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.
This is all about networking – and expanding one’s knowledge beyond the immediate focus of research, in order to understand the context in which the topic stands.
Yesterday, I headed north of the river, because there was a community event being held by Maryhill Burgh Halls Trust, and a group I’ve recently started following was manning a stall there – the Protests and Suffragettes social enterprise.
A creative project & new social enterprise led by a team of artists, activists, & local historians working to recover and re-voice the histories of women activists in Scotland.
My takeaways from the stall!
My interest stems from the work I’ve done researching late Victorian and early twentieth century Glasgow women involved in teaching, performing or publishing music. I’ve already published an extensive article in the RMA Research Chronicle, and I’m giving a conference paper later this year. I’d like to find out if two of ‘my’ ladies were actively involved in the early suffrage movement. My guess is that they may have been sympathisers, if not active in the cause. The older lady lived before the Suffragette movement as such, and I’m not expecting to find the younger of the two doing anything particularly audacious, but it would be nice to find any trace of supporting the cause, even just as a member of some organised group! (I’ve already mentioned my trip to Glasgow Women’s Library on a similar mission a couple of weeks ago.)
Anyway, I thought it would be altogether lovely if I introduced myself today, since we’ve already been in touch via social media. And it was lovely. I took the opportunity to outline what else I’m hoping to find out about this particular mother and daughter.
Caught chatting
Elevator Pitches
You’re always reading on LinkedIn about how you should have an elevator pitch just there on the tip of your tongue, so that your current project can be readily described to questioners who may not know very much about your work yet. As I travelled home, energised, after my outing, I reflected that actually, I need several elevator pitches, because I have two side projects as well as the main one!
Glasgow Women’s Careers in Music
One of my side projects, I’m currently exploring how different women’s backgrounds may have influenced the careers they pursued, in turn-of-the-century Glasgow.
The Glasgow Athenaeum School of Music
I’ve been exploring the careers of our first Principals, and contemplating the musical education that the institution offered in the first few decades. Another side project.
Publisher Thomas Nelson & Sons
This is the big project. I’ve been looking at the kind of educational music materials published in the first half of the twentieth century, and reflecting on the use made of Nelson’s four Scots song books by pupils and teachers. After archival work on the Nelson correspondence, I’m now conducting an oral history of the Sir John Leng Trust’s Scots Song medal competitions in Dundee. The idea is that I’ll use all this for a third book. Watch this space!
Since I work part-time (1.5 days a week), taking the day off effectively means taking nearly a week off. I’ve been home to Norwich for a fiftieth school reunion – fifty years since we left Norwich High School for Girls, GDST.
In fact, the weekend was significant in three different ways – as well as my school reunion, Dr Edward Harper’s Kilbarchan organ was inaugurated at St Marien, Prenzlau in Germany, and Old Gourock and Ashton Church celebrated its 250th anniversary. But I couldn’t be everywhere at once, so off I went to the reunion, whilst my husband went to the church where he had enjoyed being organist for a number of years. (I drooled over the Facebook postings about Prenzlau, where they seem to have had a fabulous series of concerts and talks in what looks like an absolutely stunning church. Dr Harper would doubtless have been highly impressed. And what lovely sounds were heard on the brief clips that were shared!)
Norwich High School front entranceThe imposing front staircase and a rather nice-looking pianoWell, what do you wear to a school reunion?! I agonized …From Newmarket Road, NorwichImpressive Skylight – I never noticed before!
I’m so glad I went to Norwich. I’m prone to focus on negative memories, but everyone was really welcoming, and it was great catching up with what everyone had done, and where they’d been. No-one else had a negative memory of one particular teacher who really did not like me! Then again, I’d kept in touch with the other member of that department for 25 years, and she’d even visited and stayed with us in Glasgow.
Old School Tie
I heard stories that I’d never heard before, and was reminded of things that I did vaguely remember. We were shown round the school, exclaiming over the changes and remembering the familiar. The archivist was there, and there were photos and other memorabilia to examine. That awful olive-green uniform!
It was surprising to find that several people had moved away from Norwich, but later moved back. That’s not going to happen for me. Someone who researches Scottish music or social history of Scottish music, is hardly going to remove themselves 400-odd miles south! Some people had continued with interests that they already had at school. Others had taken completely different directions, whether to the upper echelons of corporate life, arable farming or a whole lot of other avenues. I did appear to be the only semi-retired postdoctoral researcher! And if my Scottish music publishers didn’t evince a great deal of enthusiastic interest, then – yet again – oral history research certainly did. People are interested in oral history, interested in memories in general and particularly interested in memories of their school days and school music.
And the trip itself was a nice break. Indeed, I knitted a whole mansized sock on the various legs of my train/replacement coach journey, discovering that knitting can sometimes start unexpected conversations! People like reminiscing about that, too…
I’d better get back to my Leng Medal memories. Today, it’s time to contact people who remember participating in the 1990s – long after I’d left school myself!
Friday was a great day. Or should I say, Friday afternoon was a great afternoon?
A short research visit to the Mitchell Library was followed by discussion of my forthcoming RCS research contract – to enable me to continue researching part-time after I leave the library – followed by a trip to Glasgow Uni for the launch of the Books and Borrowing Database. It’s a fantastic resource, and I’ve watched the project with interest. (website: https://borrowing.stir.ac.uk/)
A bit of networking over a glass of wine and some cheese straws, then I headed home with a distinct lightness in my step. It wasn’t just the glass of wine! I felt as though I’m finally adjusting myself into who I’m meant to be.
I like to think I’ve been a good librarian. I do believe I have. But if I am honest, I chose librarianship because I couldn’t see myself as an academic. I am an object lesson in not writing oneself off at the age of twenty-four. If you’re like I was, or you know someone like I was, tell yourself/them to have more self-belief.
I’m giving my annual lecture on Scottish song books tomorrow.ย Just shows that I can lecture.ย Indeed, I’ve read countless papers over the past two decades.ย
Just think how many books I needn’t have catalogued, if I’d been braver and more determined at twenty-four. (I’m still cataloguing them – feeling a bit pressured, if I’m honest!)
On the other hand, how many intriguing enquiries I’d have missed, not to mention unexpected surprises amongst the book and music donations … there have been some advantages.
Image: Wikipedia picture of Hereford Cathedral Chained Library
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:-
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 โ 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:-
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 historyโ, in The Peopleโs 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
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!
Newsletter article, โโOur Heroine is Deadโ: Miss Margaret Wallace Thomson, Paisley Organist (1853-1896)โ, The Glasgow Diapason, March 2023, 10-15. (You can find this article in full on this blog)
โAn Extensive Musical Libraryโ: Mrs Clarinda Webster, LRAM, Brio vol.59 no.1 (2022), 29-42 (a late Victorian head teacher who founded a music school in Aberdeen, and later did a national survey of music in public libraries – which she presented to the Library Association!)
In October 2023, I pondered about Mr *and Mrs* J. Spencer Curwen (amongst others) in another blog post, when I remarked upon early twentieth century attitudes to folk song.
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.
โA Music Library for St Andrews: use of the Universityโs Copyright Music Collections, 1801-1849โ, in Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society no.15 (2020), 13-33.
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 …..
T. Latour – Ladies’ Thorough Bass
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:-
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,
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!
Karen E. McAulay, ‘The Accomplished Ladies of Torloisk‘, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 44, No. 1 (June 2013), 57-78
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:-
โAn English Composer and Her Opera: Harriet Wainewrightโs Comร la (1792)โ, Journal of Musicological Research Feb, 2021. Published online: 16 Feb 2021.
Conference: Reading and Book Circulation, 1600-1800
I am just back from a fabulous library history conference at the University of Stirling. Even better still, I was the lucky recipient of a generous bursary from the CILIP Library History & Information Group, meaning my attendance was fully funded.
I had many pages of notes to read through and reflect upon before I wrote my report – so many excellent papers to think about. My AHRC networking grant not so long ago was about music in libraries ca.1790-1836, and although I’m currently writing about more recent music publications, it was very interesting to see what else was happening whilst “my” legal deposit library music was being accumulated in libraries in England, Ireland and Scotland.
‘Claimed from Stationers’ Hall’ frock makes a comeback for the conference!
And of course, there was the networking. After the pandemic, lockdown, working from home, hybrid working and so on, it was quite a treat to be able to spend time with kindred spirits for two whole days!
My report will appear in the LIHG Newsletter in June 2023 – it’ll appear online on the LIHG pages hosted by CILIP. This might mean that only members can read it, but maybe I can write a summary of it to share here, once the whole report has gone live.
Image of Stirling University Campus by ๆ ๆฒ from Pixabay
Last night I gave a lightening talk as one of eight speakers at the latest HoPIN webinar. It’s the History of the Printed Image Network, so my Scottish music collections were slightly off the beaten track, but you know me – my mission is to ensure that anyone picking up an old Scottish music volume knows exactly what they’re getting into! And it was certainly interesting to hear about other people’s research into different aspects of printing.
This link summarises the scope of topics, even if the event is past! HoPIN Webinar 11 (hosted by the University of Wolverhampton).
The next HoPIN webinars are on 15 September and 17 November.
SHAMELESSLY sharing this call for papers, word for word. Maybe one of the Claimed From Stationers Hall networkers might feel inspired to talk for five minutes?
“Speaking at a conference is a big step on your career journey & lightning talks are an ideal way to dip your toe in the water. We’re searching for speakers for 5-min lightning talks CILIP’s Copyright Conference (18 May, online).”
Again with perfect timing, my ‘Cinderella’ article is just published in my professional organisation CILIP’s Catalogue and Index issue 201 (December 2020). This originated as a conference paper that I gave earlier this Autumn. It’s open access, so you can read it online right away. (I shall be adding it to our RCS Institutional Repository as well, goes without saying!)
A visit to see the University of St Andrewsโ Copyright Music collection led to my undertaking research into the history and contents of several hundred bound volumes of music. Theyโre intriguingly supported by contemporary Georgian and Victorian borrowing records, allowing us to see exactly who borrowed what, and when. We can piece together some details about how exactly the materials were borrowed, and the archives even hold a handwritten catalogue dating from 1826, which would have shown borrowers what was bound into the individual volumes.
However, since St Andrews was only one of a number of legal deposit libraries in this era, this raised the question as to what the others did with the music they were entitled to. An AHRC grant enabled me to pursue this further by founding the Claimed From Stationersโ Hall research network.
Modern catalogues became a prime research tool, enabling the network to explore what survives to the present day. However, it soon became apparent that not all libraries retained โ or even claimed โ music that was registered at Stationersโ Hall. Moreover, it has recently come to light that when music was added to stock, or when cataloguing took place, some interesting decisions were made by our Georgian and Victorian predecessors. Furthermore, early 21st century funding for retrospective online cataloguing failed to cover all the surviving music.
Inspired by a British Library big data project looking at British music published over the centuries, I had aspirations for a big data analysis of surviving legal deposit music, but the incomplete availability of automated catalogue records means that this ambition is currently not feasible, although cataloguing is still being updated, and the time may come when such a project can be revisited.
In the meantime, this research demonstrates the value of library cataloguing metadata not only in enabling readers to trace particular publications, but also for exploring a large corpus of music that was originally accepted by libraries almost as a by-product, of considerably less importance than the learned tomes which the universities were keen to claim for their students and professorsโ use. You could say that Cinderella has at last made it to the ball!
In collaboration with Corrina Readioff (University of Liverpool), I’m one of the founder members of the Eighteenth Century Paratext Research Network.ย Corrina has been doing most of the hard graft in setting up this network!ย Do take a look, and if you’re interested in any aspect of paratextual research (Corrina researches epigraphs, illustration and chapter headings, whilst mine is musicological research into music of the same era – and other members’ interest span a wide range of topics) – do get in touch.ย The more the merrier!
First up – a call for papers for a forthcoming eighteenth-century conference.ย A panel will be convened ….
Network members are enthusiastically typing away at the moment, as the deadline for our Brio special issue looms closer!ย I’ve done a couple of book reviews, and have one more to tackle.ย Today, I was thinking about matters as apparently disparate as copyright, romanticism, bootlegging and modern recording techniques.ย Does that sound weird or intriguing to you?ย I thought it was an excellent book – but you’ll have to wait until the next issue of Brio to read my review!!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 