On This Day ... 1808

Crusty, objectionable, fussy .... 

Joseph Ritson, compiler of Scotish Songs 

 

Scotish Songs

The reputed Scottish antiquarian Joseph Ritson died on this day, 3rd September 1808.  If he was fussy and argumentative, it's because he was deeply knowledgeable and wanted everything to be just right.  And he had no patience whatsoever with anyone who fabricated 'historic' Scottish culture, like Macpherson's Ossian tales.


Unfortunately, that made him very unpopular with a whole lot of people.  In spite of that, spare him a charitable thought today, because he wasn't all bad - just a bit difficult to get along with!

He compiled a two-volume collection of Scottish songs which was highly thought-of in its day.  The Whittaker Library has facsimiles of Ritson's two-volume Scotish Songs.  (Yes, that is the archaic spelling!)  

• Read more about Ritson and his work, in a posting Karen wrote in 2011.
• Ritson and Robert Burns both wrote about how Scottish song should be performed.  They were quoting a third antiquarian, William Tytler.  Read that story here ...

On this day, 25th September 1824

Revd Patrick Macdonald died.  He was responsible for publishing an early collection of Gaelic melodies, Highland Vocal Airs, which he and his younger brother Joseph had collected.  Patrick also published Joseph's bagpipe tutor, the first-ever comprehensive instructions on playing the highland pipes.

Facsimile edition of Highland Vocal Airs in the Whittaker Library at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Modern edition of Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe.

(Things you didn't know about early Scottish music publications!)

Have you a sense of history?

21 September 1832

Sir Walter Scott died on this day, 180 years ago.  You might think he was just another Victorian novelist?  

Think again!  His stories and poems inspired operas and plays, songs and paintings.  Indeed, we can thank him for much of the tartanry that is now used to sell Scotland to the rest of the world!

See what's in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  You might be surprised!

And here's another useful link: Walter Scott Digital Archive at the University of Edinburgh.  To be truthful, I could spend hours in this database.  (But then, I'm an eccentric kind of geek in that regard!)

Question: What makes Scottish music Scottish?

On this day, 1888

English ballad (and Scottish song) enthusiast William Chappell died, 20 August 1888. 

Why should you care?  Well, he published Popular Music of the Olden Time, which contained many English - and some Scottish - folksongs and their tunes, and a lot of commentary.  The two-volume book really set the cat among the pigeons as far as Scots song enthusiasts were concerned, because he announced that some favourite 'Scottish' songs were really - oh, horror! - English.  More ...

Find Popular Music of the Olden Time in Copac - the online union catalogue of all British university libraries, together with the national libraries and Trinity College Dublin.

Answer: library staff help you answer the big questions by sourcing the detail to back up your arguments.

Walter Scott - 241 years old today!

 Happy Birthday, Sir!

It's Walter Scott's birthday today - he was born 15 August 1771 in Edinburgh. 

Yes, this is a performing arts blog.  And Sir Walter Scott was a novelist, true.  But he was also a ballad-collector (and writer), and despite protesting that he wasn't musical, he had a keen interest in Scottish and Borders folk-music.

Why else should musicians care?  Well, here are a few reasons!

From Britainexpress.com - with thanks

• He effectively created the image of Scotland that has drawn tourists and visitors ever since. 
• His novels provided inspiration for any number of operatic and other pieces of classical music.
• He encouraged impoverished professional musicians like Alexander Campbell (of Albyn's Anthology fame) - and wealthy amateurs like the Maclean-Clephane sisters of Torloisk, on the Isle of Mull, not to mention his own daughter.
• He published the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and one edition had some tunes at the back.
• He was friendly with James Hogg, another novelist, songwriter and ballad-collector.
• I searched our library catalogue.  The Whittaker Library has plenty concerning Sir Walter Scott and his contribution to our culture.  Check the catalogue here!

There - is that enough to encourage you to raise a glass to Sir Walter Scott today?!

On this day: John Muir Wood

Last year, Whittaker started a series of 'on this day' postings commemorating little-known names connected with Scottish musical history.  

John Muir Wood has already been mentioned in this series, when we noted his death on 25 June 1892.  He gets another mention today because he was born in Edinburgh on this day, 31 July 1805.  And he was, truly, a significant name in his time, even though he has largely been forgotten in modern times.

Pianos, Publishing and Photos

He and his brother ran the family firm of piano makers and music publishers.  Latterly, John ran the Glasgow branch.He was a friend of Broadwood, another piano-making firm, and also friendly with Chopin (who paid a visit to Scotland when he was dying of TB).  Muir Wood was also an early photographic genius. 

You can find a couple of John Muir Wood's major Scottish song collections in the Whittaker Library here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland:-  

• The collection edited by George Farquhar Graham, Songs of Scotland; subsequent editions entitled The Popular Songs of Scotland (or, The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland, as spine title).
• Finlay Dun’s Orain na h-Albam
• OUR CATALOGUE LINK

More for the curious

• Find Muir Wood amongst famous Wood clansmen:http://www.clan-wood.org.uk/famouswoods.html 
• Read the National Galleries' biography of John Muir Wood
•  Search in COPAC under Author = Muir Wood, and you discover many pieces published by the family firm throughout the nineteenth century.   (Copac is a union catalogue combining the resources of all the university and national libraries in Britain - it's a great place to find things.  If we haven't got something here in the Whittaker Library, we can often borrow it, unless it's very old and rare or special in some other way.)

On this day ... John Muir Wood

On this day, 25 June, 1892

John Muir Wood died in Cove, 120 years ago today.  Very few people have heard of him nowadays, but he was a big name in the late 19^th century.  He and his brother were music publishers – one ran the Edinburgh branch, and the other the Glasgow one. John Muir Wood also contributed to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

1st edition

Last edition

John Muir Wood published several editions of the popular collection, Songs of Scotland, initially in collaboration with George Farquhar Graham.  Graham made some of the arrangements, and wrote the preface and notes on each song.  He, too, was a scholar and writer, responsible in his earlier days for the music article in the 7^th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.  

• The Songs of Scotland adapted to their appropriate melodies (also known as Wood’s Edition of the Songs of Scotland), 1848-9; 
• Revised as The Popular Songs of Scotland with their appropriate Melodies; with additional airs and notes (J. Muir Wood and Co, 1885-7) – spine title was The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland; 
•  Revised with the addition of many airs and notes by J. Muir Wood, original notes by Graham; and now arranged by A. C. Mackenzie [et al] (London: Bayley and Ferguson, 1908)

It was a comprehensive collection, in 3 volumes - or sometimes bound as one - with authoritative notes, and piano accompaniments within the capabilities of a competent amateur.  If only because this was one of the most popular Scottish songbooks of its day, John Muir Wood deserves this mention. 

One of Whittaker's 'On this day' series of postings.  You can search 'On this day' for more of the same!

Whittaker's round-up

Lots of useful snippets have drifted into Whittaker's net of late.  So, here's Whittaker's round-up:-

• Teach faster, Write more (article by Susanne Morgan, for research support website Academic Ladder's February ezine)
• Pseuds' corner (identifying bad books - a THE article by Daniel Melia, 9 February 2012)
• Writing for peer-reviewed journals (strategies for getting published): forthcoming book by Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler (Royal Conservatoire researchers - should we order this?)
• Re-skilling for research: a report from RLUK
• 201 years ago, 26 February 1811.  Yesterday (Sunday) was the anniversary of the death of James Johnson, instigator and publisher of the Scots Musical Museum. Genuinely a major contribution to Scottish song performers, collectors, scholars and aficionados.  He collaborated with Robert Burns for his seriously big-time, six-volume collection.  A worthy candidate for our "On this day" series of Scottish musical history facts.
• Postgraduate course in Arts management (Vienna)
• Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace Festival at the Scottish Storytelling Centre this week.

On this day: Finlay Dun, one of Scotland's forgotten musical heroes

On this day (24^th February, 1794)

On this day, Finlay Dun was born in Aberdeen – his father was a dancing teacher.  Dun played fiddle for his Dad’s dance lessons. 

He was also involved in some of the best-known and most popular Scottish song collections of the mid-nineteenth century.

See what we have here in the Whittaker Library.  And there are more books by Dun in other academic libraries – check Copac.  Notably, Dun arranged a famous collection of Scottish songs for Lady Carolina Nairne;  also a Gaelic song collection; moreover, he was involved in arranging a collection of pipe-tunes, and writing a scholarly introduction for Dauney’s Ancient Scottish Melodies.  And entertained Mendelssohn when he came on his Scottish tour (cue the Hebrides Overture!)

  Dun arranged everything for piano, with or without voice.  (You value your iPod now – the piano was as covetable then.)

Why does it matter?  Because it’s interesting to see the Scottish music that people were buying, playing and enjoying 150 years ago.

On this day: poet James Macpherson

How many drama students have encountered the 18th-century play, Douglas, by John Home?

James Macpherson

Home is also famed (and blamed) for encouraging poet James Macpherson to produce his Ossian epic verses. 

If you've ever lived in a street or a house named Ossian, Fingal, Oscar, Ullin, Malvina, Cona ... (the list goes on, but I'll stop there), then blame Macpherson.  His Works of Ossian were a careful weaving together of Gaelic tales, with a good bit of his own poetic creativity thrown in.  He was one of the most controversial figures of 18th century Scotland.  And he inspired many creative artists, Europe wide - eg, Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave ('The Hebrides overture', op.26).

Macpherson died on 17 February 1796 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

• See what's in the Whittaker Library about Macpherson and his Ossian poems
• (See John Home's own respectable output - Douglas)

On this day: George Farquhar Graham

On this day, 28th December 1789, Scottish music journalist, historian and arranger George Farquhar Graham was born. Graham (1789-1867) was originally destined for law, but became what we would now call a musicologist instead. At some stage in his early adulthood, he had lessons with Beethoven on the Continent.

G F Graham - Songs of Scotland, 1st ed., 1848
















His major accomplishment was the three-volume anthology of Scottish songs he edited for publisher John Muir Wood - The Songs of Scotland adapted to their appropriate melodies. He arranged some of the songs himself, wrote all the commentary, and coordinated the efforts of the other arrangers - Mudie, Surenne, H. E. Dibdin and Edinburgh-based Highlander Finlay Dun.



Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland, 1908



Because Wood was the publisher, the collection was also known as Wood’s Edition of the Songs of Scotland.

Why is this interesting today? Because the collection was one of the most respected Scottish song anthologies for the next sixty years, meaning that countless households over several generations would have encountered their Scottish heritage in the version presented to them by George Farquhar Graham and John Muir Wood - good, middle-of-the road arrangements, playable by a competent amateur, and bringing together some of the background to each song, as it had accumulated over the previous half-century or more.


The title changed slightly over the years, with the different editions:-

• 1848-1849 The Songs of Scotland adapted to their appropriate melodies (Mudie, Surenne, H. E. Dibdin, and Dun were also named on title-page). Also known as Wood’s Edition of the Songs of Scotland - see illustration of open copy
• 1887 Revised as The Popular Songs of Scotland with their appropriate Melodies; with additional airs and notes (J. Muir Wood and Co.);
• 1908 Revised as The Popular Songs and Melodies of Scotland, with the addition of many airs and notes by J. Muir Wood, notes by Graham and arranged by A. C. Mackenzie [et al] (London: Bayley and Ferguson). ‘The Balmoral Edition’ is the green copy illustrated here.

It only remains to be said - happy 222nd birthday, George! Cheers!

• Check our holdings in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland here;
• Check other libraries' holdings in COPAC here.
• Click the 'On this day' label below to see other blogposts in this series.
• 'Charlie is my darling', arranged by G F Graham

On this day: Beethoven anniversary too!

16th December, 1770: Happy Birthday Beethoven

The Royal Opera House reminds us today is a significant day!

Born on this day in 1770. To celebrate, a clip of his only opera - Fidelio

Twitter handle: RoyalOperaHouse

Jazz: Stan Kenton Centenary

On this day ... (well, yesterday)

Stan Kenton Centenary (15th December 2011)

The University of North Texas has created a digital exhibit to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Stan Kenton's birth, which was yesterday - December 15th.  

Please enjoy and feel free to pass along to anyone who might be interested.



http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/kenton/stan-kenton-centennial

Lost for words?

Where can you find the words to thousands of songs and poems?

A useful free database, The Lied, Art Song and Choral Texts Archive contains the words of thousands of songs. 

Take the Romantic Scottish poet, Allan Cunningham, for example.  (Well, today's his birthday, so it's a good day to focus on him!) 

Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) was a bit of a prankster, to be honest. He invented some Borders songs for Cromek's collection called Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.  (He admitted this to close friends.)  And he was thought to have done the same for his own larger collection, Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern.  (This is a collection of poetry, not music.)  Plenty of composers have drawn upon his lyrics, all the same.  As you'll see in The Lied, Art Song and Choral Texts Archive.  Here's his page.

• Wikipedia entry on Allan Cunningham (born on this day, 7th December 1784)

Looking for Scottish verse? Allan Cunningham might not be quite what you're looking for, but you can find plenty of source-material at the Scottish Poetry Library.  Here's their catalogue.  Learn a poem, or set one to music. 

• If you're using a poem as lyrics, do remember to check if the poet is still in copyright.  Poets have feelings (and rights!), but they'll be flattered to be asked ...  

NB this post is one of Whittaker Live's 'On this day' series about Scotland's song history.

On this day in 1853: Finlay Dun

On 28th November 1853

Scottish musician Finlay Dun died aged 58.

"I've never even HEARD of Finlay Dun!", I hear you cry.

Why he matters? 

Although he's now largely forgotten, Dun was much respected in his time, as performer, scholar and arranger.  It's interesting to see what activities occupied a Scottish Victorian musician's career - and find out more about the circles in which he moved.

Finlay Dun (1795-1853) was born in Aberdeen, attended grammar school in Perth, and spent most of his adult life in Edinburgh.  His father was a dancing master, and the young violinist Finlay joined his father in this.  He attended Edinburgh University from 1815-16 and is on record as having taught dancing to Elizabeth Grant of Rochiemurchus in December 1816.  He studied violin in Paris and then in Milan (1820-25), where he also learned counterpoint, composition and singing, and played viola in the royal theatre of San Carlo.

Back in Edinburgh, he became leader of the Edinburgh Professional Society of Musicians’ concerts in 1827, and worked as a music teacher.  Although Dun applied for the Reid Chair at Edinburgh University in 1841, he was unsuccessful. 

Dun married in 1828.  In 1829, Mendelssohn dined with the Duns on 28 July, and went to the triennial highland pipers’ competition with Dun the next day.

Amongst other works, his notable output in the field of Scottish music includes:-

• 1830   A Selection of Celtic Melodies
• 1836-8 Vocal Melodies of Scotland
• 1838   Appendix no.1 in William Dauney’s Ancient Scotish Melodies.  (Dun was encouraged to write this Appendix, on the grounds it would be good for his CV.)
• 1846   Oliphant, Carolina (Lady Nairne), Lays of Strathearn: arranged with symphonies and accompaniments for the piano-forte by Finlay Dun. 
• 1848   Orain na h-Albam: a Collection of Gaelic songs
• 1848-9 George Farquhar Graham, Songs of Scotland. Edinburgh: Wood, 1848-9.  (Dun contributed 26 arrangements – only two less than Graham himself.)

Check the Whittaker Library catalogue to see what the Royal Conservatoire of Library has available.

Visit Copac (the union catalogue of British university and national libraries) for a more comprehensive list.

This blogpost is one of Whittaker Live's On this day series of Scottish musical history posts.

On this day, 21 November 1835

_______________________________________

Borders Songwriter James Hogg,

'The Ettrick Shepherd',

died 21 November 1835.

______________________________________

• Primarily remembered today for his Jacobite song collection, the 2-volume Jacobite Relics,
• - and his novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
• Friendly with Sir Walter Scott

However, researchers into Scottish music and literature regard his contribution as significant, to say the least.

.

Why not take a look at what we have in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland?  Here's a list from our catalogue.  (Tip: you can always save the results of a search by copying the hyperlink at the top of the results screen.)

• The University of Stirling is the UK centre for Hogg research - here's their James Hogg website.
• Dr Kirsteen McCue at the University of Glasgow's School of Critical Studies is working on an edition of Hogg's songs with Janette Currie from Stirling University.

'On this day...' : a series of Whittaker Live blogposts about Scottish musical history

NB Picture is from a website of high resolution antiquarian images - many thanks to Graven Image.

On this day ... 16th November 1780

What is folk music?  Is it really music "of the folk"?  Which folk?  Country folk? (See Bibliolore's blogpost today about Charles Seeger and folkness.)

Okay, what about music written by someone, published as "trad", and then becoming part of the oral tradition?

What about someone having a laugh at his compatriots expense?  (Just a bit of mischief, you might say.)  What kind of words would you use to promote your "national" collection?

Today is the birthday of Robert Archibald Smith, compiler of six books called The Scotish Minstrel (yes, the spelling is right) and a smaller Irish Minstrel (which got him into copyright trouble with the Irish songsmith Thomas Moore).

R. A. Smith, 16th Nov,1780 - 3rd Jan, 1829

He was born a Scottish weaver's son in London, came back to Scotland and abandoned the weaving trade to become an organist and music teacher first in Paisley and later in Edinburgh.

Much, much more could be said about his use of metaphors to characterise his collection and place it historically. (But maybe not on this blog posting! Visit our Minstrels and Metaphors page.)  Ask to see his Scotish Minstrel - the Whittaker Library has a couple of volumes.  University Library and national collections have lots more.

On this day, 10th November 1827

William Stenhouse (1773-1827)

One of the most important early historians of Scottish song, William Stenhouse, died in 1827.  Impoverished, his widow ended up in the workhouse.  Not much of an ending for an elderly lady whose husband had compiled the "Illustrations" which accompanied Robert Burns and James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum.*

Actually, the Illustrations had nothing to do with pictures - they were annotations on every single song in the Musical Museum volumes.

Stenhouse's Illustrations  weren't published in his lifetime - that was done by librarian David Laing, later.  In fact, the Illustrations appeared in various guises - alone, as a single volume, or bound in with the Scots Musical Museum itself, and they were reissued with extra comments, later in the century.  Some of his historical comments were fanciful or even misguided, but he made a significant start, and many later musicians referred back to his work.

Look at the Illustrations in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Whittaker Library - catalogue entry here.  You can read more about Stenhouse in a recent doctoral thesis, 'Our Ancient National Airs', by Karen E. McAulay. 

Roxburghshire, birthplace of William Stenhouse
(thanks to happyhaggis.co.uk for image)

* "Elderly?" Actually, only a little older than Whittaker "himself", come to think of it ... longevity wasn't so great in those days.

Know your Scottish musical history! On this day, 12th October 1711

William Tytler, Scottish music historian, was born in Edinburgh on 12th October 1711. 

Followers of the WhittakerLive blog will already know about Tytler, of course.  'Whittaker' blogged about him when it was the anniversary of his death on 12th September.  (He died in 1792.)  Remind yourself who he was here.

Also on this date, but many years later, the Scottish song-collector Alexander Campbell was beginning to head home after 3 months of hard toil gathering Hebridean traditional songs.  On 12th October 1815, Sandy arrived in Broadford Bay on 'a heavenly morning' to see fishing boats on a perfectly calm sea.  He admired the morning view before making his way by ferry to Glenelg, where he was going to interview Lieut. Donald MacCrimmon, 'the celebrated performer on the Great Highland Bagpipe'.  He spent the day with MacCrimmon and his family, enjoyed hearing his playing and discussing piping, and then had a night in the pub with Alexander Bruce, the Piper of Glenelg, continuing to increase his knowledge of the manner by which pipers were trained.

• Why not look up "MacCrimmon" in the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Library catalogue? - look here.

Cleric saved strathspeys as well as souls - Patrick Mcdonald

Still famous today!

Patrick Mcdonald died 25 September 1824. Ages ago, but think on this - his Highland Vocal Airs, first published in 1784, is still considered an important collection of Highland fiddle tunes, two and a quarter centuries later.

In actual fact, much of Patrick’s collection came from his brother Joseph’s manuscript of tunes left behind in Scotland when he emigrated. Joseph died young, but Patrick lived to a ripe old age.

The Mcdonald brothers’ collection was reissued in a new edition by Taigh na Teud in 2000. You can find it in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow.

• Taigh na Teud website homepage http://www.scotlandsmusic.com/
• Purchase score from Taigh na Teud

Yes, posted 2 hours early ... "Whittaker" is extraordinarily enthusiastic about "his" Victorian Scottish song collectors!