Spread Too Thin?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

This is another of my cross-posts from the Facebook Glasgow Music Publishers page. But I’ve updated the update!

Apologies for the silence here. In recent weeks, I’ve given two conference papers (one on Stationers’ Hall music, and one on old Scots songs and a Lowland pipe tune); I gave another talk (about Scottish song-collector Alexander Campbell) last Sunday late afternoon. Was I happy with my talk? Yes, until I had given it! This self-doubt is really quite a handicap.

I have just had the luxury of a long weekend, but – well, it hasn’t been luxurious. As well as the Sunday talk, there was the usual domesticity and the church organist duties. We expected the roofer to start work today, too, but it rained – and you don’t remove a VERY large skylight in the rain! Not to worry – I turned one of my conference papers into a journal article and submitted it this evening. I’ve just realised I’m a coward. I submitted an article to a journal I’ve not submitted to before, and now I’m struggling NOT to judge it too harshly, probably before the editor has even checked their email inbox!

I really do have to get back to work on a book chapter – although neither it nor the rest of this frenetic activity has been about Glasgow music publishers! (I just hope their ghosts aren’t feeling neglected, or heaven help me come Hallowe’en!)

A question to you, my reader

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I asked a question on my Facebook page, Glasgow Music Publishers 1880-1950. Maybe folk don’t realize I genuinely would like to hear their thoughts! Here it is again, for anyone who doesn’t use Facebook:-

So, now. Has any particular topic really resonated with you, or has there been anything you wish I’d expand upon? I have the opportunity to write a longer piece (not immediately, but in the foreseeable future) and I’m trying to decide what to focus on!

(Confession – the image is of cards by Dundee printers, Valentines. I missed out on the eBay auction, but snaffled the picture earlier …)“

Book History: Scottish Airs in London Dress

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Before establishing the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project, which looked at Scottish fiddle tune collections largely from the Georgian era.  In that context, I read a paper at Musica Scotica in Spring 2014, about a couple of London-published music collections.  It has finally been published in Scottish Music Review Vol.5 (2019), 75-87, this week.

Sometimes when we look back at earlier work, we wonder if we’d have written it differently today, but I’m still pretty happy with this article.  If anything, I think it justifies my claim that the history of this kind of collection does indeed deserve to count as “book history”, even if it is music rather than literature. So, here it is for your enjoyment:-

Scottish Airs in London Dress: Vocal Airs and Dance Tunes in Two Eighteenth-Century London Collections

Guest Issue of Brio (IAML UK & Ireland) guidelines for contributors

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Woohoo! It’s deadline time.  As you know, we’re contributing a special issue of Brio for IAML (UK and Ireland) on the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall theme.  We agreed to have all writings completed by the end of August, and contributors up and down the UK and Ireland have been – and are – eagerly scribbling their considered thoughts on different aspects of the topic.

Brio does have a very general set of guidelines for contributors, but when it comes to referencing, the main requirement is to be clear and consistent within each article.  Here’s a pdf of the guidelines, along with a quick screenshot of the first footnotes in the article on Edinburgh University Library’s music collections, already contributed by Alasdair Macdonald and Elizabeth Quarmby-Lawrence, Vol.55 no.2  (‘From General Reid to DCRM(M): Cataloguing the music collections of Edinburgh University Library, Part 1, The early Reid Professors and the first catalogues, 1807-1941)’, 27-49.

If the pdf doesn’t open for you, please let me know!

If you’re reading this but you’re not (yet) a member of IAML, then you might like to know more about us.

The Dead Mouse

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’ve typed so much, and moved so much text around – not to mention manipulating images on the PowerPoint – that my mouse has died.

Yes, it has been another working weekend – I’ve edited and resubmitted a librarianship article to a librarianship journal, licked my seminar paper about Sir John Macgregor Murray into its final, polished shape, and totally indulged myself sourcing suitable images for the PowerPoint!   No kidding – I have had to abandon the mouse, which I’ve left twitching at the back of my desk.  It has had a long and interesting life.

I do have a day-trip planned for this week, to the archives of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.  I’m off to inspect more Macgregor Murray documents – I can’t NOT see them!  It has been an interesting assignment, because I’ve found out so much more about him than I knew at the time of writing my PhD.

And then … back to grant-writing.  And thoughts of Stationers’ Hall music, amongst other things!