A Gift for a Musical Friend? Or a Disappointment!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Lochnagar

My lovely new book sits on the piano looking, frankly, grand. Diagonal tartan paper on top of cloth-bound covers, the red cloth spine and corners peeping out tantalisingly, and a gold-embossed title. It does indeed look like the advertisement’s promise of being a great gift for a music-loving friend.

I have my own set of questions that I always ask when I open a new book of Scottish songs, and I’ll apply the same tests to “Morven” as I would any other book. But first, I played a couple of tunes from “Morven” this evening. My heart sank. Then Himself called through to me, “What on earth’s THAT you’re playing?” And with reason! The arrangements aren’t bad, technically, but they’re unbelievably prosaic. To be fair, they aren’t too demanding, so they’re accessible at least.

Listen to the introduction of Oh for the bloom of my own native heather, and you’ll see what I mean:- https://soundcloud.com/karen…/oh-for-the-bloom-of-my-own

My next step is to see how long Mozart Allan went on advertising it! It was first published in the 1890s, and my advertising leaflet with ‘An ideal gift for your musical friend’ is from the mid 1920s – but it would appear my copy of the vocal score was owned by someone in 1951. It’s in good condition, so perhaps it WAS still being sold then. (The address could place it anywhere between the late 1920s and the mid 1960s.)

I’m just a little bit sorry for all those countless musical friends who, nearly a century ago, eagerly opened their new book of Scottish songs, and found a batch of well-known songs in plain, unimaginative settings! You know that feeling?

A Word to the Wise

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I needed to buy some music for church this weekend. And to console myself (because it wasn’t really my favourite kind of music), I ordered some old Mozart Allan music too.

  1. If ordering from Amazon, note that they may not tell you something is for “easy piano”. To avoid receiving insufficient notes, look VERY CAREFULLY at the photo of the book. Hal Leonard seem to put “EASY PIANO” in very small print at the top of the cover. Two of my purchases have had to return to Amazon.
  2. If ordering from Abe, be very careful to check that what you’re ordering actually IS music, or you’ll get No Notes At All. You didn’t know Mozart Allan produced word-books? Well, actually, I was aware of this. And now I have another one!
  3. Maybe you have absolutely no interest in where secondhand music came from, but as a point of interest, my Mozart Allan word book came super speedily from Derry, whilst another publication is going to come all the way from Canada. Considering it’s a promotional publication, that’s a fair indication that Mozart Allan advertised pretty widely, isn’t it?!

Weekends are Dangerous

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

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!

When Less is More (Blog to Book)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Returning visitors to these pages may find the content thinner than it used to be. Now that I’m working on my next book, I want my best content to be honed to perfection and triple-checked before I commit it to print. Rather than leave extended writings – which I posted as ‘work in progress’ – sitting on the internet, I’ve pruned what is here. In general, I continue to research the topics I posted here (Scottish music publishers James Kerr, Mozart Allan and many others, and interrogations of cultural issues), and any new details or dates which I didn’t know at the time of blogging, could potentially change what I originally wrote. And also, of course, I want readers of the book to be surprised and delighted by new insights that no-one knew before!

  • A textile interpretation of the Merry Melodies logo
    Collection of Merry Melodies

I shall continue to blog, of course. How could I not? I have so many ideas buzzing round my head that it’s hard keeping them all to myself!