Rose Played On (an Admirable Edwardian Musician)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Black and white drawing of girl playing piano

Why do I persist in researching Rose Smith? I suspect my interest is partly because I see myself in her.

Rose attended, and briefly taught at the Athenaeum.  Throughout her life, she played, accompanied,  composed and taught. I half-wondered if she gave up playing the organ when the family came along, but no! There she was in 1900, and in 1911, still playing. 

Did she leave the baby at home with the maid? There wouldn’t have been a creche! And what about when there were three small children? (They were born ca. 1899, 1903 and 1907.) That’s something I probably don’t need to know.

But when you consider that my own mother told me I’d have to stop playing when the baby arrived (that was in 1993 – and I didn’t stop! Don’t tell me what I can’t do), then for Rose to keep playing in 1899 seems quite unconventional. Or maybe not – I haven’t researched any other Edwardian organists who were mothers.

I’ve temporarily lost track of her organ playing after 1911. And did they move to a closer Episcopal church when they moved house? (I know where to look, but access isn’t easy. Give me time!)

But I do know she was still listed as a piano teacher at the age of 67.

I’ll just keep digging away. I find out a little bit more every time I start looking!

Respectful Academic Writing.

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
'RESPECT'

I wrote my conference paper a couple of weeks ago. Timed it, trimmed the word-count, timed it again. (Repeat that a few times!) And then today, something occurred to me. Not all at once, no. In stages, let’s say. To start with, it was just a question of technology: wouldn’t it be better, I mused, if I used the tablet rather than a wad of paper? On went the tablet. And (not that I noticed at first) off again. I eventually realised that it needed charging – it’s ages since I last used it. Whilst I waited for it to become functional again, I looked at my paper one last time, thinking I’d just make sure it was absolutely perfect before I looked at it on a different gadget.

And that’s when I spotted it – I could call it a major faux pas, or I could blame it on my generation.  Well, that’s a cheap excuse, isn’t it? Not acceptable. If I want to be accepted as a scholar who is still on the ball, still at the top of her game, then I can’t lamely whimper that I didn’t realise what I was doing was disrespectful …

Equality

It’s a relatively recent academic writing protocol, and one that was long overdue: men and women should be written about with equal respect. By that, I mean that if you wouldn’t refer to Elgar as Edward, then you can’t justify calling Mary Wollstonecraft, just Mary.  Elgar is Elgar, and Wollstonecraft is Wollstonecraft.  Otherwise, it’s not only disrespectful, but diminishes the woman’s standing.

Mary-Anne Smith, Rose B. Smith, Jane Sillars, Flora Woodman …

Now, in my paper, I’m not talking about big names like Elgar or Wollstonecraft.  But I realised that I’d fallen into the trap. Mary-Anne, Rose, Jane and Flora deserved better. They needed their last names.  So I got stuck in.

It’s just a bit more complex than you’d think, especially when you are not only writing about the women, but are also mentioning their menfolk. You can’t refer to three different Smiths as plain, ‘Smith’. But ‘Mr, Mrs and Miss Smith’ doesn’t work, especially when Miss Smith kept her ‘Smith’ professionally after marriage. 

Then there’s the unmarried mother who identified as ‘a widow’ in at least one official document – but married some years later. At which point her daughter’s name changed. (Had she actually got married another time before the marriage I know about, wouldn’t her daughter’s name have changed then, too? But it didn’t, so I’m taking it that ‘widow’ was being used diplomatically. We’re talking of the Edwardian era.)  In any case, her marital status is of absolutely no concern to me, but I am concerned that she and her daughter are called the right names at the right time!

Need I continue? 

And, grammatically, if two individuals with the same last name get mentioned in the same sentence, then either you need to use first names as well, or rephrase for clarity. ‘Her daughter’ and ‘her mother’ are very useful substitutes!

Sometimes it’s just a question of being pragmatic. I haven’t, indeed I couldn’t excise all stand-alone first names.  But I think I’ve improved it. I’ve shown due respect to all the individuals I’ve written about – most of them women.

I do believe I’ve finished my revisions!

Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914. Conference 2-4 September 2026: Website

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Old photo of a woman

I’m looking forward to my trip to London for this conference this week, and I’m grateful both for the invitation to give a paper, and for the support from my home institution, in the form of a Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Athenaeum Award. I thought it would be worthwhile sharing the link to the event again, now that the programme has been finalised.

Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914

The organisers have shared the following information:-

The final programme can be accessed directly here:

View the full conference schedule.

A more comprehensive programme, including all presenter abstracts and biographies, is accessible as an Exposition on the Research Catalogue platform.

My paper is on the final afternoon, Friday 4th September:-

‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

ABSTRACT

Although I’ve encountered few women’s names in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish music publishing, I recently published an article about the five women that I did find. (Two were English by descent, but they all grew up in Scotland.) Meanwhile, in other unrelated research, I encountered a London-born Scotswoman with a completely different background, who made her career as a high-flying soprano recitalist. The common thread was their family background and/or support. In today’s paper, I’d like to focus on Rose Buchanan Smith (1870–1942), one of the Scottish-born Englishwomen, and Flora Woodman (1896–1981), the London-born Scot. The cut-off date of this conference, 1914, is significant for both women: it’s the latest possible date for Kerr’s fourth book of Kerr’s Merry Melodies, in which I first encountered Rose’s name; and the year of Flora’s concert debut in London’s Bechstein Hall.

One cannot generalise about women’s musical careers on the strength of two women’s stories. Nonetheless, when there are comparatively few stories substantial enough to draw any inferences from, those that do survive must perforce carry more weight. In my research, I have realised that it is sometimes surprisingly useful to attempt comparisons between individuals whose lives were entirely unconnected. How did these women curate their careers? What influence might their parents have had? Might their mothers have had a particular influence or been especially supportive? What about marital status? Did being a Scottish-born Englishwoman, or a London-born Scotswoman, have any particular effect on their careers? Did they make use of professional networks? And was the advent of new technologies reflected in their musical activities? I shall outline the resources to which I had access, in tracing their path from adolescence to late middle-age, and demonstrate the importance of families to a young Victorian or Edwardian woman establishing a musical career.

This project has been supported by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Athenaeum Awards.

Image by chenspec from Pixabay

Hunting for Heroines

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

(Or should this be, ‘Holding out for a heroine?’) I love looking for the places where my Scottish music heros and heroines lived and walked. No particular reason – I just like to visualise where they lived. In fairness, it may tell me nothing more pertinent than to inform me that they lived in a very luxurious, upmarket neighbourhood – or one that has seen better times – or indeed, one that may never have been particularly swanky! If they were a church organist or a teacher, or supplied music to dance musicians, it’s nice to see how far they lived from their work. In any case, it’s an innocent enough obsession, and sometimes I manage to find a coffee whilst I’m out prowling!

Out we went into deepest Lanarkshire earlier this week, in search of the birthplace of one of the two women I’ll be talking about at the conference in a couple of weeks.* We couldn’t stop for a photo, in a busy street, but I’d seen it on Google maps in any case.  We had a coffee just round the corner in the main street. (I believe it’s under Turkish ownership, which might explain the intriguing illustrations of quadrilles in different national costumes, on the walls! Look carefully – there’s a Marcia Persiana amongst them.)

Quadrilles, illustrations found in an antique shop by the cafe owner

But I didn’t expect, a couple of days later, to find myself looking across at one of the addresses that our budding composer occupied in Glasgow. Buildings change, and it looks as though this one has been reduced to two storeys since our heroine lived there with her mother and a couple of siblings in the 1890s. So … you may or may not be looking at the tenement flat where they lived, but you’re definitely looking at the tenement!

It’s just along from the Fabric Bazaar and the famous Barras market.  Since Piping Live has been on, and yesterday it was the second day of the World Pipe Bands Championships at Glasgow Green, there was a distant, constant sound of drones, and kilts swinging round every corner.

Yes, even in the fabric shop, the reason for my outing in the first place. No kidding.

*The Royal Academy of Music’s September conference, Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914. My paper has possibly my longest ever title-

‘The Trumpet Major’s ‘Poetess’ Widow; the Scottish Shipping Magnate’s Daughter and the Retired Barrister: The Importance of Parental Support to Musically Gifted Girls in the Late Victorian and Edwardian Eras’.

Back to Work Now

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Busy Lizzie plant on garden table, with cup of coffee

I’m back at work after a month’s vacation (I confess that I was rather lazy), and now I must get back both to my Dundee Leng Medal research, AND to writing a paper for a conference at London’s Royal Academy of Music: Women and Musical Histories, 1789-1914.

Recent Summers

'Don', one of the IAML Cambridge Congress mascots, clad in academic robes

I’m reminded by this, my own blog, that I was attending the International Association of Music Libraries’ Congress in Cambridge, this time in 2023. I particularly enjoyed hearing the talks about early film music. 

I wasn’t speaking on that occasion.  No, my input was merely in various social media aspects: I was running the social media campaign for and during the event, and I’d created a trio of conference mascots – Cam, Bridge and Don – whom I employed in social media posts. (I don’t know what happened to the first two, but Don was given to a wee girl at church, and has enjoyed a comfortable retirement in a family setting.)

IAML Cambridge 2023 programme logo

I’d also come up with the IDEA behind the conference logo – a chap on a punt, incorporating the IAML abbreviation. Well, it was Cambridge! I hasten to add – I wasn’t the artist. The IAML Cambridge Congress feels like a long time and another lifetime ago!  I was already aspiring to a new part-time research existence, but envied another delegate who already had theirs’ lined up, being a tiny bit closer to retirement age than I!

And by this time in 2024? I’d retired from librarianship, but I was rather busy on final tweaks to my second monograph. And 2025 saw a rather unsettled summer, which we’ll gloss over.

Miss Marple – my Alter Ego?

Anyway, this year, I decided it would be a proper vacation, even if I didn’t spend it travelling or sunbathing. I achieved this moderately successfully. However, last weekend I decided I’d ease myself back by having another go at some detective work which had failed on all earlier attempts. My earlier research had focused on this individual’s daughter. Now it was the parent who intrigued me. But again, I drew a blank, after I don’t know how many hours. I cannot trace documented evidence of youthful musical activity by this individual, although I know that she was her daughter’s first singing teacher – and I have my own hunches about some of the books they might have used!

This is not to say that I found nothing. I know where the mother was born – no more than a couple of miles away from where I’m sitting today, in a large house that is no longer there.* It would be fair to say that the neighbourhood has gone down significantly since then! I know where she subsequently grew up (an even larger house in a very nice neighbourhood, again a couple of miles from where I’m sitting today, but on the other side of the M8 motorway). I know where her parents came from, too. And I traced her mother’s retiral from the family business. I even found a blogpost about a family grave in the Glasgow Necropolis.

However, the sad fact is that if a wealthy young woman was musical, but there’s no newspaper documentation of her ever performing publicly, then there really isn’t very much to go on. Try as I will, I can find no mention of her at school, or singing, being a soprano or a contralto, ‘contributing’ (a common word in Victorian reportage of musical events), or even venturing into playing the piano/pianoforte. Her older brother and sister took part in a fund-raising bazaar hosted by the local church, but there’s no mention of ‘my’ subject there either.

I have visions of myself standing dolefully outside the large house that’s still standing, or on the corner of the street where the other house stood, or even in Glasgow Necropolis, literally trying to communicate with ghosts past, in my efforts to intuit how much music occupied her childhood and adolescent years. It would make not a scrap of difference, though!

Ah, well. Back to more pressing topics. Perhaps I have to give up on my Miss Marple endeavours.

*By this evening, I had realised that my bus route to work actually passes the junction where Flora’s mother was born. It’s a curious coincidence, to add to the vacant site a bit further along the route, where James S Kerr’s first music shop was located.  Who knew the no.23 bus had such  historical links?!

Saturday Outing to Maryhill Burgh Halls

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why This Matters

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!

Expedition to Glasgow Women’s Library

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In search of a Victorian-era suffrage connection, I made a trip to Bridgeton. I sat on the rather beautiful carpet, studying  suffrage organisations in Scotland.  (We musicologists know how to have a good time!)  But was there any mention of the women I was looking for?

No.

(Yes – I did jinx my trip by wearing Suffragette colours!)

However, I found an interesting fact about someone else. ( I subsequently spent several hours at home trying to fit this into what I already knew. And I couldn’t.)

However, it wasn’t a wasted trip.  I saw several useful books I hadn’t previously known of.  I’ve asked questions.

Barking up the Wrong Tree?

Indeed, armed with a couple more dates, I can see that there must have been many situations when women sympathised with the cause, but were not in a position to take an active part: caring obligations, age, disability or living too far from big cities like Glasgow or Edinburgh in terms of early organised activities. I could be looking, at least in one case, for involvement which would not have been feasible.  (I shall not leave any stone unturned in terms of other lines of enquiry, all the same!)

Moreover,  before heading home again, I crossed London Road for coffee and a flapjack. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing I’d had elevenses a short distance along the road (formerly called London Street) from where ‘my’ ladies once lived.

I suppose you win some, you lose some. It was a lovely day for an outing, anyway!

Eagerly Anticipating this Conference: ‘Women and Musical Histories 1789-1914’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It’s a stroke of good luck that my recent research just fits into the scope of this conference, which is taking place at the Royal Academy of Music in London from 2-4 September this year. I’d agreed with my line-manager that I should attend, but I confess I needed a little nudge to actually complete my registration, since my head has been whirling with oral history interviews and the trip down south last weekend.

Women and Musical Histories, 1789–1914

I’m going to give a paper at the conference, comparing the careers of two of my musical ‘heroines’. One featured in my recent RMA Chronicle article on ladies connected with the Scottish music publishing trade; the other has been mentioned by me elsewhere, but moved in completely different circles, in a different stratum of society. Anyway, the conference cut-off date of 1914 enables me to bring them together in my paper, so I’m looking forward to this opportunity to think about them again as I settle down to write it!

Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay

International Women’s Day: Rose Smith (and Marjory Kennedy-Fraser)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The beginning bars of The Road to the Isles, in a piano arrangement by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.

This has become a two-post day? Well, it’s International Women’s Day. How can I not mention it?

I decided I would play music by women this morning. Rose Smith (one of the women I recently wrote about in the RMA Research Chronicle – you’ll be familiar with her name by now!) was a piano teacher, a composer, and an Episcopalian organist. She was born in Lanark, moved to Glasgow whilst still a child, and later lived with her husband and children in Rutherglen. Her composed songs were rather like those by Ivor Novello – I’ve acquired nearly all of what seems to be extant, but I think a lot is missing. She only self-published a few, and the rest – for variety show singers – may not even have been published at all.

There’s no surviving organ music, so there was nothing for it – I played her songs before morning worship today. I bet you she never played them in church! However, since no-one knew they were secular songs, there was no harm in it. They’re well-written pieces, and I do think it’s a shame they’re not known. I did recommend one to an RCS Finalist a few years ago, and it was performed with enjoyment and appreciation.

I have significant performance anxiety about recording my playing, but I did unearth a piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith, that I recorded for a student a few years ago. Be kind! This isn’t a perfect performance or a perfect recording, but does show how the songs go.

Quick piano demo of three songs by Rose Smith

For my outgoing voluntary today, I turned to a more well-known composer. I played Marjory Kennedy-Fraser’s Eriskay Love Song, followed by The Road to the Isles.

Applause

I scored! I don’t usually get a round of applause after a voluntary.

I’ve got a new book of proper organ voluntaries by women composers, so I really must roll up my sleeves and learn some of them, but I suspect The Road to the Isles will prove hard to beat, as far as audience reaction goes …

‘February Article of the Month’ – Delighted!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Pink Scottish heather plants

What do you know? I’m delighted to discover that my article is February Article of the Month in vol.56 of the RMA Research Chronicle!

Women Pursuing Musical Careers: Finding Opportunities in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scottish Music Publishing Circles