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.
Soon, very soon, all will be revealed! It’s been quite a quiet year, as far as publications go. Very quiet. But I have had one article and two chapters waiting at their publishers, and this weekend will at least see the article published in History Scotland. Featured on the cover, too.
Hooray!
Image by Belinda Cave from Pixabay
So here’s the thing, as we say in Glasgow. Looking up Doris Ketelbey some weeks ago, I thought I saw an interesting heading in one of her books: it was the title or first line of a Scottish song. And I did EXACTLY what I warn students not to do.
It made such an impact that I was sure I’d find it again. After all, her book titles weren’t that numerous. Of course I’d remember. Moreover, if I’d found it once … right? (It’s possible that I found it by accident, with an unlikely set of search words, though.)
I bought a copy of her most popular school textbook, shelved it, and that was me. Sorted!
Until I looked at it more closely. This was European and a bit of world history. Post-Jacobite, I couldn’t see anything where a Scottish song title would have been a suitable caption. And – had there been an illustration above it? – or was I havering? (The caption might have been on a digital image, not searchable as text, maybe …)
Maybe I imagined the illustration, but I remained convinced about that caption. Just a pity that I couldn’t remember the song!
There’s only one problem: the nearest copy is in Edinburgh. I had hoped to find it in Glasgow’s epic Mitchell Library, but this time I had no luck.
However, I’ve ordered the pair for about the cost of a return to Edinburgh. If what I’m looking for isn’t there, then I have to admit defeat. I still don’t understand how something I found before is now so very elusive…
You can imagine the enthusiasm with which publishers rushed to produce centenary editions of Robert Burns’s songs in 1896. We have a Bayley & Ferguson ‘new and revised’ centenary edition in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland library: well-used over the years, bearing the scars of untold tussles, its paper almost skin-soft through repeated borrowing. This one was published in Glasgow and London. I wasn’t at all surprised to see vendor Frank Simpson’s stamp on it – the Sauchiehall Street shop was there for many years, where the now defunct BHS store later stood. I can’t imagine how many of our old scores came from there!
Today, I needed to compare it with a more lavish bound presentation copy, which we acquired as a donation. The imprint likewise had Bayley and Ferguson’s name, but in larger print above it, it had Hedderwick, of Citizen Buildings in St Vincent Street. Both firms gave Glasgow addresses, and no mention of London. I suspect it was the earlier of the two, since I found 1896 newspaper adverts for this one. Hedderwick was a long established firm. And Bayley and Ferguson did publish music on behalf of other firms, groups or individuals.
It’ll have to go into the special collection – it’s so heavy that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to borrow it.
Plain or fancy, I imagine this title was a bestseller for several decades. I’ll finish cataloguing it tomorrow.
Now – have we got the Mozart Allan centenary Burns edition … ? Of course we have!
Saturday frivolity, not research. But it does give a bit of insight into the fin-de-siecle publishing trade.
This came in a donation; we have the low voice version, but it was also available for high voice – that’s perfectly normal. Inside, there’s ukulele tab as well as the piano accompaniment, and instruction as to which notes you should tune the strings to. The publisher clearly thought he was onto a winner, and issued it in as many formats as he could think of. Just look! Oh, and he published it both sides of the Atlantic, for maximum exposure.
Just a trivial song, but it must have been a hit – in my family there are still memories of it being sung!
This is the third week of my Ketelbey Fellowship, and I arrived at St Andrews in pouring rain yesterday morning. Fortunately, it had subsided to a drizzle by the time I made my way to Martyrs Kirk, where materials from the Library special collections can be consulted. I didn’t get wet enough to risk dripping onto rare Victorian pamphlets! (I only know they were Victorian by the fact that the earlier numbers included God Save the Queen rather than the King – so they were published before January 1901.)
I had a ball! They each began with an editorial introduction – I love these. They’re so informative about the thinking behind whatever is in the book. Intriguingly, the editor seemed not to be the prime contributor, but all was revealed when I did some Googling later. Good old Baptie (Musical Scotland) informed me that the editor had two middle names, and used them as a nom de plume. No mystery after all! Moreover, one particular collaborator, more involved than most, was …
His daughter.
I didn’t quite get through the pile I’d called up, but I’m making good progress. And I encountered some interesting glimpses into social and political history. What’s more, if ever I needed proof that little girls’ education had a subtle difference to that of little boys, I found it today. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – I know it happened. But I wasn’t expecting to find this in a Sol-Fa song book!
It is such a luxury to have a desk in an office just a couple of minutes from a big university library. This morning, I snatched a quick coffee before I went back for another session with more of these instruction books. What’s more, I feel more a dedicated researcher here, compared to being ‘the librarian that also does research’ in Glasgow. It’s easier to focus, somehow. And tonight, I’m going to a research seminar, so I’ll get to meet some more historians then. Good times.
What’s all this about? Everyone perhaps having to pay to be on Twitter? No, Sir! I’m not actively leaving just yet, but if failure to pay results in accounts disappearing, then I’m afraid I will disappear from Twitter.
I’m on Threads: KarenMcAMusic.threads.net – maybe I should be asking my Twitter followers to follow me there?
And of course, I’m here on my blog.
I know – a blog is not the same as the casual, friendly conversations we used to have on Twitter. It’ll be interesting to see what we’re all doing in a year’s time!
I’ll spend my 15 minute tea-break writing this – it won’t be a long read! Thinking about all the things I’ve got to do, the metaphor came into my mind of a pendulum. It’s supposed to swing in two dimensions – an arc, not an ellipse. But my mind is full of so many different ideas that it swings all over the place.
I’ve got a book to finish – but that’s when I have my Researcher hat on. I try not to think about it when I’m busy being a librarian.
I’m also promoting an international congress for my professional association – something else I do in my ‘spare’ time. So this morning, before I got started with the day-job, I took a photo of the mascot and dashed off a tweet.
Back to the day-job. I know what I intend to do this morning, and I open the websites and spreadsheets that I need to use. But incoming emails are inevitably a distraction – aren’t they always? Especially when we’re offered a book that relates to the topic of my book. It’s being offered to the library, not me personally, but as a researcher, oh how I’m bursting to see that book. Quick – check the catalogue, dash off an email …. Phew! The book will be ours. Then there’s mention of another conference … relevant? Or a distraction? No, I haven’t got time at the moment. I haven’t got time to attend, not whilst I have a book to finish!
But I’d better get back to the task in hand.
So I look on my list, look in the catalogue, look in commercial catalogues and at composers’ own websites, and check to see if they’re on Twitter.
The task in hand involves looking up works by the women composers who I’ve got on a long list, and seeing if they’ve composed anything for under-represented instruments. So, music for tuba, bagpipes, accordion, bassoon, double bass … because my goal at the moment is to provide plenty of good music by women composers, for our students to explore and incorporate into their repertoire. But if there’s not much for their instrument, that will be problematical. It’s my job to find it! (Well, not for every individual student, I hasten to add, but I do want to ensure there’s material in the library for them to find – and, more crucially, perform.)
(Oh, Twitter! says my overactive mind. Has anyone responded to the library recently? to the professional association’s conference site? Have our sponsors posted anything interesting?)
I metaphorically slap my own wrist and go back to the list of women composers. The woman composer I was looking up doesn’t seem to have a Twitter account anyway, so there won’t be anything informative about her there. The trouble is, it’s all very well finding out what they’ve composed. From my point of view as a music librarian, it’s whether we can buy the performance materials! Yes, some of it could be hired for a performance, but that’s not within my remit. What I want is scores on library shelves, accurately catalogued.
I Googled, “Balancing a pendulum”. I was being metaphorical, but of course Google took me literally, and told me how to balance a clock. Which doesn’t really help much! However, I do know that removing distractions is a good way to aid concentration. I’ll post this, close a few windows, and do some cataloguing to give my eyes a rest from spreadsheets.
You know the story of the shoemaker and the elves? He goes to bed, exhausted, and wakes to find the little elves have done all his outstanding work? Oh, I wish!
Technically, my book is meant to be finished by the end of July. I’ve written quite a bit of the last chapter, but it goes without saying that that’s not the end of the process!
I’m also handling the comms for an international congress – it begins on 31 July.
Of course, there’s also the day-job to be done! And domesticated things don’t just stop. Garden hedges grow regardless of everything. Aargh!
And I have a whole magazine issue to proofread ASAP. (This task was accepted on my behalf – literally nothing to do with me!)
Now, the book deadline has been engraved on my brain for a long time. I’ve also known the congress date quite a long time. But believe it or not, it’s only just dawned on me that both dates coincide, and that therefore 38 days’ countdown for one thing would be 38 days for the other. Strange how the realisation suddenly makes it all the more stressful! All I can do is keep doing what I can. A colleague asked me the other day, what were my plans for this summer … ?
‘Finish a book’, I whispered. One way or another!
Alas, I don’t feel indomitable today. More like, a bit hopeless, faced with the mountain in front of me.
I omitted to note that this week is my 35 year anniversary of being in the same library post at RCS. Having said that, I have …
I just haven’t managed a promotion 😕. Still, apart from that big fail (a single, male former colleague once said that anyone who didn’t move on and up was not a success), at least I have some other successes to my name!
Has anyone said that to you? How did you respond?
Just an aside. I didn’t finish my first attempt at a PhD. Opting for a career in librarianship (yes, I know, maybe I should have been braver in my scholarly aspirations), I got taken over by professional training, and couldn’t fit in the completion of a thesis simultaneously. As anyone who knows me will already know, I returned to doctoral studies more than two decades later, but continued working in music librarianship. Part of my time has been seconded to postdoctoral research since 2012.
However, librarianship isn’t the trendiest metier in which to work. We get sick of comments about ‘enjoying a quiet life’, or ‘all that time reading books’, or disparaging remarks about library rules and regulations.
Enter “GLAM”. It stands for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums sector. Suddenly I feel much better about combining librarianship and musicology, because I can officially call myself, the GLAM musicologist.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 