Dr Karen McAulay explores the history of Scottish music collecting, publishing and national identity from the 18th to 20th centuries. Research Fellow at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, author of two Routledge monographs.
Looking forward to my Exchange Talk and Book Launch next Monday, I made a wee promotional video! Maybe I’ll see you there, if you’re in/around Glasgow.
Click for The book’s details
I’m very happy to have been honoured with an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the place where I’ve worked for 36 years. It was a memorable and touching evening.
https://www.rcs.ac.uk/news-stories/global-arts-educator-to-be-recognised-alongside-the-class-of-2024-at-the-royal-conservatoire-of-scotlands-autumn-graduation/
Loads of official photos were taken; here are a couple!
Please watch this space!
On Monday 11th November at 6 pm, I’m giving a talk in the well-established and popular RCS Exchange Talk series, where scholars talk about their latest research. I’ll be talking about a song book compiled for the Festival of Britain:-
It’s in the Fyfe lecture theatre. There will be ONLINE BOOKING for this lecture. This will be the link:- https://www.rcs.ac.uk/whats-on/exchange-talk/book/507006/
At 7 pm we’ll have the launch of my new book, in the library. No online booking for the book launch, but if you’re hoping to attend, please do let me know, so we have an idea of numbers.
You can attend both, or either event.
McAulay, Karen E., A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951 (Routledge, October 2024) 🎶
Is it just me, or is there something strangely comfortable about allowing oneself to be an amateur and just enjoy a creative process?
This is how it is for me with sewing, and composing music. Whilst I can spend hours, days, weeks (and more) striving for high-end results in writing about musicology, I take a good deal of pleasure in just sitting and sewing, or writing lyrics and music, enjoying less pressure on myself to produce perfect results. Indeed, several decades ago, when I was writing light fiction for a modest fee, I briefly attended a writing society, but concluded quite quickly that I preferred to row my own boat, solo.
I am chronically perfectionist where I have to be, but I can allow myself a bit of slack with spare-time occupations.
Last weekend I encountered a challenge to write a song in the hour gained between British Summer Time and Greenwich Meantime. I wrote the lyrics in advance, but did complete the song and the score in an hour.
However, I had to change a couple of chords and un-double a few octaves before ‘recording’ my effort as a computer audio file. Sing it, accompanying myself? No chance! Now, that would be embarrassing.
I hope I’ll get better reviews than this from people who are interested! You need to know the context. This is the complete, full and unabridged parental acknowledgement of the book that I spent five years writing. I have not missed a single word.
We tell students that they should not make assertions without providing evidence. I was recently explaining that I had found a great website with a long article about the Shakespeare controversy. It criticised a couple of other authors for blithely ascribing half of Shakespeare’s plays to a woman, Emelia Bassano Lanier, without providing sufficient (any?) evidence.
Now, I’m not a Shakespeare scholar. (I did study some of his plays for A-level, a very long time ago – that doesn’t really count!) In recent years, I have become aware that some experts query whether he did write all the plays ascribed to him. That, in summary, is really all I can say about the controversy, because I simply don’t know enough to make further comment.
I was, however, quite taken with this website’s argument. The authors they were criticising had proposed Emilia Bassano Lanier as the author of a number of ‘Shakespeare’ plays. The justification for this assertion was apparently that Emilia hadn’t written much in her own name before middle-age, due to the fact (?) that she had been busily writing some of the plays that we now consider to be by Shakespeare, before that. It seemed a very shaky assertion!
You need to back up your statements with firm evidence, I insisted in my seminar. Well, I was right in that advice.
However, we also talked a bit about being accurate in our references, and checking where our information came from. Very important, as everyone will agree. And here, I’ve come unstuck. Because, if you wanted to cite the Oxfraud website, the first thing you find is that there’s no date of publication at the bottom of the page, and no obvious sign of who the authors are – or whether they have an institutional affiliation. (Don’t try googling, “Who is responsible for Oxfraud” – it thinks you’re asking about monetary fraud.) Indeed, there is also an Oxfraudfraud website and a ShakespeareAuthorship website, and I’ve no doubt I’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg. But I shan’t be delving any deeper. I don’t need to cite it.
In the circumstances, it’s probably a good thing that, as a musicologist, I don’t actually need to know about the Shakespeare controversy!
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
As I planned what to play for tomorrow’s organ voluntaries, my eye fell on an old book of pieces by Cesar Franck. It had been my father’s book, and I remember my nine-year old self playing one of the melodies on the oboe, as he played the rest of the lines. He loved France, French, and French organ music. Today, I realised that this particular volume was published by none other than one of ‘my’ Scottish music publishers – Bayley and Ferguson. What could be more appropriate to celebrate my new book, than to play our ‘duet’ from that particular anthology? (I had, moreover, already encountered the editor, Henderson, in my research. He’s mentioned in passing in Chapter 3.)
I don’t know when Dad got that book. It was published in 1953, and it has an oldish look to the cover design, so I imagine he got it not long after it was published.Wherever he was at the time, it has since spent decades in Norwich before eventually coming up to Glasgow, Bayley & Ferguson’s original home.
I must admit that the focus of my book means I didn’t make much mention of organ music, and definitely no mention of Cesar Franck! Looking at it, the Cesar Franck cover design is staid beyond its years. You wouldn’t think the sixties were just around the corner. Still, it’s the music that matters. I’ll enjoy playing it tomorrow, thinking of Dad as I do so. He would have been so pleased to see my published work – I can only hope he’s smiling from his fleecy cloud now!
Writing a second book has felt quite different from the first time round. The first one developed out of my PhD, so I had my supervisor supporting me as I wrote the original thesis.
But this one? All my own, unsupervised work, arising originally from the thought that someone really ought to write a book about the music published by Scottish publishers in the late Victorian era and the early twentieth century. No-one had written one, so I researched and wrote it myself. I was grateful for my peer-reviewers’ feedback on the first draft, and I know that the final product benefited from the subsequent edits that I made during my Ketelbey Fellowship at St Andrews.
This time, I did my own indexing, too. That was a new experience for me.
Now, to start planning a book launch! Watch this space – I have an idea. Provisional date Monday 11th November, but the details have yet to be finalised!
Well, after all my Stationers’ Hall research a few years ago, you won’t be surprised to see me say that!
The Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing, 1900-2020 (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)
But I had reason to be grateful again today, when I needed to consult an expensive new book of essays from Edinburgh University Press. Only a few universities have it in electronic format (not accessible to external readers, for licensing reasons), but there was ONE printed copy in Scotland – presumably the legal deposit copy. A trip to the National Library of Scotland was called for. (I am so used to going upstairs to the rare books reading room, with all the book cushions and stands, weighted ‘book snakes’ and fragile volumes, that it was quite a novel experience to be heading to the general reading room to see a shiny new book in all its glory!)
From a drizzly start in Glasgow, it turned into a glorious warm and sunny autumn day, showing Edinburgh at its best. (Which is more than can be said for Glasgow, sulking in the rain upon my return!)
And the book was fascinating, despite seemingly not referencing anything related to music. It was wide-ranging in subject-matter and chronological coverage. (120 years is a long time in book-publishing.) I read a couple of chapters, making a mental note that I might have reason to come back to it again next year.
Sometimes, you need to look at a book, just to make sure you haven’t missed anything! I can finish my article now, reassured that I haven’t overlooked any unexpected new commentary. It was a long shot!
By way of a change, I took myself to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s concert in Glasgow City Halls last night. Conducted by Martyn Brabbins and Michael Bawtree, the programme was entitled Scottish Influences, with music by Errollyn Wallen, Master of the King’s Music; Sir James MacMillan; and the late Peter Maxwell Davies and Lyell Cresswell. I anticipated seeing a few faces that I recognised – and I did – and I was particularly looking forward to hearing Wallen’s Mighty River and Maxwell Davies’ An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise.
It was a truly great night. Wallen’s piece very much suggested a wide, flowing river, and incorporated two spirituals and a hymn, ‘Deep River’, ‘Go down, Moses’, and ‘Amazing Grace’. Davies’ piece – which I only encountered for the first time a few weeks ago on Radio 3, whilst driving – evoked uninhibited Scottish celilidh dancing, along with a waiter delivering a tray with whisky and glasses to the principal violinist and conductor at an appropriate point – and a fully kilted piper striding the length of the auditorium. (Yes, Chris Gibb is one of our RCS alumni. I was proud!) Michael Bawtree conducted gorgeous choral pieces performed by students from Glasgow and Edinburgh. New Zealander Lyell Cresswell’s PianoConcerto no.3, was premiered in Europe last night by pianist Danny Driver.
I couldn’t help smiling at the thought that yesterday afternoon, I was listening to Scottish country dance music recorded a century ago, whilst only a few hours later, I was sitting listening to Scottish-influenced music with the two living composers literally sitting within ten feet of me. Yesterday afternoon, I was remembering the story of the dance pianist who played with a tea-cup of whisky teetering on the edge of her grand piano, whilst last night the ‘whisky-drinking’ (was it real?!) took place right before my eyes. Indeed, my recent research of Scottish printed music has revealed a healthy export trade of Scottish song and dance music to Australia and New Zealand – whilst the late Lyell Cresswell reversed the process by bringing himself to Scotland, where he made his home in Edinburgh.
The good news is, last night’s concert will eventually be broadcast and will then be available to stream or download for 30 days via BBC Sounds. I’d certainly recommend listening.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 