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.
I just remembered a tiny detail about Sir John Macgregor Murray that didn’t make it into my recent Folk Music Journal article!
213 years ago today, we’d have found him at his writing desk, Christmas Day or not. He was writing to Lewis Gordon about,
‘inspecting the Materials collected by the Society.’
This was in connection with the Gaelic dictionary project. In fairness, they didn’t make a big splash of Christmas then. At least he was doing something he enjoyed!
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‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’. Folk Music Journal vol. 13 no.1, pp.50-63.Â
Since Friday, I’ve been sent three exciting emails:-
the proofs of one chunky article that’s due to be published next year;
the proofs of a contributed chapter with probably a similar timescale,
and another even chunkier article that has now been accepted – but needs a couple of final touches before I send it back to the editor.
Not bad, in two working days with a weekend in between!
It’s just the way things turn out, but the first article is a late-in-the day return to a paper that I originally gave in 2019 – I waited to be sure that the original conference organisers wouldn’t be needing it. Not only that, but the paper itself had been a return to, and development of, a topic I researched for my PhD and subsequent first monograph, so it has been a long time brewing! I first ‘encountered’ the ghost of Sir John MacGregor Murray some twenty years ago, and a fascinating ghost he turned out to be. He deserves his article in Folk Music Journal next year. Proofs checked and returned already.
Collection aimed at …Visitors …To Britain …
Meanwhile, the book chapter expands on work that I did for my own recent second monograph, A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity, focusing on a song collection published in time for the Festival of Britain. And the other article picks up on very different threads from that monograph, but also represents a considerable amount of detailed research since then. I look forward to checking the chapter and dealing with the article.
I do have another article due to be published later this year, too. More of that anon.
When you consider that I’m just beginning to think about a third monograph, it’s all a bit dizzying. Mind you, that won’t be happening immediately. I’m still exploring ideas. (Would it be disloyal to say that this is all so much more fun than cataloguing jazz CDs in my earlier existence …?)
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 