I’ve linked to this on my Publications page as a permanent record, but if you’re interested, you can see my talk on YouTube now:-
Engagement activity: RCS Exchange Talk, Monday 29 January 2024: ‘From Magic Lantern to Microphone: the Scottish Music Publishers and Pedagogues inspiring Hearts and Minds through Song’ – YouTube recording
Remember, I was looking forward to receiving a pile of old Sol-Fa music the other day? Well, it proved as interesting as I expected. And in amongst the copies that I was expecting, were a couple of choir booklets for ‘The Glen’ concerts – which were annual open-air concerts on the Glennifer Braes in Paisley. I’ve written about these concerts, actually. (You’ll see, when my book comes out!)
As predicted, the programmes were mainly of Scottish songs, but the first song in 1915 was an Irish one – ‘Killarney’. I carefully read the score – I have no problem with the Sol-Fa note pitches, but I can’t have learned the rhythmic notation quite so well when we did it at school! And then, I wondered if I could find a recording of the song, to see if I’d got it right!
I found a YouTube recording of 1905 by Marie Narelle. I have not the first idea who this lady was, but it occurred to me that her singing style probably wasn’t a million miles from what the Paisley United Choirs would have considered a good rendition. It was a strange feeling, to be listening to something 118 years old, and the closest I could get to what was sung on the braes that afternoon.
But that’s not all. On a completely unrelated note, I remember reading about the fascination people had for echoes in the Georgian era, when I was researching the early 19th century Scottish song collector, Alexander Campbell. Alexander Campbell went to Fingal’s Cave with a bagpiper in his boat, just to hear the echo. And I read somewhere that in Ireland, people did a similar thing at Killarney Lake, where they’d take a few instrumentalists in the boat to listen to the echo – but sometimes the musicians would ask for more cash before they’d play a note!
Maybe it was my destiny to find that YouTube recording!
‘I was talking’, said a colleague, ‘to someone who found a stash of an elderly relative’s music ….’
Now, you’ve possibly picked up on my mixed feelings about donations. Grateful, curious, but also sometimes experiencing a sinking feeling when I realise that a recently donated bagful of music really can’t be added to the library stock. We welcome music if it’s historically important, or a serviceable copy of core repertoire. However, the bottom line is that we want our musicians to use up-to-date or at least respectable standard editions, and a lot of old music is neither historically important nor serviceable core repertoire.
So today, I cautiously asked what kind of music it was?
Sol-Fa.
How often have I sighed at that word? Our students don’t use old Sol-Fa notation. It fell out of use by the mid-1960s, and ‘modern’ or avant-garde classical music never made it into Sol-Fa; the system doesn’t lend itself to harmonically and rhythmically more adventurous music. But today was different, because my own research has meant my spending quite a bit of time finding out more about the use of Sol-Fa in elementary music education. And to cut a long story short, I am very much looking forward to seeing this music. I now know what I should be looking out for, from the perspective of ‘my’ Scottish music publishers. A few tantalising snaps of this donation have really whetted my scholarly appetite. What will I find? How will it augment what I already know?
I can’t wait!
If you find Granny’s old Sol-Fa music in the attic, do give it more than a passing glance. See what the music is. See who published it, and where. (Scotland? England? Somewhere else?) Was it for children? Adults? A male-voice or ladies’ choir? Church? A municipal choir? A school or college? Is there a date on it? (You’ll be lucky! But you never know.) Is it part of a series?
What at first sight looks humdrum, mundane, and unusable can sometimes prove to be a fascinating piece of a musical history jigsaw-puzzle. And strangely enough, you don’t actually have to sing from it, to learn more of that history – a close inspection tells so much.
Well, the talk seems to have gone well, and again, I found a very responsive audience. After being taken out for a delicious dinner, I headed for Dundee, which was the only way I was going to be at work on time in the morning.
Another time, I need to clarify, for anyone not familiar with Tonic Sol-Fa, that it was devised for singers, not instrumentalists.
If you played an instrument, you learned off standard staff notation or by ear – with or without an instructor. In late Victorian times, after the 1870 and 1872 Education Acts, it stands to reason that more children would have learnt sight-singing by Sol-Fa, than learnt an instrument. Children whose parents could pay, might have had private instrumental lessons. Some might have had opportunities to join a band, learn from someone known to them, or pick up a fiddle (for example), but I still maintain that the majority of children were more likely to have encountered Sol-Fa.
As to social mobility … I’m not entirely sure whether it was easier or harder to fight your way up the ladder in those days. I’d need to ask a social historian of that era. I can only comment on the few instances that I’ve observed: ‘my’ music publishers certainly seemed to do well for themselves.
So, here I sit on a train back to Glasgow. Like Cinderella, my carriage will change back to a pumpkin, and my garb back to rags, if I’m not a librarian behind my desk by nine o’clock!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 