Lanrick Castle, Centre Stage!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I have just stumbled across a whole video about Lanrick Castle – only touching upon Sir John MacGregor Murray’s time there, but it’s very evocative, so I thought you might like to see it for yourself.  You can imagine Sir John living there, and song-collector Alexander Campbell approaching it in 1815, perhaps a little in awe when he saw the grandeur inside:-

Dr Peter J. Gordon’s website is called “Hole Ousia”.  You’ll find the Lanrick Castle video here:- https://holeousia.com/time-passes-listen/ruins/lanrick-castle-demolished/

A Trip To Killin (Clan Gregor Weekend)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Last weekend, I had the honour of being after-dinner speaker for Clan Gregor at their annual gathering.  I gave a talk (which lasted about 20 minutes) about their ancestor, Sir John MacGregor Murray.  It was based on the talk I gave at the Sorbonne, but slightly modified.  (See my PowerPoint with a very brief verbal commentary – not the entire talk!)

Maybe you’d just like to hear Niel/Nathaniel Gow’s tune, Sir John MacGregor Murray in the Celtic Chair?  Audio link to SoundCloud

Teaching About Musical Paratext

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

A few years ago, I published an article in a librarianship journal, about librarians teaching, and the question of teaching music students about paratext in early national song collections.

Let me state here and now, my approach to article titles has changed, and I would never again try to be ‘clever’ or controversial in this regard.  A perfectly acceptable article was made to look flippant, or even worse, by my woeful enjoyment of puns and double-entendres.

Nonetheless, because I’d like to share the article, I’ll endure the embarrassment of sharing the title with you.  This is a pre-publication version, which I’ll also upload to our institutional repository in the near future:-

‘Sexy’ bibliography (and revealing paratext)

bluebells-1429817_960_720Engaging with students in teaching bibliographic citation, and demonstrating the significance of paratext in historical national song collections.

General information

 

Niel and Nathaniel Gow’s Controlling Influence? | Bass Culture in Scottish musical traditions

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Paratext jacket
Paratext jacket – harps and flowers

In connection with my continuing interest in paratextual matter in national song and dance music, I’m sharing some postings I wrote whilst I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project. (See hms.scot for the web outcomes of that project).

Shared link no.2:-

https://bassculture.info/?p=416

Italian Style | Bass Culture in Scottish musical traditions

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Paratext jacket
Paratext jacket – harps and flowers

In connection with my continuing interest in paratextual matter in national song and dance music, I’m sharing some postings I wrote whilst I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project. (See hms.scot for the web outcomes of that project).

Shared link no.1:-

https://bassculture.info/?p=489

Stationers’ Hall music and David Daube’s collection by Dalia Garcia

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Absolutely delighted – and that’s no exaggeration – to see the Stationers’ Hall music at Aberdeen being studied with enjoyment by MSc placement student Dalia Garcia. I was thrilled to learn that Dalia’s been investigating some of the scores in this collection, and am equally excited to read this blogpost, bringing the collection to the attention of a wider audience – deservedly!

specialcollectionslearning's avatarUoA Collections

Dalia 1My name is Dalia Garcia and I am about to complete my MSc Information and Library Studies at Robert Gordon University. Looking back now I can say studying this course has been one of the best decisions I have ever taken, and my placement has contributed in great part to making me feel this way. I was lucky enough to be accepted as a placement student at the University of Aberdeen Special Collections Centre, situated on the lower ground floor of The Sir Duncan Rice Library. I was there for the month of April in a full-time learning position, under the supervision of Keith O’Sullivan, Senior Rare Books Librarian, and Jane Pirie, Rare Books Cataloguer.

I had the privilege of seeing such a dream team as the University of Aberdeen Museums and Special Collections working together on their day to day tasks of facilitating research through their books and archives…

View original post 1,282 more words

Silence in the Pecha Kucha

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’ve already mentioned that I would be attending Icepops 2019 at the University of Edinburgh yesterday – a conference about copyright literacy, and providing appropriate training to students, researchers and other staff colleagues.

(Icepops = International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars).

My challenge was to deliver a Pecha Kucha which mentioned my research into historical legal deposit music, and ALSO touched on library user education into matters pertaining to copyright.  ‘Silence in the Library: from Copyright Collections to Cage’, did just that.  I have never spoken about John Cage’s controversial piece, 4’33” before.  Neither have I deliberately inserted six seconds of silence into a format DESIGNED for brevity and concision!  If you Google how many words you can fit into 20 seconds, you’ll find it’s just 60 words.  That’s if you don’t use long words!  So giving up a third of a slide to silence was, I felt, a calculated risk, but how else was I to demonstrate what you might hear during a silent episode?!  All went well, and my calculations worked out – what a relief!

The conference was about a playful (lusory) approach to copyright education.  In that regard, I discussed how Cage’s piece – silent though it was – still has copyright in the concept, and how students could be encouraged to contemplate how intellectual property can reside in the most unlikely situations – whilst also pointing out that 4’33” cannot be performed or even hinted out without dire legal consequences.  You don’t believe me?  I’ll put my presentation on our Pure institutional repository, and you can follow the references for yourself!

I mentioned playing the piano during the evening social?  Oh boy, did we play?! I wasn’t alone – there was also a clarinet duet, and I staggered through a piano duet, unknown to both of us, with one of the (multi-talented) clarinet duo.  The same clarinettist, on clarinet, kindly gave the premiere performance of a piece I’d recently written. That was definitely a first – I’ve never had an instrumental composition (as opposed to an arrangement) of my own performed publicly before.

Definitely an out-of-the-ordinary conference, then.  I seem to be making a habit of this!  Better get back to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, now …

Networking Again: Forthcoming Engagements

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

In a strangely sychronistic way, the different topics I’ve focused on as a researcher are now intertwining and demanding to be considered alongside one another.  My forthcoming engagements are a perfect example of this!

Next week I’m going to see the Copyright Collection at the University of Aberdeen.  That’s directly related to the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network activities.

The following week I’m sharing a Pecha Kucha at Icepops 2019 (an ‘International Copyright-Literacy Event with Playful Opportunities for Practitioners and Scholars’, in Edinburgh).  In 20 slides each lasting 20 seconds, I’m combining historical research, intellectual property, and modern academic librarianship, in ‘Silence in the Library: from Copyright Collections to Cage’.  Rabbits on pianoAnd I’ll be playing the piano, purely in a background music capacity in the evening!  Nothing scholarly about that part – I cannot call it practice-based research in the least.

 

A Fifth collection Gow pub Gow Shepherd title page
Paratext? In music? Assuredly!

July will see me speaking about paratext at the International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies congress in Edinburgh (‘Reading Between the Lines: Paratext in National Song and Fiddle Tunebooks of the Georgian Era’), and also having some vacation!

By August, hopefully my next grant application will either be taking shape, or have been submitted. Exciting times.

September, talking about songs in the Napoleonic era at a conference held at King’s College London: the British Commission for Military History’s War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon conference.  My talk is entitled, ‘Napoleon’s Songs: the Artistic Responses of Composers and Performers to Contemporary Current Affairs’.

And in November, I’ll be talking about Scottish song-collecting at the Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies at the University of Glasgow: ‘Scottish Song Collecting in the Context of Cultural Heritage: “A Mission of National Importance” (to quote Alexander Campbell)’.

By then the dedicated Stationers’ Hall issue of Brio will be hitting your letterboxes, too!

Literary Print Cultures – database reviewed

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

One of our network members has spotted a useful review of Literary Print Cultures, in Reference Reviews.  I’m very grateful to be alerted to this.

For your interest, I share details:-

Literary Print Culture: The Stationers’ Company Archive, London

Author: Wenzel, Sarah G11 Bibliographer of Literatures of Europe & The Americas, University of Chicago Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Publication info: Reference Reviews ; Harlow  Vol. 32, Iss. 4,  (2018): 3-4.

https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/RR-12-2017-0260 (Published by Emerald Insight, this is also available via Proquest, if your institution subscribes.)