Amongst Friends

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
From the Thomas Nelson Archives

This afternoon, I gave a talk about my archival research, to the Friends of Edinburgh University Library – where I received the strongest indication that people love talking about their memories of school music lessons!

I had great fun introducing the long-forgotten editors at Thomas Nelson  – including a lady who went on to work at the University Library after finishing her PhD – and, of course, the people who compiled the Scots Song Books.  (They wanted to compile a fifth – I bet you didn’t know that! But Nelson’s didn’t …)

Main picture  – tulips outside the University Library

Mind the Gap! A Hiatus in the Research Process? Don’t Panic

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I was going to add another exclamation mark there, but one exclamation mark is enough. Otherwise, it looks panicky, and that’s not what I want.

Over the years, I have come to realise that when you feel you’ve reached a block of some kind, it’s time to take a deep breath, go and do something else, and wait for inspiration to strike.  This profound truth falls into two parts.  The first key thing is to stop thinking about the block. (I’ll come to the second shortly!)  If you’ve just completed a huge project  – or a thesis  – you might need a significant break. In my present project, it wasn’t on that scale.  I just needed to step back for a weekend.

Is That It?

So, here I am, realising that soon I’ll have looked at most of the roughly contemporaneous archives relating to the Nelson’s Scots Song Books, meaning that I won’t be able to extract much more quotable content from these papers.  And oh, I do enjoy the thrill of the chase! I can continue trawling through papers – or databases – for hours, if I’m hunting for particular details. An initial feeling of disappointment – no more discoveries? – left me wondering if I should start writing up what I do know, now?

But There Is More!

This is the second key thing.  Don’t assume that you’ve ground to a halt. And try to avoid doom predictions; don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ll never manage to get back on track again.  Instead,  regard the hiatus as a time to regroup (if an individual can be said to regroup) and permit new ideas to surface.

I remind myself that I do have a couple of new ideas to pursue, leading on from what I’ve unearthed so far.  This is certainly not the end.

Embroidered copy of child singing from book

Moreover, as I picked up my embroidery needle for some weekend distraction, the sewing project itself reminded me that I haven’t yet explored every angle that I wanted to cover whilst I have access to the archives.

Weekend Pause for Reflection

Remember the little engraving of a child singing from a book? It was used for several of Nelson’s song books, although I think not for the Scots ones. (Only the four Scottish pupils‘ books have illustrations, and they tend to illustrate the songs they accompany – whereas the singing child is just that – a child singing.) I like it, though, and I decided to see if I could reproduce it in stitched form.

And that set me thinking about MacMahon’s New National and Folk Song Books – which include just a few Scots songs. Not to mention the other music books I’ve encountered along the way. 

Actually, that’s another piece of advice.   Take a long, hard look at your initial plan, and ask yourself if you’ve done all you intended to do. There may be other angles that have slipped to the back of your mind.

Looking back at my avowed intentions, at the start of this project, there are several more books I’d like to do a little research into. Not as much as I’ve done into the Scots books, but certainly, to see if I can find any more interesting detail around the times when these other titles were being published. I went back to see what I had written for my Fellowship page on the IASH website. Look:-

“Project title: From National Songs to Nursery Rhymes, and Discussion Books to Dance Bands: investigating Thomas Nelson’s Musical Middle Ground

So, how could I NOT devote some thought to nursery rhymes or aspiring amateur dance musicians? Even if it’s only a quick look?

“My recently-published monograph focused mainly on specialist music publishers, but I also made some comparisons with output by contemporary Scottish book publishers, including Thomas Nelson’s.  Exploring the extensive Nelson archive will offer me the opportunity to investigate Nelson’s modest music-related output in depth.  

“The Edinburgh publisher Thomas Nelson’s historical output can be broadly characterised into four categories:- religious; educational; attractive reprints of literary classics; or series for the intelligent layman.  In this project, I shall explore the publishing histories of Nelson’s comparatively limited catalogue of music books and scores, to determine how these titles justified their existence in predominantly non-musical lists.  I’m curious about the publishing histories of all Nelson’s music titles, whether notation or text; and the relative success of different titles.  I’m also interested in the working relationships with compilers and authors.”

Well, I said it there!

  • “The publishing histories of all Nelson’s music titles, whether notation or text.” I can’t compile extensive histories for all of them – there’s more than I thought – but I can certainly explore some that caught my attention. As I have for a couple already, as it happens.
  • As for the relative success of different titles? Well, I can already name a few successful ones, and one a little less successful!
  • And the working relationships? I have plenty of detail, but exploring a few more titles might yield other, unexpected discoveries – all the more reason to keep going!

“I’ll be exploring the background to Nelson’s national song collections, also contemplating their educational music materials in the era ca. 1927-40; books specifically aimed at the layman; and music publications for the Commonwealth.”

  • So – yes, I can justify a bit more time spent looking for the months before MacMahon’s book was published.
  • Maybe I can’t be as thorough as I have been in the 1948-55 era, but I should certainly dip my toes in the water!
  • And – music publications for the Commonwealth? Yes, I can amplify what I know there, too. (Indeed, I’ve just reached out to a college in Nigeria, although it relates to a quest for a picture, rather than anything to do with music.)

So – am I finished? Far from it! I just need to shine a light on different parts of the archive.

(Meanwhile, I’ve finished my wee embroidery – I have no idea what I’ll do with it. But it did get me thinking.)

IASH courtyard, May blossom at its best!

New Technology! From Early Plastic Recorders to Tape Recorders and Long-Playing Records

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Dulcet plastic recorder by John Grey and Sons

They wondered where I was in the Uni Library this morning  – I was off looking at old magazines in the National Library of Scotland!

Queuing for 10 am!

High Fidelity

EMI tape recorder
Advert for musical instrument - the Dulcet recorder
Perfected in Plastic
Baird’s High Fidelity

I did find a couple of book reviews and an advert, which is what I was looking for. But I was also drawn to other adverts for long-playing records, tape recorders and plastic recorders! Here we are today, with our phones, mics, streaming services and laptops, whilst a wooden recorder is much more eco-friendly, not to mention authentic. But in post-war Britain, all this shiny new stuff was the last word in modernity! 

As for a record that held four times as much music as a 78? Who wouldn’t want such an innovation?! 

Oh, and I spotted another ‘innovation’: folk songs with guitar chords. The times they certainly were a-changing. (And this was a decade before Bob Dylan’s song!)

Anyway, I filled in a couple of gaps in my knowledge by ploughing through eight years‘ worth of bound, unindexed magazines (we forget how amazing digitised journals are!), and answered another question with a microfilmed reel (urgh, old technology!) of another journal.  To think that microfilms were comparatively modern when I was a postgrad the first time round.  Today, I used a shiny new microfilm reader – very techie – but it’s still a linear way of storing data. Luckily, I found what I was looking for towards the end of the first reel.

And had a thoroughly modern iced latte before heading back to the Uni Library!

The Multi-Tasking Music Teacher – 88 Years ago!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Engraving of child singing. Probably late 1920s or early 1930s.

Here’s a little curiosity that I came across last autumn. It’s published by Thomas Nelson, yes, but I’m not entirely sure why I bought it. I certainly didn’t know what I was getting!

The title should have given me a clue, but it wasn’t enough to tell the whole story:-

A RURAL SIGHT READER

Being an Amalgamation of “Eyes Right!”

and “Look Ahead!”

Okay, you might say, so there were clearly two earlier books. Correct, there were. But the amalgamation was performed by having “Eyes Right!” (the simpler sight-reading book) on all the left-hand pages, and “Look Ahead!” on all the right-hand pages, until just past halfway through the book. The rest is all ‘Look Ahead” material.

You might ask why? The answer is quite simple. A teacher in a small rural school in those days might have a wide age-range in one class, so they could hand out one set of books (are you with me?) and have two age-groups use it at the same time. The idea was that the older children would follow along when the young ones were sight-reading, and vice versa.

The one thing they could not do, was sing together simultaneously. That absolutely would not work. (Opposite pages might have different time signatures, and or different keys – they were completely unrelated.) Ah well, it was a nice idea. The publishers went on printing it from 1937 until 1948, when His Majesty’s Inspector for Music pleaded with them to reprint it, suggesting that a different title might make it more saleable. There was still a need for it, he insisted.  (I have since discovered that he was the unnamed author of this miserable little book!)

It was not reprinted. The publisher’s sales reps reported adverse comments and little customer interest. Looking inside, I’m not surprised. Apart from the first page of ‘Look Ahead’, which patriotically contains the National Anthem with the right rhythm followed by various odd permutations, they aren’t even recogniseable tunes, just abstract little melodies to familiarise the pupils with the ups-and-downs and simple rhythms of notated music. Functional to a fault.

showing two opposite pages of this frankly rather dull music sight-reading book!
[Discreetly yawning …]

And my copy – look closely at the image at the top – was a publishers’ sample copy. It may never even have been used. But the little singing child image was used again on the front and title pages of two other titles – E Fosbrooke Allen’s A First Song Book, and a much more popular book – Desmond MacMahon’s New National and Folk Song Book vols. 1 and 2. (Possibly elsewhere too – I haven’t seen enough titles to be able to say.)

Whilst I admire the laudable desire to have every child leaving school musically as well as functionally literate, the Rural Sight-Reader is a truly dull and uninspiring little offering. I imagine the children wriggling and kicking under the desk until it was playtime, or time for something more appealing!

Blue marbles - more appealing to the average child!
Anyone for marbles?!

Falling into the Category of ‘Did I Need to Know That’?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

On Friday afternoon, a tiny germ of a thought struck me. It was about a book to which I had previously given no thought whatsoever.  It is unrelated to Scottish song, or even Scottish culture. It was published by a Scottish publisher.

100, 245, 260 …

(Forgive the little library codes! I haven’t forgotten where I came from.)

But I can’t see a title without wondering about the author, so I idly looked them up on my journey home from Edinburgh.

Well!

Here we have someone who …

  • Had LRAM piano and was a Dalcroze graduate
  • Trained primary school teachers in eurythmics
  • Gave classes for kids in a city studio
  • Helped choose music for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society
  • Once or twice arranged music for same (but was never apparently on any committees –  you can spend hours looking at RSCDS digital archives, and I have!)

Did I trace their birth and death dates,  where they grew up, and where their parents married? Yes, I’m afraid I did!

MT? Definitely.

(Another clue for my former colleagues!)

All this falls into the scholarly equivalent of ‘pretty but pointless’, on the face of it, since it has nothing to do with a Scottish song book series for schools.  But the book itself might have a tangential link to my present research  – more anon – and gives me food for thought in another direction.

I have just talked myself into another eBay purchase  …

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Wilma Paterson and Alasdair Gray’s ‘Songs of Scotland’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Front cover of Songs of Scotland by Wilma Paterson and Alasdair Gray, Mainstream Publishing

Published in 1997, this is quite an unusual collection: I can’t think of another Scottish song book illustrated throughout by a famous contemporary artist.  Inside,  the drawings and graphic art are monochrome  – only the cover is in full colour.  This, it must be said, is not quite what Gray initially envisaged; the decision was necessitated by cost, on the part of the publisher.  It’s still a beautiful piece of – well, book art – I imagine it sitting on coffee tables.  It doesn’t sit very easily on a piano music stand, due to its bulk.

Today, as I opened it, the dust-jacket fell back, revealing an equally beautiful embossed cloth cover.  I just had to share it!

Embossed cloth cover; wording says 'Sing as if you live in the early days of a better nation'
Embossed cloth cover; worded:- ‘Sing as if you live in the early days of a better nation’
Endpapers
Endpaper design
Imagine inside dustjacket: book designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray
Book is designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray

It’s a very traditional anthology  – you won’t find modern repertoire here.  But it’s  carefully annotated, with a bibliography bearing witness to the amount of research that went into it.

I have looked at contemporary reviews, and other related material – and there’s more I could say about this publication. However, I am keeping this for another day.

If you’d like your own copy, it’s out of print but easy to source second-hand. (Here’s the Abe Books link.)

Songs of Scotland, ed. by Wilma Paterson, designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1997)

One Side of a Conversation

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

From the 56 or so files I’ve examined up to now, the Thomas Nelson archives generally save copies of the letters that went out from the offices – but not the incoming replies.  They reveal one side of a conversation.

So today, I was able to read letters to James Easson and Herbert Wiseman about the third and fourth Scots Song Books, but I couldn’t see how they reacted or responded.  I need to look at the finished books again, but I may not necessarily be able to determine if they took on board the impeccably polite and respectful points raised about the texts they had used.  I haven’t got the annotated proofs that were sent to Easson,  or his reply. 

As you will see from the enclosed, there are certain discrepancies, mostly small ones, between your text and the text as given in the various authorities. 

I wonder if he had anticipated the lengths to which his new editor would go – visiting libraries and consulting authoritative editions – to ensure the texts were accurate?! Lengths, I might add, which are entirely consistent with what I’ve learned about the editor!

What is clear, though, is that these books were very carefully compiled, and just as painstakingly edited.

I am very anxious to get these points settled now before the MS goes for setting.

I still have a number of files to examine – and until I see them, I won’t know which departments they are from. I wonder when I’ll catch up with the meticulous editor again?!

Image by Peter H from Pixabay

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!