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.
So they say! Very well, but whatever the era, and the differing nuances in the contents, there’s no denying tartan was often used as a cover for books of Scottish songs, Scottish poems, stuff by Robert Burns, stuff by Walter Scott (there was a firm specialising in miniatures, like this picture of Scott’s The Lady in the Lake ballad, no music here) …
It’s my research day. I faced a choice: write a lecture for November, work on a book chapter for January, or get back to the Scottish music publishers project. I feel as though I’ve been away from the project for quite a while, writing papers on other things, so today is going to be a project day. I know the other things are important, but I need to reconnect with my main preoccupation, if it is to become a book at some stage in the future.
So … the question of the tartan book covers …..
[more anon!]
Here’s another quick update, for the benefit of those who don’t follow the Facebook pages for The Claimed From Stationers Hall or Glasgow Music Publishers projects!
Next week, I’m giving a paper (well, I’ve already video-recorded it, but it’s being given next week) at a conference of cataloguing and metadata librarians. What else would I talk about but legal deposit music in libraries?! So this time, it’s called ‘The Cinderella of Stationers’ Hall: Music (and Metadata) in Georgian Legal Deposit Libraries’.
In a spirit of sheer whimsy, I’ve incorporated a picture of Cinderella as very pale background for the title page of my powerpoint – a volvelle picture from my favourite childhood book. This was a French picture-book of Cinderella, given to me by my late father when he taught on a teaching exchange in France. He died before I got my PhD, and wouldn’t half have been surprised to find his gift to seven-year old me, used as illustration for a perfectly serious presentation about a postdoc research project! You see it here in its technicolour glory. The conference will see it faded to near obscurity, but I know it’s there. A tribute to Pa!
The first of my research papers to be video-recorded last weekend was a paper about some very old tunes, which appeared in one version in Scottish sources, and in a different but apparently related version in Borders ones. This is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society conference in a few weeks’ time. Well, with all these old sources on my mind, I inadvertently made things more difficult for myself at work today. We were ‘practising’ a new lIbrary lending procedure for when the students return, and it involved setting up fake readers and fake book requests, to make sure the routine worked in practice. I used fake names associated with my research paper, because I was sure they were unlikely to crop up as real people on our system. And then I started getting my imaginary readers to request genuine books as part of this practice session. I shouldn’t have done it – those imaginary readers had very specific requirements, ALL concerning some aspect of the Scottish Borders, Northumbria and Cumbria.
They had me running all round the library tracking down books from every corner, high and low. If I had had any sense, I’d have picked books from one single shelf! My Fitbit tells me I have walked further than I’ve done in months, today, and to judge by the calories expended, I’ve carried more weights ditto. That will teach me to use my imagination ….
You know what happens when you empty a plastic carton, and it sort of collapses in on itself? After a weekend in which I recorded not one, but TWO conference papers, did sundry domesticity and not much else, I feel very much deflated!
Imagine my – ahem – joy that I have a day actually Working-At-Work tomorrow for the first time in six months. Just when I feel as though I could do with a quiet day at my home-desk with copious cups of tea …
But the good thing is that, apart from a third conference paper on a different topic, and a book chapter to start work on, I am currently up to date! I may yet get back to my late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scottish music publishers. Although the book chapter just might be rather time-consuming. Nonetheless, it’s a nice topic and will make a pleasant and RELATED change to my main focus, so I can’t complain too much.
I think my fingers should be tingling. You know I bought myself two scores published by Bruce, Clements & Co earlier this month? One of them was the opera by the publisher himself, W. B. Moonie.
And …I now have a copy signed by the composer!
However, such excitement has to be kept in check as I work on my second conference paper of the month.
I’m primarily working from home at present, both with my researcher and with my librarian hats on. Right now, in my research role, I have undertaken to give three conference papers in as many months, so I’m rather busy writing! I haven’t forgotten my Scottish music publishers – certainly not! – but I only officially have 1.5 research days a week (shhh, don’t mention all the evening efforts!) – so I need to focus on things with deadlines. The conference papers will be recorded and shared online.
Time will tell if I manage to make any visits to other libraries in the foreseeable future. Since lockdown, I seem to have purchased more books and music than I have room for, but some things aren’t available to purchase!
I was going to write a bit about Cedric Thorpe Davie today. However, the day simply didn’t pan out as intended!
Instead, I finished a conference paper about metadata in rare music cataloguing, started gathering facts for another conference paper about a lowland pipe tune, broke off to deal with a library-related query, and played the pipe tune on a concertina to unravel my head after so many disjointed activities!
I do still intend to write something about Cedric Thorpe Davie at some point!
This is another posting that I put on the Facebook Glasgow Music Publishers page a couple of days ago. I wonder if anyone can provide any pointers to this firm, currently a bit of a mystery to me?!
My study of historical Glasgow music publishers may need to embrace other Scottish music publishers too. (A metaphorical, socially distanced embrace, obviously.)
So. The first question is, who WERE Bruce, Clements & Co, who traded in Edinburgh circa 1921-1937, published quite a bit by W. B. Moonie and a significant work – Dirge for Cuthullin – by Cedric Thorpe Davie? I’ve only looked at Jisc Library Hub Discover and the British Newspaper Archive so far, but although I can find out what they published, I don’t know who they were – sometimes they called themselves Bruce Clements & Co., and other times Bruce, [COMMA!] Clements & Co. – though I do know they traded from 30 Rutland Square.
W. B. Moonie – YouTube of “Perthshire Echoes” played by pianist P. Sear
I don’t have access to Post Office Directories in Libraries – and they’re too “modern” to be in the National Library of Scotland Digital Gallery – though appropriate directories might yet tell me more about Mr Bruce or Mr Clements! At the moment, it’s just a question arising from my insatiable curiosity, but I should still like to know, because you never know what connections firms had with other firms or individuals.
I have had a couple of responses – Jack Campin tells me that Davie’s son was Tony Davie, computer scientist at the University of St Andrews. And I am sure there will be plenty of material about Cedric Thorpe Davie himself at St Andrews’ research repository, so that could be an interesting angle to pursue.
Meanwhile, another respondent pointed me in the direction of a couple of directories available via the Internet Archive, so I now have their address, (You’d be surprised how many firms I’ve traced at Rutland Square, which plainly housed more than one company at a time. The Boy Scouts Association were there, for starters. But I digress!
Interestingly, Thorpe Davie’s choral work, Dirge for Cuthullin, published in 1937 and admired by Vaughan Williams (four letters survive at VaughanWilliams.uk), was subsequently taken over by Oxford University Press in 1946. (See notes on manuscripts at St Andrews University Library.) I have a feeling Bruce, Clements and Co published very little, if anything else, by Thorpe Davie, and I believe the firm fizzled out in the very early 1940s. (I’d still like to know who they were!)
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
So … about the Melbourne Allans that I mentioned the other day? I shared this postscript on Facebook, but omitted to upload it here. The Glasgow “Mozart Allan” firm is highly unlikely to have a family connection with “Allan & Co” Down Under.
The Glasgow Mozart Allan advertised quite often in Australian papers in the early years of his business (the late 19th century).
But, as for his Reels, Strathspeys and General Dance Music being distributed by Allan’s in Melbourne? They just had the same surname. The Australian George C. Allan’s father (George Leavis Allan) came from London, and their ancestors may even have had a Cornish connection. No obvious link with our man.
Image: Butler, Graeme Allans Music, 276 Collins Street, Melbourne. 1982-1985
In June 2020 I had just posted a new article on my Glaswegian Music Publishers Facebook page.
Jigs, Quicksteps, Reels and … Hang on a Minute!
I had promised to write about some of the Victorian Glaswegian James Kerr’s music publications. The entire posting is going to turn into a chapter in the monograph I’m working on, so I’m taking it down from the blog – I’ve continued working on dates and the intricacies of Kerr’s trading career, and there’s every chance that slight details may now be different from what I wrote last year. I wouldn’t want inaccurate information or ideas that I have since developed, to survive publicly online.
The blogpost that I originally wrote for the Cultural Capital Exchange, has also now been posted in a series of postings by the Research Exchange at my own institution, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Here it is again, then:-
THE GREEN ROOM: DR KAREN MCAULAY (10th June) – Stepping out of the Georgian Era into a Pandemic
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 