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
Click here for online poster & more about the speaker!
Don’t worry, it’ll all be in my book, currently at the publishers…
Composer Chris Hutchings established an organisation called Choirs For Climate, using choral music to raise awareness of environmental issues arising from climate change. After an initial workshop last autumn, a choral concert of 55 voices took place in Edinburgh’s Greyfriar’s Kirk on Sunday 5 March. It was funded by Creative Scotland, and attracted about 150 in the audience raising several hundred pounds for Greenpeace.
I was delighted that my own Extinction Calypso was included. Although I wasn’t able to attend last week, Chris has shared the video with me, and I have his permission to share it here. The video is the work of Andy Henderson of ah-media.co.uk. Video of the entire concert will appear on Choirs for Climate in due course.
Video of Extinction Calypso
(Image of Greyfriars Bobby, from Pixabay)
Today, I took part in Explorathon20, where I showed a tiny videoclip discussing my research into late Victorian and early 20th century Sottish music. (It was actually called the Global Science Show, but it was an opportunity for researchers to showcase their research in whatever discipline. I was probably the token musicologist!)
I couldn’t help myself – this afternoon, I was finding out more about Sir John Magregor again – initially by rereading Ronald I. Black’s article, ‘The Gaelic Academy’ in Scottish Gaelic Studies vol.XIV part 2 (Winter 1986), 1-38, and then by visiting the British Library’s 19th century Newspapers website. This was very absorbing – possibly too much so! It was, however, nice to discover that Clan Gregor offered their condolences to Sir John’s son Evan, when their clan chief died – and that the toasts on that evening were punctuated alternately by music from Gow’s band, and by a piper. Sir John would have liked that, I’m sure of it. (He was a judge for Highland Society of Scotland piping contests, and was also responsible for rescuing Joseph Macdonald’s draft bagpipe tutor from India and returning it to Scotland.) Admittedly, once I’d learned that Clan Gregor met at Oman’s Hotel, I didn’t really need to find out where the hotel (aka Oman’s Tavern) actually was … I did find out, but decided to stop delving any further.
Maybe I also didn’t really need to make a biteable video about Sir John! I have by no means encapsulated all his contributions to Gaelic culture – in 90-odd seconds, that simply wouldn’t be possible. However, perhaps it does illustrate why he is a character worth remembering. Here it is:-
When I was doing my PGCert, I surveyed a cohort of postgraduate distance-learners to see what they thought of some brief instructional self-help clips that I had designed. I asked for feedback, and I got it – short videos were very welcome, it seemed, but several students particularly asked for animations. I liked this idea – apart from wondering how I would achieve this!
When I found Biteable.com, I was quite excited – there are a number of templates and audio backgrounds to choose from, and you can just edit in your own text, changing colours and adding pictures as you choose. I’ve already done a couple for this research network, and a couple of months ago I made one as a library guide, too.
This week, I made two more. One is about setting up email alerts for our library discovery layer, and the video I’ve just curated today is about fake news – basically, not leaping to conclusions about things when you haven’t enough evidence to back your suppositions up. It stemmed from Wednesday’s field trip. It would have been great to have been able to say that I’d discovered a whole story about how certain music scores got into an old library collection. But – as you’ll see – in truth, I haven’t enough evidence to back up my guesses, and my initial ideas are probably pure fantasy! The scores are there, some of them in what might be a legal deposit volume. But to infer any connection between the scores by these two particular composers would, at present, be reckless in the extreme!
Anyway, do have a look. I had fun making them, and I hope both videoclips will be useful.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 