Oh, the Suspense!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

If this book could speak, it would just say something mysterious and enigmatic. It wouldn’t give everything away all at once.

So … as you know, I’ve been ploughing through archival records.  On Friday afternoon, I’d just got to an interesting volume.  But before I’d examined all the pertinent pages, I left (because the reading room was closing) – just wishing it was Tuesday morning!

I’d unearthed a change of personnel at the publisher’s.  Over the weekend, I’ve learnt all sorts of interesting facts, most of which – truth to tell – have nothing related to Nelson’s Scots Song Books.  (They can’t have  – they’re subsequent to these books’ publication.) On the other hand, it significantly adds to the human interest, and gives a kind of forward-looking context.  And I truly believe that the more context you can give, the more relatable the ultimate story is.

I look forward to Monday, because it’s a Glasgow-based research morning.  But Tuesday? I want to get back to that volume in Edinburgh, and there are other sources I am keen to access.  Roll on Tuesday.

Striving for Originality: Only so many Notes

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I wrote a tune the other day – a perfectly respectable tune. But I was worried; I admire lots of professional fiddlers and accordionists, and I would hate to think I’d plagiarised them.  The trouble is, there are only a finite number of notes, and clearly the most common combinations will have been used countless times. So much for originality! I did ask one friend if they recognised it. They didn’t think so.

However, when I was playing it over last night, it suddenly dawned on me that there’s a Scottish song – which I sang only a couple of weeks ago in a talk – that has a similar opening.  The song itself sometimes begins on the tonic (doh’), sometimes on the dominant (soh), and in that instance, sometimes has a flattened leading note in between dominant and tonic (soh te doh’). It’s been used with various words.

Here’s the version I sang, with a simple soh-doh’ start:-

My love’s in Germanie, arranged by James Easson (Nelson’s Scots Song Book)

‘My love’s in Germanie’ is in the minor,  quadruple time.  Meanwhile,  my own tune is in the minor, but triple time, with a three -quaver lead-in.

Wait, ‘Ashokan Farewell’ starts with the same soh te doh’ three-quaver anacrusis  in triple time, but it’s in a major key.

In fairness to myself, it’s only the first few opening notes that may have been influenced by ‘My love’s in Germanie’, aka ‘Ye Jacobites by name’.  The first full bar above became two bars in my tune.  The rest goes its own way, and it’s an instrumental tune rather than a song! Just goes to show how easy it is to be subconsciously influenced, with absolutely no intention of ‘copying’ anything. It’s just musical memory.

In the circumstances, I have at last come up with a name for my tune:- ‘My love’s in Germanie – Again’.  (It can commemorate a series of European tram-riding summer jaunts made by my husband and his friends over a number of years!)

Listen to My love’s in Germanie – Again, by Karen McAulay on SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/i1EfrwBjxPZXLH4D7

The Ability to Touch-Type

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Neutral face emoji - straight line for mouth

Whilst I was working on my first PhD – the one I didn’t finish – my mother, concerned that I would never get a job, urged me to do secretarial training. Reader, I was twenty-two, doing doctoral research. You can imagine the conversation that followed.

Nonetheless, having stated categorically that I would never work as a secretary, nor would I learn shorthand, it did seem a good idea to learn to type properly. Getting my Masters dissertation typed had been expensive. (This was before the days of word-processing packages and personal computers, let alone laptops or tablets.) It was an acceptable compromise, so I attended evening classes, took RSA Typing classes and achieved Stage 3, with a certified speed of 55 wpm on a manual typewriter. (Thats ‘words per minute’). Electric typewriters were certainly in use, but not in the technical college where I attended my classes.

Touch-typing at speed has been my secret strength ever since. But today, I was just copying out a quotation about music educational theory in 1947. I wasn’t looking at what I was doing – touch-typing means looking at what you’re copying! But when I did look, I found modern technology had turned it into a laugh! Here’s what the book said:-

‘The Sol-Fa Time Notation ( | : | : | ) is discarded as being unnecessary’

– then I looked at my copy-typing:

‘The Sol-Fa Time Notation (|😐|😐) is discarded as being unnecessary’

I always did think those ta-fe-te-fe syllables were a bit of nonsense, but I never imagined Microsoft would agree with me!

“You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy”

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Little boy in field of sunflowers

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, this common saying originated in North America. Nowadays, you can find it borrowed and adapted to suit any situation. So, “You can take the girl out of Glasgow, but you can’t take Glasgow out of the girl” – or whatever.

Today, I’ve come up with a new version:-

You can take the scholar-librarian out of the library, but you can’t take the librarian out of the scholar.

I received an email asking me about a particular publication. Did I have any idea where it might be found? Oh, yes, I had ideas. (Indeed, as a former librarian, I tend to take it as a slur on my searching abilities if I can’t find something online!) Sadly, none of my digital ideas have borne fruit this time – and goodness knows, I have turned the internet inside out. I used all the tricks of the trade – Boolean searching, phrase searching, library union catalogues, libraries NOT in union catalogues, second-hand music sites, NEW music sites (just to be on the safe side), specialised bibliographies – I just hope that maybe my non-digital suggestions might be more successful.

Messy spider's web

But if you find your web-searches are a wee bit weird tonight, it’s because the internet is now inside out! Sorry about that.

Images by StockSnap and Daniel Roberts from Pixabay

Being a Fellow at IASH

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

As I’ve already mentioned, I am currently a Heritage Collections Fellow at IASH – the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, at the University of Edinburgh. I’m halfway through my Fellowship, and (hopefully) halfway through my trawl of the Thomas Nelson publishers’ archives in search of correspondence about their music publications in the 1940s to 1950s.  The book I’m primarily interested in has presented me with a few surprises and thoughts of new directions to pursue, but I shall plough on through the archives until I am sure I’ve captured every whisper about these four little school books.

View from the Scholar Hotel

This week, we had the Institute’s 55th Anniversary celebrations, with a focus on Decoloniality. The Institute has just concluded a two-year project on this theme. There was also a session on motherhood and reproductive justice.

Now, you’d think, perhaps correctly, that my Scottish song book and music education focus has little connection with either decoloniality or motherhood. But I did put a lot of effort into broadening the scope of the music collection to include more music by women and composers of colour, whilst I was a Performing Arts librarian at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, so I was keen to find out what other scholars in more directly related disciplines have been doing.

I think it’s fair to say I felt a bit overawed! IASH is very interdisciplinary, so there were contributions from all corners of the humanities, and by scholars with far more extensive experience in their fields than I have in mine. But there were contributions from the performing arts, and from heritage collections and archives – I felt more comfortable in these areas, and a bit less out of my depth.

I stayed in Edinburgh overnight to make it less of a rush from Glasgow for the second morning.

In the final session, with contributions from past and present directors, I was impressed by the sheer reach and achievements of this amazing institution, and both proud and humbled to be a Fellow here.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us,

To see oursels as ithers see us!

In the context of Robert Burns’s poem, those lines are exhorting us not to get above ourselves, but taken in a different context, they perhaps offer reassurance that others see something in us that we can’t necessarily see ourselves.

‘They thought I was worthy to be a Fellow – in a very competitive application process?’, I mused. But yes, they did indeed select me, which is a vote of confidence in itself.  Sometimes, you need validation by others – it’s hard to be objective about oneself!

Another view from the Scholar Hotel

Image at top of post: The Edinburgh Futures Institute

Service of Song? (If you Know, you Know!)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

If you’ve glanced at my book, you may have encountered the part where I explain  about Bayley and Ferguson and the services of song. Services of song are a virtually forgotten genre nowadays, but be assured that they were once a very common form of entertainment/instruction.

Biddy: opening piece

It’s not an abstract concept – these were a genre of magic lantern show, aimed at adult and/or juvenile audiences.  To put on a magic lantern show, you needed a few key ingredients:-

  • A venue
  • A magic lantern
  • Something to project onto
  • Set of slides
  • Something containing a narrative (for the narrator), and plenty of songs for the audience.  The music could be in Tonic Sol-Fa or staff notation (notes on lines and spaces).
‘Get a thoroughly good Reader’

The narrative could be a biblical story or an adaptation from a moralistic story.  Or perhaps something about a poet or a place.

‘Biddy worked hard …’

Whatever, the narrative and the songs were in a wee booklet, and that was your Service of Song.  You bought multiple copies  – they were cheap!  The event itself was advertised as a service of song.

So, as you can see, a Service of Song was an early slideshow providing a variable mix of education, entertainment and religion. They were popular with Sunday Schools as a special treat, and they were often used by the temperance movement. Bayley and Ferguson published loads of them. (Organisers would have to buy or hire the slides – possibly from somewhere else.)

If you would like to know more … read the book!

Karen E McAulay,

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music 1880-1951 🎶

Routledge, 2025.

Singing in Public? New to me!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
George Square Edinburgh University

A few weeks ago, I led a community ‘Scottish song’ event. I found myself singing a solo – well, to say ‘found myself ‘ is inaccurate, because I HAD planned and rehearsed it with a pianist.

But it seemed to go down well enough, so, emboldened by this, I sang a couple of examples from Nelson’s Scots Song Book at my Work in Progress talk on Wednesday.  This time, I prerecorded my accompaniment myself. (Three cheers for the decent mic I had purchased during lockdown!)

I reminded myself that my esteemed audience were a mixture of musicians and non-musicians, and I was there as a researcher rather than a star turn, so hopefully they’d listen kindly rather than critically! 

And it was fine. I suppose the more often you do something, the easier it gets. I have played in public, conducted in public, and sung in a choir numerous times, but singing solo? That’s something new.

I have another talk coming up in a few weeks.  Of the two songs I sang this week, I much preferred one to the other  – the range was more comfortable. So I looked through NSSB4 again last night, and hit upon a favourite – ‘I’ll aye ca’ in by yon toun.’ I took it to the piano for a first play through. Yes, I like Easson’s setting.  It’s reasonably modern, and playable.

At this point  – just as I’d finished the chorus – I was obliged to stop.

‘But, I was  …’

You’d be alarmed at how routine governs my activities.  No point causing upset by continuing to play, so the song will wait for another time. Supper couldn’t wait!

However, I thought I’d look for a YouTube rendition, to accompany my breakfast this morning, and what did I find, but a Topic recording of Jean Redpath performing it in the American Serge Hovey’s setting.  I never heard Jean sing live, but she got an honorary DMus from the University of Glasgow (my Alma Mater), and her enthusiasm for Scottish song was influenced by her time at the University of Edinburgh – as I sit with a cuppa in the Library cafe, I’m literally looking out at the School of Scottish Studies building where she’d have talked with Hamish Henderson.

I’ll aye ca’ in by yon toun

Having heard Redpath’s beautiful singing, I am less sure that my singing is a good idea, but there’s only one way I can share Easson’s setting, and that’s by playing it. Which, without a singer, wouldn’t work at all. I’d better get practising!

Wonderful! Look! A Gift of a Book

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

A couple of days ago, I wrote,

I would dearly love to trace a child, or children, who sang from these books. I think these books were aimed at children probably between eight to twelve years old, so the oldest children were born circa 1936-1946.

Well, I have! Five people have reached out to me already – one of them a prize-winning singer.  However, it appears I underestimated this title’s longevity.  I guessed,

I don’t know how long the books would have remained in use, but my guess is that they’d probably have fallen to bits by the late 1950s. In that case, the youngest users would have been born round about 1950. And that would make them baby-boomers, but several years older than me

I got that wrong! Two (as I predicted) are a bit older than me. Two a little younger. And the very youngest tells me they were at school in the 1980s – still singing from Nelson’s Scots Song Book.

Four are Scots. But the other (one of those a little bit younger than me) was in …

South Wales! (Now I’m curious to know – any more distant sightings, anyone?)

I’ve also, tonight, been gifted a copy of Book 4.  I got home and sat down at the piano straight away! What an exciting present. And I can play away to my heart’s content, since it’s all in the name of research.

Wednesday 26 March, 1 pm

But I won’t pre-empt my Work in Progress talk at IASH next week. Would you like to hear it? It’s online as well as in person. Click here.

Scots Songs: a Question for your Elderly Scottish Relatives!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Front cover of Nelson's Scots Song Book Pupil's Edition Book 2

As I’ve mentioned, I’m researching some Scottish song books published by Thomas Nelson between 1948-1952. There were four books in total, and they were intended for school classroom use.

I would dearly love to trace a child, or children, who sang from these books. I think these books were aimed at children probably between eight to twelve years old, so the oldest children were born circa 1936-1946.

I don’t know how long the books would have remained in use, but my guess is that they’d probably have fallen to bits by the late 1950s. In that case, the youngest users would have been born round about 1950. And that would make them baby-boomers, but several years older than me.

So, if you have elderly Scottish relatives aged between 74 and 90, please do show them these images. Can they remember singing from these books at school?

And does Granny remember her teacher playing the piano for class singing lessons? There were bigger, more substantial teachers’ books to go with these little booklets. The teachers’ books had the piano accompaniments as well as the words and tune melodies. Only a few libraries still have them. I consider myself lucky to have tracked down my Pupil’s Edition Book 2!

Library copies of teachers’ books on an archival cushion

Marking Time

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Cat sleeping

Who’d have thought marking was such energetic mental exercise?! I might have a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in the Performing Arts – I might even have some experience in doing these activities – but I haven’t usually had to do marking. And now I’m almost all done – just one paper to go, this week, and that has got ‘Tomorrow’ written all over it. My brain has had enough for today.

Back soon.