Burns Night? We Have Just One Thing to Say ...

http://tinyurl.com/BurnsSongs

(It's where you'll find all the Robert Burns materials in our catalogue!  Have a nice evening.)

Burns - a Poet for the 21st Century

Monday is Burns night.  Singers will be out "warbling their wood-notes wild"*, and half of Scotland will be eating haggis and neaps. But Burns and his poems are also the stuff of serious scholarship:- 

Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century - a project at the University of Glasgow

• Professor Kirsteen McCue talks about Burns, my Dad and me on BBC Two on Burns Night. Her father, Bill McCue, was an actor and singer in the 1970s and 80s, and Kirsteen herself is now a lead scholar in Glasgow Uni's Burns project.

Did you need some Burns songs to sing?  

• Check our catalogue here.  Registered staff and students, if you need to borrow anything, then remember we're open until 20:30 on Burns Night (Monday). 
• Try our music streaming services if you're looking for recordings to accompany that haggis dinner!  
• Whittaker Library Electronic Resources for staff and students - click here.

When YouTube comes into its own!

• The Ayoub Sisters play Scottish Melodies. We found this YouTube video which you might enjoy - click here. 
• Robyn Stapleton and Claire Hastings sing 'Logie o' Buchan' at the Star Folk Club 2014. Another YouTube clip for you! Here. 

Warbling their wood-notes wild: when talking about traditional songs, 

Burns's generation frequently used this phrase, referencing the poet Milton! 

If you're from beyond Scotland, would you like to know more about Burns Night?

Are you celebrating Burns Night?

25.1.2015

This Sunday is the birthday of Scotland's national bard, poet Robert Burns.  The Whittaker Library has plenty of his songs on the shelves, and CDs of them being sung.

One of our web resources is ideal for finding out more about him, though: Scran is jam-packed with images, digitised documents, recordings ... and they have a special feature about Robert Burns at the moment.

Click to visit here - Staff and students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can login using their RCS password to get the fullest access to this great online resource.

• Scran homepage: www.scran.ac.uk
• Whittaker Library Catalogue

Celebrating the Bard

Robert Burns

• Vocal scores in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Music
• CDs (we just searched on Burns as Author.  More results using a keyword search.)
• Robert Burns in our book collections

Late 18th/early 19th century collaborators with Burns included James Johnson (of Scots Musical Museum fame), and George Thomson.  Thomson got Burns' lyrics set by famous Continental musicians like Haydn, Beethoven and Kozeluch.

You could also look him up in one of our databases, like Oxford Music Online (for info), Naxos or Classical Music Library (streaming services).  See what's available to our staff and students here.

Celebrating Burns

• The BBC has a fantastic page for Robert Burns (biography, 716 works, and all about Burns Night)
• Steve Jones' audio slide show inspired by Robert Burns (a page on the BBC site)
• Scottish Storytelling Centre - Burnsfest this week (w/c 22nd January 2012)
• Scottish Poetry Library - similarly a significant week for Burns enthusiasts here.
• Echoes from the Vault - the St Andrew's University Library Special Collections blog has today posted about Burns. A truly beautiful page.

Burnsfest at Scottish Storytelling Centre

January 13-28

It's that time of year, folks.  Burnsfest events in Edinburgh this week and next - click here. 

Robert Burns died broke

Podcast on BBC website

There could be useful material here, if you're speaking at a Burns event next week!