I’m a rank amateur when it comes to composing, but I quite enjoy the freedom of neither having elevated expectations of myself, nor of being under any pressure to be compared with ‘real’ professional composers!
I wrote a couple of choral pieces about the climate crisis, not long ago. Both have been trialled at workshops run by composer Chris Hutchings in Edinburgh. One was even programmed by a choir putting on a couple of concerts down in England last weekend. That’s beyond exciting.
Songs of Hope for a Planet in Peril, St Mary’s Ivinghoe
(Ivinghoe is near Leighton Buzzard – near Luton, to those of us unfamiliar with the locality!)
Workshops
You can hear both being tried out, here. The most recent was, Not like Noah. Before that, I wrote the Extinction Calypso.
Flushed with success, I thought I’d write another piece this year, and I did make a start at the weekend. However, these things can’t be hurried. It is still a work in progress.
Chris Hutchings has put together a website where choirs can find a wide range of different pieces on the subject of climate change – Choirs for Climate. Do take a look!
It’s also Climate Week in the Whittaker Library (where I work) this week. I can’t take any credit for all that’s happening – my capable colleagues set it all up. But of you’re interested, do visit the library blog, here.
I’ve just given myself a strict talking-to. On the face of it, I’ve published nothing of significance since January 2023. The shame of it! And me a 0.3 FTE researcher and all! But when I remind myself that by the end of December 2024, I shall hopefully have published another monograph, two book chapters and an article, it doesn’t look quite so bad. I really must stop comparing myself with full-time academics.
Women Composers
My last substantial article was actually written with my librarian hat on – maybe that’s not surprising, given that 0.7 of my role is as a librarian. I wrote about my work getting more music by women composers into RCS Library:-
Watch out for my forthcoming article in History Scotlandin December 2023. It’s about two Scottish women singers, one still famous (albeit not for her singing) and the other now forgotten. I’ve seen the proofs – it looks nice!
Historically Under-Represented Composers
Since writing the ‘Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library’ article, I’ve continued adding music by historically under-represented composers to the library at RCS – it’ll be some kind of legacy to leave when I retire from the library in 38 weeks’ time! I want to know that if students are looking for this kind of repertoire, there will be plenty to choose from.
Climate Change – Vocal Repertoire
I’d also like to see more songs about the climate crisis, a topic that colleagues have already been working on in the wider library collection. If you’re reading this and know of published music suitable for young professional singers, do please get in touch. I’m also looking out for decent publications of songs about environmental issues for classroom use, to benefit our trainee teachers in the Conservatoire. If I can capitalise on the connections I’ve made through social media, to gather more information about this repertoire, then the collection can only benefit. I’m just looking for songs – 38 weeks isn’t long enough to glean more than that, and it’s not as though the library won’t get on capitally without me next year in any case!! No-one’s indispensible.
Like this …
The music has to be commercially published – we’re not trying to build an archive of unpublished material with all the copyright complexities concomitant with such output.
But not this …
My own Extinction Calypso was performed in Edinburgh this March at Chris Hutchings’ Choirs for Climate concert, but it’s precisely NOT the kind of thing to end up in a Conservatoire library – fun, but lightweight, unpublished, and certainly not to be preserved for posterity! It doesn’t make me any the less pleased with it, but I make no pretence of being anything other than a rather third-rate composer. So – please tell me about proper works by serious composers, but not the likes of this:-
When I retire from the library, I shall still go on being a researcher professionally at RCS. (No doubt I’ll also compose and sew pieces of nonsense in my retired-time!) But it’ll be summertime before that happy day. So for now, it’s on with the day-job, and the enjoyment of my Fellowship in St Andrews on Wednesdays and Thursdays! More about that research in due course.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 