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.
There’s going to be a lot of activity at my front door in the next few days. I confess I had a spending spree. First, I ordered new, not-terribly-exciting organ music (needs must, but not my own taste!) … and then I had to console myself with some old Mozart Allan scores. Ironically, I won’t be playing a couple of them publicly, but I feel I can’t write about delicate, topical issues without seeing these old scores for myself. Not out of any remote sense of liking them, but because it wouldn’t be right to address the issues without knowing exactly what the publications are like. No second-hand, reported commentary for me.
To counterbalance those, I ordered some Scottish piano tunes and an advertising brochure which has to come all the way from Canada. These will give me considerable pleasure!
Returning visitors to these pages may find the content thinner than it used to be. Now that I’m working on my next book, I want my best content to be honed to perfection and triple-checked before I commit it to print. Rather than leave extended writings – which I posted as ‘work in progress’ – sitting on the internet, I’ve pruned what is here. In general, I continue to research the topics I posted here (Scottish music publishers James Kerr, Mozart Allan and many others, and interrogations of cultural issues), and any new details or dates which I didn’t know at the time of blogging, could potentially change what I originally wrote. And also, of course, I want readers of the book to be surprised and delighted by new insights that no-one knew before!
Collection of Merry Melodies
I shall continue to blog, of course. How could I not? I have so many ideas buzzing round my head that it’s hard keeping them all to myself!
Hello again, dear followers! I’ve heard of a research grant that I am eligible to apply for. It’ll receive applications from many researchers, so I haven’t got a particularly strong chance of succeeding, but it would be nice to get a research grant to help me get on with writing my book, so … I shall have to see what’s involved in making an application!
I thought I’d share my current plans for the book. So far, I’ve written some of the introduction, and most of the first chapter.
This is the shape of the thing:-
1. Cheap music for all: James S. Kerr and Mozart Allan (history)
2. Enduring Kerr and Mozart Allan titles, what was in them and why they were so successful.
3. Organisations (Glasgow and Scotland-wide) concerned with music making and with promoting Scottish music
4. Educational connections
5. Educationalists and how they fit into the scene
6. Overseas.
7. Spin-offs and tie-ins
8. Publishing “classical” music in Scotland
9. Domestic music-making in Glasgow
Considering how long it has taken just to get the first chunk written, you see what I have got ahead of me. Some chapters will be longer than others, and some of these topics may get merged. Who knows?!
Six years ago, I wrote a wee blogpost about music engravers for Whittaker Live – the Whittaker Library had a Blogspot blog for many years, until I migrated it to WordPress last year.
Just in case it ever goes missing, I thought I’d reproduce that single posting here, now. The truth of the matter is that music librarians don’t generally spend a lot of time with really old volumes, whilst rare books librarians spend a lot of time with really old volumes … but music is only a small part of their remit. This means that things that are obvious to librarians with one specialism may not be obvious to their counterparts in a different library or department.
Can You Tell Your Scripsit From Your Sculpsit? (20 May 2015)
Here’s a little bit of book history to broaden your mind!
If you’re looking at REALLY old music, sometimes you see tiny writing at the bottom of the title page – “Script” or “Sculpt”, and then a name. Rudolf Rasch, who is a book historian, and Associate Professor of Musicology (Emeritus) at Utrecht University, has kindly provided us with an explanation:-
“Script = scripsit = “he wrote”, normally this refers to the one who designed the engraving or made a drawing as a design for the engraving. This should refer to a title page only. [Typesetter is not a good description of this person.] “Sculpt = sculpsit = “he sculpted”, refers to the engraver.
“If a title page is signed by a “sculpsit” one is not a priori certain that the same engraver did the music too. The best way to decide whether the engraver of the title page also engraved the music is too look at the form of the letters on the title page and on the music pages. In many situations title page and music are engraved by the same hand, but there may be cases where the publisher had different engravers work at the title page and the music. “But please keep in mind: 18th-century indications are never full-proof. Never turn off common sense.”So now you know. Just a little advancement in knowledge every day …! One day you might be grateful to Whittaker for sharing this little piece of book history with you!
If you enjoyed this, you’ll love a blogpost that Kelsey Jackson Williams wrote for this present blog, a few years ago. Here you are:-
I have just contributed a blogpost to a research project blog that is hosted by the University and Stirling. The project is called, Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: an Analysis of Scottish Borrowing Records. There are a large number of participating partners – visit this page to find out more.
I revisited Miss Elizabeth Lambert (later Mrs Williams), Mrs Bertram and her daughters, and Principal Playfair’s daughter, Janet. Here’s the blogpost:-
If you were involved with, or followed the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall copyright music project, then news of this project led by the University of Stirling will probably also interest you.
“Our project uncovers and reinterprets the history of reading in Scotland in the period 1750 to 1830. Using formerly unexplored (or underexplored) borrowing records, we are [ … ] creating a valuable new resource that will reveal hidden histories of book use, knowledge dissemination and participation in literate culture.”
I’ve been invited to contribute a blogpost about the lady musicians of St Andrews, so watch this space … !
I’ve been busily posting away on the Facebook page, so I thought I’d better update the blog as well. These few lines are taken from the FB page.
YESTERDAY there was a slight hint of despair as I wrote,
My second book is going to take quite a while to write! I’m only technically a postdoctoral researcher for one and a half days (10.5 hours) a week. I told myself I had to write 250 words a day, five days a week.But factoring in answering emails, attending the odd meeting, doing the odd bit of research, ordering the odd book or downloading the occasional article, and how much time do I have in which to actually write? So the first week of this bold resolution has resulted in …? Not exactly 1250 words for the introductory chapter. Oh, they’re good words, in the right order, but nonetheless … I shall have to pull my finger out tomorrow morning!!
TODAY, things started to look up:
ONE DAY THERE WILL BE A SECOND BOOK. I’ve redeemed myself. I set out to write 250 words a day, five days a week. I didn’t manage that in the first week. However, on the first day of the second week, I do now have a total of 1500 words – mathematicians will work out that I’ve caught up before the Easter break. This may be the only time that it happens, of course …
I have contributed to the April 2021 ‘What are you reading?’ column in the Times Higher Education. My chosen book was Sean Reidy’s Dunbrody, A Famine Odyssey: How JFK’s Roots Helped Revive an Irish Town (Sean Reidy, 2020)
I saw reference to Lambeth Palace’s long-awaited new library on Twitter. (My thanks to Ely Cathedral’s Honorary Assistant Bishop, Graham Kings, for sharing the link – we’re not acquainted, but credit where credit is due!) Revd. Kings shared the link to a new Church Times article, which I shall share here now, for the benefit of all followers of the Claimed From Stationers Hall legal deposit music network.
Church Times, 19 March 2021. “Declan Kelly talks to Tim Wyatt about the new Lambeth Palace Library building”
Why am I interested? Well, Sion College was a college (essentially a social club) for London clergy, and it used to be entitled to receive legal deposit publications under copyright legislation. Some of the old legal deposit material from Sion College subsequently went to Lambeth Palace library. Even though Sion had long ago jettisoned the music before passing on book stock to Lambeth Palace, it’s wonderful to see the new facilities here. I haven’t added this link to our network bibliography, since it isn’t really connected to what we were researching – but it’s still to good to see the ‘long tail’ of the story – the ‘what happened next’.
I don’t have permission to share the picture at the head of the Church Times article. However, you can see it in all its glory at the link that I’ve shared.
Professor Porter has a new article in the Journal of Musicological Research, and I look forward to reading it at the earliest opportunity. Did you know an Englishwoman called Harriet Wainewright wrote an opera, Comala, in 1792?
Here are the article’s details, if you have access to this Taylor & Francis Journal:-
Research Article
An English Composer and Her Opera: Harriet Wainewright’s Comàla (1792)
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 