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.
If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know I’m writing a history book about Scottish music publishers. (58,000 words and rising!) But I’ve reached a point where I’m writing about a book COMPILED by Scots, PUBLISHED in England, but also DISTRIBUTED from Edinburgh and Boston, Massachusetts.
I know a lot about the anthology (as I should – I’m writing about it!), but I’m curious about its life in the Scottish diaspora – in other words, anywhere else in the world where Scots emigrated.
The Boston agent of the book was Thomas J. Donlan. His address was Room 831, Colonial Building, 100 Boylston Street, Boston. He moved to New York some time between 1910-1915.
Now, I know from WorldCat and Jisc Library Hub Discover, that there aren’t many copies in libraries. My interest is more to see if there are many copies out ‘in the wild’ in people’s homes, and obviously it would be nice to discover that Mr Donlan imported and distributed lots of them. It was more of an ‘art music’ book than a book of simple folk melodies. The repertoire is non-standard. You’d probably have owned a piano, and been quite a good pianist – or had a good pianist to accompany your singing.
I’m not looking to buy copies – my own came from a dealer under 40 miles from Boston, and I don’t need another! I’m not a bookseller. I am literally just curious to find out if there are many survivors hiding in piano stools and under-stair cupboards. If you’ve got a copy, I’d love to hear from you!
Maybe you haven’t got this book, but you know more about Donlan the agent? If you are aware of archival data, please do let me know. My book is about Scottish publishing, but there’s room for a paragraph or two about the American distributor, if more information came to light. (I’ve already discovered that Colonial Building also housed the Colonial Theatre, and that there were a lot of music shops along the street – indeed, I know which organisation occupied room 831 after Donlan, and that’s another fascinating story, but really I can’t pursue that – it has nothing to do with Scottish music publishing!)
POSTSCRIPT, July 2024. This song-book is the subject of a chapter that I have contributed to an essay collection published by Lang, that is due out later this year. It also gets mentioned in my own forthcoming monograph, again due out later this year. Do follow this blog if you want to keep updated!
So I decided to spend the afternoon at the Mitchell Library. Glasgow is so fortunate to have this wonderful collection!
I saw the two publications I had in mind. I took notes. I even had time to look at the card catalogue. (Catalogues are great research tools, even though I am personally sick of actually cataloguing.)
And then I went home. It was only when I went over my notes that I realised I had missed at least one item in the bibliography of one book, which I thought I had been looking out for. I spent the next 24 hours kicking myself, determined to go back to find that elusive reference if it killed me.
And then my librarian self remembered the advice I often give students. If you have copied out a useful snippet, put it into Google Books, in speech marks. Like this:-
“Reader, I married him”
(Try for yourself – it’s a quote from Charlotte Bronte.)
Often enough, Google Books will retrieve 2-3 lines including the words you copied, telling you the book where it found the text – and the page number.
I searched on the book abbreviation for the missing reference, and found I’d missed three! However, I have now traced them, and all is well. All for research into a publisher who only caught my interest two weeks ago.
Sometimes there are times when you know you should read something, but you worry it might not be directly relevant to your work – or you suspect you’ll spend too much time on something that may only be of tangential interest.
Today was not one of those times, though. After a couple of days off for home improvements, I decided that what I really needed this morning, to ease myself back into a research frame of mind, was to sit and focus on something which might not mean much note-taking, but was certainly of background interest. Indeed, it even touched my interest in copyright history, albeit not music copyright.
And that’s how I found myself reading online – for I couldn’t justify printing out 170-odd pages – this very readable article about Scottish book publishers:-
Gossman, Lionel. “Spreading the Word: Scottish Publishers and English Literature 1750-1900.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 109, no. 2, 2020, pp. iii–161. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45381452. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Pocket-size instructions, a dance-card, and a mouse – just for size comparison!
Mozart Allan’s dance instruction book, Allan’s Ball-Room Guide, early 1900s. Just the right size for a breast pocket, same as a dance card. And here you also see a dance card from the Caledonian Society of Aden, Yemen, produced for St Andrew’s Day 1959 (nothing to do with Mozart Allan) – so you can compare them for size.
Mind you, the Society had a very traditional programme of dances, didn’t it? Mozart Allan would’ve known at least half the dances listed!
(Featured top image: No spitting on the carpet, please, gents – it’s a sure sign of low breeding!)
There’s going to be a lot of activity at my front door in the next few days. I confess I had a spending spree. First, I ordered new, not-terribly-exciting organ music (needs must, but not my own taste!) … and then I had to console myself with some old Mozart Allan scores. Ironically, I won’t be playing a couple of them publicly, but I feel I can’t write about delicate, topical issues without seeing these old scores for myself. Not out of any remote sense of liking them, but because it wouldn’t be right to address the issues without knowing exactly what the publications are like. No second-hand, reported commentary for me.
To counterbalance those, I ordered some Scottish piano tunes and an advertising brochure which has to come all the way from Canada. These will give me considerable pleasure!
If you were involved with, or followed the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall copyright music project, then news of this project led by the University of Stirling will probably also interest you.
“Our project uncovers and reinterprets the history of reading in Scotland in the period 1750 to 1830. Using formerly unexplored (or underexplored) borrowing records, we are [ … ] creating a valuable new resource that will reveal hidden histories of book use, knowledge dissemination and participation in literate culture.”
I’ve been invited to contribute a blogpost about the lady musicians of St Andrews, so watch this space … !
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) …
Before establishing the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project, which looked at Scottish fiddle tune collections largely from the Georgian era. In that context, I read a paper at Musica Scotica in Spring 2014, about a couple of London-published music collections. It has finally been published in Scottish Music Review Vol.5 (2019), 75-87, this week.
Sometimes when we look back at earlier work, we wonder if we’d have written it differently today, but I’m still pretty happy with this article. If anything, I think it justifies my claim that the history of this kind of collection does indeed deserve to count as “book history”, even if it is music rather than literature. So, here it is for your enjoyment:-
As I’ve mentioned recently, this is another network with which I’ve been involved. Last week, the new website of the Romantic National Song Network was launched – and yesterday, my contributed guest blogpost about a Scottish song – Afton Water – went live. It draws heavily on my doctoral research into Scottish song-collecting, but I like to think that my present interest in the wider context (collecting, publishing, curating) has also influenced my approach. I was certainly very glad of the National Library of Scotland’s Digital Gallery, which I can’t praise enough!
My own personal thanks to Special Collections and Archives at James B. Duke Library, Furman University (Greenville, SC), for supplying one of the images used in my guest blogpost.
I’m delighted to introduce today’s blogpost by Andrea Cawelti, who is the Ward Music Cataloger at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Andrea attended a course at the American Rare Book School a couple of years ago, and is keen for everyone to know what a wonderful opportunity it would be for anyone who could attend this year’s course. I shared a link to Andrea’s reflections on the course, which she authored for the Houghton Library blog last year – you’ll find the link in the posting below. Now you can read more about it – if you manage to get there, do please consider sharing your own experiences here!
Philadelphia skyline (Pixabay image)
Fellow readers of Claimed from Stationers’ Hall may be aware that the American incarnation of Rare Book School has offered a course on the Stationers’ Hall since Peter Blayney, one of the stalwart fathers of research on the Stationers, taught the course in the 1990s. But I see that applications have been opened today for this summer course, now taught by Professor Ian Gadd, so I’d like to share a bit about my excellent experience in taking this course in 2016, as prompt applications are usually the most successful.
This term, as in 2016, the course will be held in Philadelphia, June 2-7, at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania, with reasonably-priced and comfortable dorm space available within easy walking distance through the picturesque Penn campus. As this course represented my first experience at the Kislak Center, I was delightfully surprised by our genuine welcome, and helpful assistance by the staff, both of the library and those in attendance from the Rare Book School, even though this wasn’t their turf. The Center holds significant hand-press material for examination and project fodder, and Penn Libraries holds a complete set of microfilms of the Stationers’ Company registers and archives, which we consulted extensively for our work.
As with all RBS courses, ample opportunities are presented for individual discussion, questions, and networking, including regular morning and afternoon breaks, lunches, and receptions. Evenings often include programmed activities from lectures to film presentations, and during my course, there was an excellent presentation by Lynne Farrington, senior curator at the Kislak, on American subscription publishers and their German-American readers. Dr. Farrington provided a fascinating overview of the American subscription publishing industry, and how it was utilized for foreign-language titles to be sold through the subscription network. The lecture was accompanied by a hand-on exploration of subscription samples from several of the Kislak’s collections.
Enough of that, you may say, what about the course itself?!?!?! Well, first of all, I should mention that I arrived with a specific agenda, which was to familiarize myself with the Registers, what was in them of a music format, and to learn how to use the microfilms most effectively (Harvard, too, holds a complete set of these microfilms).
Like many of you I’m sure, I’ve had cases where I’d hoped to find a specific date in the 18th century when something had been published, or to establish some kind of sequence for several publications, and had been frustrated by my inability to harness these resources. Now of course, newer products are available, including the Literary Print Culture online access, which Professor Gadd has now incorporated into the course. Still, the navigation of this product isn’t straightforward, and one really needs to know what one is doing before attempting to use, or it is easy to get completely lost.
Course schedule
As you can see, the schedule was laid out to allow us a proper introduction to the history of the company and its archives: Professor Gadd offered spirited presentations on each aspect, as well as providing references to online and printed documentation which would be of use later in our explorations. Each of us was then tasked to research and present on some topic of particular interest to us (see “research time” and “presentation time” in the daily schedule). I chose a particular segment of time and explored all of the Registers chronologically to gain an idea of what music was being brought to the Stationers for registration between 1799 and 1804. Several of my discoveries ended up in our Houghton Blog, which presents a bit more information for those who are interested.
I had honestly come into this course completely unaware of how extensive the Stationers’ archives were apart from the Registers! Learning more about the “people” documentation was particularly eye-opening, and quite helpful in my cataloging. The online index to the London Book Trades for instance, based on the Stationers’ archives is great for finding more information on printers when researching, creating authority records, or for investigating connections between people. As always, Professor Gadd provided helpful hints: don’t use the “search” box, just go directly to the “index – names”. There were so many trails of bread crumbs offered to us, that who could remember them all (certainly not I!) Knowing this, the professor provided us with an extensive workbook to take home, complete with bibliography and most useful for me after the fact, an overview of the most important copyright legislation affecting just what was registered with the Company.
Workbook table of contents
While this course only goes up to 1775, and consequently doesn’t cover some of the most influential music-related legislation, suggested readings within provide an appendix as it were, and after going through the history before 1775, reading forward into the 1790s was not difficult. Additional revealing segments covered what species of books were included in the English Stock and why this was important, and an introduction to Edward Arber’s term catalogues – keyword-searchable, and covering (among others and appendices) periods into the 18th century. A mind-boggling amount of work, which doesn’t include that much music but is well worth a look.
Two and a half years later, am I glad I took the course? You bet I am; it has proved to be perhaps one of the most useful courses I’ve taken at RBS. Possibly more so for me, because I was essentially ignorant of so many details of the Stationers’ history, but I would heartily recommend this to anyone preparing to work with, or already working with 17th to 18th century music. The context will provide you with an invaluable overview of how printing functioned in Britain, and how and why and what was registered. I hope that I’ve given something of the flavor of the course, and if anyone has questions about how RBS works, please do ask the RBS:-
If you’re considering attending, you can find out more about the RBS on their website. The homepage explains, “Rare Book School provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and skill levels to study the history of written, printed, and digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field.”
Be quick! The early bird catches the worm, as they say.
Good luck and good researching!
Andrea Cawelti Ward Music Cataloger Houghton Library Harvard University
As I’ve mentioned recently, this is another network with which I’ve been involved. Last week, the new website of the Romantic National Song Network was launched – and yesterday, my contributed guest blogpost about a Scottish song – Afton Water – went live. It draws heavily on my doctoral research into Scottish song-collecting, but I like to think that my present interest in the wider context (collecting, publishing, curating) has also influenced my approach. I was certainly very glad of the National Library of Scotland’s 
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 