I were a contemporary musician rather than a 21st century musicologist. Looking at music educational materials is likewise not new to me.
Enter Dr Walford Davies and his The Pursuit of Music
He was the first music professor at the University of Aberystwyth, but he was also hugely popular in the 1920s-30s through his broadcasting work – fully exploiting the new technology of wireless and gramophone for educational purposes, and to share his love of music with the ordinary layman wishing to know more about all they could now listen to. This book was written after he’d mostly, but not entirely retired.
It wasn’t exactly what I expected! If I thought he would write about what made the Pastoral Symphony pastoral, or Die Moldau describe a river’s journey, I rapidly had to change my expectations.
His audience was apparently not just the average layperson, but also young people in their late teens, not long out of school. If the reader didn’t play the piano, they were urged to get a friend to play the examples for them. (Considering the book is over 400 pages, you can imagine how long they’d be – erm – captive!)
Dedication
Examples for your friendly pianist to play!
And this was aesthetics, 90 years ago. I struggled to get into the mindset of a layperson wanting to know what music (classical, in the main) was ‘about’, without knowing what a chord was, or realising that music occupies time more than space. Would I have benefited from that knowledge? Would being told in general terms what the harmonic series was, have helped me appreciate the movements of a string quartet? Or Holst’s The Planets?
It wasn’t about musical styles over the years. I didn’t read it cover to cover, but neither did it appear to explain musical form and structure as I would have expected.
Davies’ biographer, H. C. Colles, did comment that it was a mystifying book, and suffered from the fact that the author’s strengths were in friendly and persuasive spoken, not written communication.
I’ve only heard snatches of his spoken commentary, so I can’t really say. Apart from which, Colles made an observation about Davies’ written style. Colles was a contemporary authority who knew Davies personally – and he may have been picking his own words carefully, so as not to cause offence. My own disquiet is more a matter of content: was it what his avowed audience needed, to start ‘understanding music’?
I think I have been mystified enough.
I wonder what the Nelson editors made of this book by one of the great names of their age? They published it, and I think regarded him as a catch, but what did they actually think?!
And did the layperson, assuming they got through the 400+ pages, lay it down with a contented sigh, feeling that now they understood music?
It would be remiss of me not to point out that Routledge’s Black Friday sale makes the e-book version of my book very affordable! (Maybe someone might even buy you it for Christmas?).
Those preferring to read a hard copy might point out to their library that there’s no time like the present…
(Do I live in the 1950s these days?!) I’ve been tracing a woman who briefly worked for publisher Thomas Nelson in Edinburgh in the mid-1950s. Yesterday, I found a memo from her to one of the managing directors. Instructed to throw a book away if she couldn’t find a use for it, she promptly did find a use for it, giving it to the library of the Glasgow training college where she had previously worked.
I admired her honesty in telling him, because there was probably no need to report back on what happened to a book that was clearly regarded as inconsequential. It came from the Toronto branch of Nelson’s, and was about important Canadian educationalists; I can see why it might not have been much use in the Edinburgh office. (She had, in fact, travelled back from Montreal at the age of 16 – I have no idea how long she’d been there – so maybe he knew this, and thought she’d be interested in this combination of a country she’d visited, as well as a topic she knew well.)
Nonetheless, she did tell him, and reported that not only did the college librarian thank her, but her former boss at the college had commented that it was a title she’d actually been looking for. My interest was piqued, and I checked Jisc Library Hub Discover. Sure enough, the college has since been absorbed into a university, but the university library still has that book – the only copy in the UK. It has survived 72 years and at least one library relocation. I wondered if it had subsequently been borrowed by that senior training college lecturer – the one who had been looking for it?
Apparently not! The book has no trace of ever having been borrowed. Let’s hope she at least sat and read it in the library!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 