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!
***
‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’. Folk Music Journal vol. 13 no.1, pp.50-63.
Finally, an article from me after a long spell of apparent silence. ‘Sir John Macgregor Murray: Preserver of Highland Culture, Music and Song’. Folk Music Journal vol. 13 no.1, pp.50-63.
The article started out as a conference paper, but I felt it deserved a wider audience. Let me share the abstract:-
Abstract
Sir John MacGregor Murray is known by Scottish music historians as the man who retrieved Joseph Macdonald’s Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe. This act of transmitting a work about Highland culture was just one instance of the Highland chieftain’s involvement in facilitating the artistic output of his native country. A founder member of the Highland Society of Scotland, he traversed the Highlands in pursuit of James Macpherson’s Ossian poetry, assisted song collector Alexander Campbell in planning his own itinerary in the Highlands and Western Isles, and helped establish a piping competition in Edinburgh. Sir John was one of a number of individuals who played a mediatory role in the collecting and publication of Scottish music. This article outlines Sir John’s role in the codifying and promotion of Highland culture, embracing literary as much as musical endeavours. It also introduces some of the other individuals who played a similar role in Scotland during the Georgian and Victorian eras.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 