Saturday dawned, and a research question was bothering me …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Old music card catalogue at Mitchell Library, Glasgow

So I decided to spend the afternoon at the Mitchell Library. Glasgow is so fortunate to have this wonderful collection!

I saw the two publications I had in mind. I took notes. I even had time to look at the card catalogue. (Catalogues are great research tools, even though I am personally sick of actually cataloguing.)

And then I went home. It was only when I went over my notes that I realised I had missed at least one item in the bibliography of one book, which I thought I had been looking out for. I spent the next 24 hours kicking myself, determined to go back to find that elusive reference if it killed me.

And then my librarian self remembered the advice I often give students. If you have copied out a useful snippet, put it into Google Books, in speech marks. Like this:-

“Reader, I married him”

(Try for yourself – it’s a quote from Charlotte Bronte.)

Often enough, Google Books will retrieve 2-3 lines including the words you copied, telling you the book where it found the text – and the page number.

I searched on the book abbreviation for the missing reference, and found I’d missed three! However, I have now traced them, and all is well. All for research into a publisher who only caught my interest two weeks ago.

Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m delighted to see my article, Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library, published in the Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice (pp.21-26) this week!

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023): Special Issue on Breaking the Gender Bias in Academia and Academic Practice

Special Issue of JPAAP exploring and addressing issues, dimensions and initiatives related to ensuring a greater gender parity and representation within academic institutions, academic and academic-related work, and related professional practices. Guest edited by Alexandra Walker and Keith Smyth. (Published: 2023-02-22)

Direct link to entire issue:- https://jpaap.ac.uk/JPAAP/issue/view/34

‘Spreading the Word’: article by Lionel Gossman

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Sometimes there are times when you know you should read something, but you worry it might not be directly relevant to your work – or you suspect you’ll spend too much time on something that may only be of tangential interest.

Today was not one of those times, though.  After a couple of days off for home improvements, I decided that what I really needed this morning, to ease myself back into a research frame of mind, was to sit and focus on something which might not mean much note-taking, but was certainly of background interest.  Indeed, it even touched my interest in copyright history, albeit not music copyright. 

And that’s how I found myself reading online – for I couldn’t justify printing out 170-odd pages – this very readable article about Scottish book publishers:-

Gossman, Lionel. “Spreading the Word: Scottish Publishers and English Literature 1750-1900.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 109, no. 2, 2020, pp. iii–161. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45381452. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.

Audio at a Future Date

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
A lot of vinyl records (image from Pixabay)

I’ve taken a couple of days’ leave whilst we’re having work done at home. I’m far too distracted by the banging and crashing around me to be able to sit and write scholarly thoughts. I just can’t!

‘Satan finds work for idle hands to do’ (Proverbs 16:27-29)

However, it appears I can quite easily go shopping on eBay. For some weeks, I’ve covetously watched a handful of old 78-rpm recordings, the sensible voice in one ear drowning out the sentimental voice in the other. The latter is whispering,

‘Look! He conducted that. You can listen to him actually conducting something he arranged! How cool would that be?’

Inner voice

That’s not the voice of a sensible, frugal scholar! Reader, I resisted the sentimental voice. I was being firm, resolute, and admirably sensible until a glorious thought occurred to me: when I’ve finished my book, publication will also entail a book-launch of some kind. And I’m sure to want to give talks about some aspect of the book topic. These records aren’t just artefacts – they’re multimedia soundfiles! Oh yes, indeed. How dreadful it would be, for my future self to remember the records that slipped through my fingers through misguided sensibility?

You also have to understand that my previous research was into an era when there were no sound recordings of any kind. So my present investigations into music between 1880 and 1950 mean stepping into the era when one could listen to recordings (gasp!), view projected slides and even access broadcast media. All very, very exciting at the time.

Broken Record

I did do a bit of bargaining, having resolved that I couldn’t have them unless I negotiated the price below a certain figure. The last shellac record I bought arrived in bits, so I hope that if these are travelling as a threesome, they might be a bit more robust – safety in numbers.

And I’m afraid I succumbed to a small music publication, too. (What am I going to do with all these scores when the book is written and they revert to being cheap, forgotten old titles again?!)

Update

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Having invested in my own personal domain, I thought I’d better make sure my bio was up-to-date. And then I remembered that my list of publications needed to be there too, so that became another page.

When I was contemplating a mid-career PhD way back in 2003, my then line-manager attended a meeting, and mentioned my intentions. An unnamed academic (luckily, I don’t know who!) thereupon enquired,

“What would a librarian want with a PhD?”

Anon

They didn’t know I was fulfilling an interrupted ambition of some twenty years earlier! (See my bio page.) But if the anonymous scholar saw my list of publications today, I like to think they’d agree I’ve made good use of the PhD …

I went on to get a postgrad Teaching in Higher Education certificate after that!

‘Dr Karen McAulay of the Books’ – by Dr Karen Marshalsay

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Karen Marshalsay's album, The Road to Kennacraig

When my first book was published in 2013, my dear friend clarsach-player and composer Dr Karen Marshalsay played at the book-launch, performing a tune that she had written especially for me. ‘Dr Karen McAulay of the Books’ has been included in Karen’s album, The Road to Kennacraig – you can hear the tune here.

Karen’s playing ‘my’ tune at a gig in Crail on 18th February 2023 – clarsairs have a much more interesting and varied existence than librarians! – but I’ll have to content myself with listening to my CD or the digital rendition. I feel very privileged to have a tune named after me.

My Own Domain!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Quick update – you can now find this blog at KarenMcAulayMusicologist.blog. No adverts, and an easier hyperlink to remember. After all this excitement, I’ll go and put the kettle on. (We musicologists know how to enjoy ourselves!)

Now you See it, Now you Don’t: the British College of Music

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I was just tidying up some loose ends in the chapter I’ve been writing. There was a music professor called John Greig who looked after things at Edinburgh University in between Reid Professors. Friedrich Rieck got the job – Greig didn’t. Within a decade the press was reporting his taking up an organist post in London. Then acting as an external examiner for the London College of Music, and finally principal of his own college – the British College of Music – in 1908. He died within a couple of years of opening it, having funded it largely out of his own pocket, but with a handful of shareholders holding a tiny fraction of the shares.

A contemporary magazine said it was just a money-spinning exercise. Okay, but it did advertise from time to time, notwithstanding Greig’s demise, so it clearly continued at least a little while. I also found reference in an Australian source, suggesting it was went on being a money-spinner for a while.

Here’s the thing: on the face of it, it appears still to be offering music exams to this day. I found reference to a modern professor in the UK, who offers masterclasses to students wishing to take ‘British College of Music exams’; there’s even a masterclass coming up in Ochanomizu, Japan this month (February 2023). However, I suspect that the professor actually means ‘exams offered by British music colleges’ rather than an institution by that name. Capital letters and word order make such a difference!

I don’t really mind. It has absolutely nothing to do with my research, and I stopped before I fell any further down the Alice-in-Wonderland-type rabbit hole. Anyway, I don’t need to mention the institution in a book about Scottish music publishers!

Review: George Kennaway, John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Image of book cover: John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain

My review of George Kennaway’s impressive monograph has just appeared in Brio vol.59 no.2 (Autumn/Winter 2022), pp.62-63.

Boydell & Brewer link to the book itself.

Brio is the IAML(UK & Ireland) journal – the professional publication of British and Irish music librarians.

A Good Description (Bibliographers will understand!)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Two school music books entitled "Pictures in Song"
Tonic Sol-Fa notation
Tonic Sol-Fa

My latest eBay purchase will teach me to look more closely at the photos. (Of which there were a lot, I might add.) But the words DESCRIBING the pair of books nowhere said that one was a staff edition, and the other Tonic Sol-Fa!

The cover title was correctly transcribed, although the seller hadn’t indicated that the one without the words “School edition – Staff” was, in fact, the School edition in Tonic Sol-Fa. Had I looked right through the photos, I would have got to the picture of the Sol-Fa title page and an example of the Sol-Fa itself. My mistake!

However, in this case it’s not too much of a problem – I’m more concerned with the contents of the books and their paratext, than actually playing or singing the music. And if I want to practise my sol-fa reading skills, well, I now have another book to practise with!