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.
The Courier covered our Leng Medal Get-Together with an article and a lovely picture of attendees. What a great night! I’ll write more in due course, but I wanted to share this straight away! (News report by Alan Wilson, The Courier & Advertiser, 11 November 2026.)
My grateful thanks to Dr Erin Farley of the Local History Department for helping me arrange this event, and of course to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, for granting me an Athenaeum Award for my research project.
There will be songs, there will be reminiscing. The Leng Medal Scots Song contests have run for one and a quarter centuries. Thousands of kids have entered, hundreds of kids have won medals. So who will be there? Wait and see!
And I’m in Dundee 😉
I’ll write a write-up in the next couple of days!
The event has been flagged up in one of D C Thomson’s local newspapers, The Courier & Advertiser, Tuesday 10 November 2026:-
We have a wifi outage at home, so I’m working on campus today. I almost reach the bus-stop before I realise I’ve left my phone at home. This would be inconvenient, but would also render me uncontactable, and that might not go down too well. I go back for it. Extra steps are good, right?
I get to work to discover it’s an auditions day. The students in suits look very youthful, so it’s easy to deduce that these are audition candidates. And every so often, a name is called out. I silently wish them all the best of luck! Anxious and exciting times for them. There’s a bustling, busy vibe in the cafe-bar.
Safely ensconced coffee to hand and laptop open, I start sharing the link for our Leng Medal Get-Together at the Wighton Centre in Dundee Central Library on Tuesday 10th November (5.30-7 pm). (Facebook, Bluesky, and via email. I shared it on LinkedIn last week – I can reiterate in due course.)
Limited numbers – Booking essential! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/leng-medal-memories-get-together-tickets-2004114804329
Have you noticed how many adverts there are on Facebook these days? Ridiculous. Here’s hoping my event links actually surface amongst all the adverts in everyone’s feeds! But then I did my weekly glance at my email junk folder, to ensure I’m not deleting anything significant – and I got even more irritated. I’ve been invited to two irrelevant conferences (one an international conference about care homes!); courted by scientific spammers who think my published writings would benefit from being exploited to a totally disinterested, if not imaginary audience of scientists; not to mention being notified about fire extinguishers for businesses – and something about e-surgery.
Click! Gone.
I dedicated a very long Friday to editing an article that I wrote a while ago; today I’m crafting a new one. Two very different processes! Now I’ve cleared the decks, I can proceed …
Tuesday 10th November from 5.30-7 at the Wighton Centre, Dundee Central Library. Leng Medal Memories. Booking essential! (Please do click the booking link to find out more.)
This event arises from my Athenaeum Award-funded oral history research into the Leng Medals in Scots Song, entered by Dundonian children for one and a quarter centuries already. The three books illustrated were at various times prizes for the Gold Medal winners each year. Wilma Paterson, compiler of the most recent prize, grew up in Dundee herself, and studied music at what is now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. This beautiful book was the result of a collaboration between Paterson and Alasdair Gray in his capacity as illustrator. Gray was undeniably the most famous Scottish song book illustrator that I can think of!
Athenaeum Awards are awarded by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow. I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Research & Engagement department.
I’m writing an article (publication destination yet to be confirmed) – this was one of my planned outputs from my oral history interviews gathering Dundonian Leng Medal memories. And in due course, I want to write my book chapter, but I’ll get on with the article first! One thing at a time.
But my most pressing concern is organising a get-together for any of my interviewees who are free to meet up in person and share a few songs together – not to mention reminiscing about their participation in the Leng Medal competitions. This Leng Medal for Scots Song is literally woven into the fabric of Dundee, and where better place to hold it than the Wighton Centre in Dundee’s Central Library? Of course there will be singing!
Maybe you took part in the Leng Silver and Gold Medal competitions? Fond memories? Or know people who have a medal?
It’ll be on Tuesday 10th November from 5.30-7 pm. You do need to book admission, using this EventBrite link, as seats are limited and we can’t overcrowd the space!!
Last year, I had a research fellowship at IASH, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, at the University of Edinburgh. I was researching the educational music publications of Edinburgh publisher Thomas Nelson, and in particular, the four wee Nelson Scots Song Books.
I plan to write a book about my findings – focusing on the importance of networking between all the people involved – and one chapter is going to be dedicated to the Nelson Scots Song Books. These books were compiled by two local music advisors, one of whom was Dundee’s James Easson, and he encouraged local schools to use the song books for their participation in the Leng Medal Scots Song competitions. This competition has been so wildly successful and popular, that I decided to conduct oral history interviews with people who participated. Another chapter of my proposed book will therefore be dedicated to their Leng Medal memories. It’s not that common for a quartet of tiny song books to have had such a significant role in local music-making. This research has been sponsored by an Athenaeum Award from my employer, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Acknowledgements are therefore due both to IASH at the University of Edinburgh, and to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Research and Engagement department. A big thank you also goes to the participants in my research study, and to the Local History department of Dundee Central Library.
Whilst I’m whimsical enough to rather like the idea of a birthday cake for a book, I don’t think I’ll go quite that far. Still …
I’m celebrating the second birthday of my second book – A Social History of Amateur Music Making and Scottish National Identity. It was reviewed by Soundyngs in January 2025 – https://soundyngs.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/…/review-a…/ (Happily, the paperback and Kindle versions are affordable!)
Since then? Well, I have a couple of research strands on the go at present:-
1. Leng Medal Memories in Dundee, my research sponsored by an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. This is really coming together now – I’m working on an article and planning an event.
2. Then there’s the research into a forgotten woman Glasgow composer. I wrote an article in which she was one of the main characters, published a few months ago:- https://www.cambridge.org/…/85AB3A5B58392CEE7FCE07E7009… I have an idea for an event there, too. But I’d better get the first event tied up before I plan the second!
I’ve started writing an article about the Leng Scots Song contests. I haven’t yet decided where it’s going to be submitted, or how long it’ll be! I just want to get a rough draft done first. But what I do know is that I’ve got exactly 12.4 hours of recorded interviews absolutely laden with interesting anecdotes about how the competitors decided what to sing, how they felt about standing up and singing unaccompanied, and lots, lots more. Only earlier this week, I heard from a relative of someone who entered in 1931. I was able to provide them with a photo of the youthful competitor, making for one very happy relative. I feel as though I’ve done a ‘good deed’ this week!
I have lists (of course I have lists; you can’t beat a good list!) of songs, and interviewees, and schools, and song books – sifting through all my gathered information is quite a herculean task in itself.
And now – talking about writing – I’m heading out to a calligraphy class tonight. It’ll be fun to focus on the physical art of putting ink on a page, after a day toiling over a laptop and deciding what to write about, in which order!
Postscript. On second thoughts … the clumsy, left-handed child that I was, came back to haunt me this evening. There will be no elegant copperplate from me, tomorrow or any time in the future. (But I can type very fast …)
Image by chris_muschard from Pixabay
Since beginning this research into Dundee’s Leng Medal competitions, I’ve posted updates from time to time. Seven of them, to be precise! If you’d like to read more, I’ve put all the links on a special page dedicated to this project:-
To recap – I have done oral history interviews with a number of people who participated in Dundee’s Leng Medal competitions for Scots song singing – mostly as children, but a few teachers have also talked with me. I’ve checked the transcriptions of 25 out of the total 27 interviews, and I also have a few emailed responses too. If you’re one of the people I’ve interviewed or emailed, then can I offer a big thank you, right now, because I now have lots and lots of information and memories. I really am very grateful. I couldn’t have done this without you. You’ve shared your memories, you’ve made me smile, and some of you have even sung to me. Who could ask for more generosity of spirit than that?
So, what’s next?
And I have more than one string to my bow. I’m also still researching …
After my talk at the recent Royal Academy of Music conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914, I have continued researching Rose Smith’s life. I’ve already found out more, and tomorrow I’m off to consult an archive where I hope some of my still outstanding questions might be answered. I foresee a [second, more focused] research trip to Rose’s birthplace in the near future, before our Scottish days get short and wintry!
I’d also like to organise another event! But I really must focus on getting the Dundee research written up and celebrated before I get consumed by this other research thread.
It’s a good thing I’m semi-retired, really! If I was still cataloguing jazz CDs in the library, I certainly wouldn’t have time to plan research expeditions without taking annual leave.
I sat down in my home office alcove this morning, and realised that my desk actually tells you everything about me!
(I could add context, and explain that I’m a semi-retired researcher and a church organist!)
Right, the song book and old laptop are closed. I fix my eyes firmly on the Leng Silver Medal on my pinboard. That’s this morning’s focus! But I just can’t put away the 11th Hussars trumpeter – it’s the closest I’ll get to Trumpet-Major James Smith today!
