New Zealand Conference: talks about Scottish Kennedy Family and John Wilson

The Scottish Kennedy family included Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, but it was her father who took the family on worldwide tours, singing Scottish songs to ex-pats.

John Wilson was another Victorian stalwart recitalist.  

Here are two papers about these individuals, given at a New Zealand conference in 2010.  You need to download this link to a sizeable pdf.  (It does take a while to download.)

re-Visions: 

Proceedings of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia Joint Conference hosted by the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand between 2nd and 4th December 2010 / Edited by Marian Poole

The link in full:- http://nlnzcat.natlib.govt.nz/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1598198

 

Today's Featured Website - The Folktrax Archive

Folktrax.org

 

Beryl and Peter Kennedy
image from Folktrax.org

Folk music specialists Peter and Beryl Kennedy were prominent figures in the folk music world for a very long time.  Indeed, Peter was a descendant of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser.  They died in 2006 and 2007 respectively, but the Folktrax Archive website lives on here:-

http://folktrax-archive.org/index.htm
 
Browse the index for customs, songs, tunes, stories and more.  The website is also a retail outlet for audio and video recordings that the couple made or were involved with. 
 
There's a wealth of useful info here.  Recommended to our Scottish Music students!

Singing Scots Songs - Pronunciation

'Whittaker' was asked for a book about pronouncing Scots songs, yesterday.  To be honest, the helpful, 'it's a blue one with gold lettering' didn't offer much to go on.

Whittaker found Scottish song books with glossaries at the back - useful to a point, but they only informed the singer what the words meant, and not how to pronounce them.

Enter the helpful Tweeps on Twitter!

By 'return of post', came two great suggestions, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's Lowland Scots  Pronunciation (not only have we got the book here in the Whittaker Library, but it's also available online via the Internet Archive), and ScotSpeak, by Christine Robinson

• Lowland Scots Pronunciation / Marjory Kennedy-Fraser - Whittaker Library Book
• Lowland Scots Pronunciation / Marjory Kennedy-Fraser - online via Internet Archive
• ScotSpeak / Christine Robinson - Whittaker Library Books

And as though that wasn't enough, a couple of new items arrived in the post at the Whittaker Library today - the new Faber books, The Language of Folk, Vols.1 and 2.  How's that for a fortuitous coincidence?

• The Language of Folk - Whittaker Library Scores
• The Language of Folk - Amazon link

On this day ... 22nd November 1930

Marjory Kennedy Fraser may not be to everyone's taste today - her Gaelic song settings are now seen by traditionalists as decidedly "fake" and inauthentic.  Certainly, they're art-songs, and occasionally with a hint of Debussy in the accompaniment.

Nonetheless, her songs were on everyone's pianos in the early to mid 20th century, and RSAMD alumna Lisa Milne did a great recording not so long ago.

On the date she died, 22nd November, why not take a fresh look at her contribution to Scottish musical history?  Here's what we have in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Whittaker Library.  Check the "Collection" links in the library catalogue, to see what printed music, recorded songs and music books we have.

Know your Scottish musical history

On this day ... 1st October, 1857, Singer-songwriter and collector Marjory Kennedy-Fraser was born.  Her Hebridean song-settings are disdained by many 'traditional' singers nowadays, but they were hugely popular in their time, and are still very atmospheric early-20th century song settings.  Just not direct transcriptions of simple Gaelic melodies!

• Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's publications in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
• Marjory's books (as opposed to music) in the Whittaker Library

• Land of Heart's Desire - an album by RSAMD alumna Lisa Milne - Whittaker Library CD / Amazon.co.uk link

On a different tack, it's less commonly known that on 29th September 1817, another songwriter and collector, Highlander Alexander Campbell wrote to Walter Scott, thanking him for his financial assistance and for employing him as music teacher to Scott's daughters.