Want to Know More about Robert Burns and Scottish Songs?

You may know of Burns' contribution to the six-volume The Scots Musical Museum.  This collection has been reprinted more than once since first publication!

There's now a new, authoritative edition combining the original text with new scholarly commentary.
University of Glasgow Professor Murray Pittock's edition of The Scots Musical Museum is contained in vols.2 and 3 of The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns.  (Vol.2 is the tunes, and vol.3 the commentary.)  

We've also got Donald Low's slightly older reprint, which can be borrowed by staff and students for short loan, and William Stenhouse's 1853 Illustrations of the lyric poetry and music of Scotland.

That one's in our Special Collections - because it's special!

What Goes on in a Music Cataloguer's Head?

This week, the library was gifted a copy of The Scottish Orpheus edited by Adam Hamilton.  As with any donations, the first question we ask, is whether we've already got it?  We have - but not this edition.  We hadn't even heard of the editor, Adam Hamilton before! Not a problem - David Baptie's Musical Scotland dictionary usually comes up trumps, and it did again today:- 

Hamilton first published his The Scottish Orpheus around 1865 - it was published in Edinburgh by "Hamilton & Müller".  By the turn of the century (around 1897), it was being published in Edinburgh and London by Paterson - and that's the edition we've just been gifted.  It looks a competent collection.  There are no editorial notes ("paratext"), just a title-page and a contents page, and unlike some other collections of this era, there's no sol-fa, just normal music notation.

By 1922 it was published with the intention of being in in more than one volume, by J. Michael Diack - we already have Vol.1.  The contents are a little different, and Diack's edition contains a few more Scotticisms in the text.  It has also gone down from 215 to 159 pages, probably because he intended to publish a subsequent volume.

But that's not the end of the story.  There's no trace of a Scottish Orpheus vol.2, but Diack went on to publish a New Scottish Orpheus in three volumes, ca.1922-1937.   It must have been a commercially viable product - or at least, certainly worth keeping the title and updating the contents and arrangements!

Meanwhile, our new gift has been catalogued (and all the contents indexed, titles and first lines and all - phew!) and it'll go in our Special Collections.

Our catalogue system will be changing in July 2017. Until then, you can see the catalogue entry for Hamilton's Scottish Orpheus here.  (We'll post the link to the new catalogue nearer the time.)

The Boundless Energy of Niel Gow and Sons

Anyone involved in the Scottish music scene knows that Niel Gow and his sons - particularly Nathaniel - produced an enormous amount of fiddle music to dance to.

• Take a look at IMSLP and be amazed. 
• Find out what motivated those fiddling Gows!  Here's a new posting from the Bass Culture project about Niel and Nathaniel Gow's controlling influence.
• And another posting about Nathaniel's diversion into Scottish song repertoire: Nathaniel Gow's "small share of trouble". 
• When the Bass Culture website goes live this autumn, there will be much, much more digitized fiddle music for you to exclaim over at http://hms.scot  (At the moment it's just a holding page.)

See, I'm Looking for this Old Scottish Song ...

A few years ago, the National Library of Scotland ran a pilot project to start indexing Scottish songs in early printed collections.  Sadly, the test project didn't carry on to finish indexing every Scottish song in their collections, but it's still a useful resource.  (Further funding would be required to see the whole thing through.)

• Click here to access the Scottish Song Index Pilot Database.
• Introduction to the Pilot Project

We understand that the pilot database includes about 350 incipit titles and around 20,000 bibliographic title references. However, we don't know how many publications are completely listed in the pilot.

• Visit the National Library of Scotland Music Collections page here.
• Free access to the NLS Digital Gallery of music and much, much more - here.

Have you had your Full English? (Digital Archive, English Traditional Music)

The English Folk Dance and Song Society recently launched a brand new digital archive of English traditional music.

Since national songs don't live in watertight compartments (and we could argue all day about what exactly you consider to be a national song, anyway!), you'll also find some Scottish and other traditional music in the archive too.

Take a look - it's a big and significant initiative!

• Click here for the EFDSS Full English
• Click here for the EFDSS homepage

Folksinger Legend Jean Redpath dies in Arizona aged 77

We were sad to read of Jean Redpath's death in an Arizona hospice this week.

• BBC News tribute 
• YouTube - Jean Redpath sings The Wild Geese
• Jean Redpath sings 'Jock o' Hazeldean'  1st line: Why weep ye by the tide, lady - Child ballad 293 sung with heartbreaking poignancy by Jean Redpath onYouTube 
• Jean Redpath Sings (website)
• We in the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland treasure our Jean Redpath materials, still appreciated by today's students of Scottish music.

Is this Song Scottish, or English? Is it even Genuine?

Karen has spent some time pondering these questions when she researches historic Scottish song.  As far back as the 18th century, song collectors were debating the nationality of the material they collected.  

For example, take Joseph Ritson.  He was from the north east of England, but made collections of both English and Scottish songs.  A stickler for detail, it mattered enormously to him that everything was well-documented and annotated.  The antics of other less scrupulous collectors really annoyed him.  (In fact, he called himself "Anti-Scot", but he was actually anti-John Pinkerton and most particularly, anti-James MacPherson, of Ossian fame.  He was certainly not anti Scottish music.)

A century later, the English ballad collector William Chappell similarly got himself into hot water by suggesting some old Scottish songs were really English.  You can read more about the whole issue here in 'From ‘Anti-Scot', to ‘Anti-Scottish Sentiment': Cultural Nationalism and Scottish Song in the Late Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries'.

William Motherwell, the 19th century ballad collector, was another person who strenuously asserted his meticulous approach to ballad-collecting. However, his friend Robert Archibald Smith said the songs in the Scotish Minstrel  were all genuine, but we know from his correspondence with Motherwell that this wasn't entirely true.  The same goes for Scottish poet Allan Cunningham.

By the end of the 19th century, attitudes were becoming more relaxed.  In later editions of Wood's Songs of Scotland (initially edited by George Farquhar Graham), there was more chance of 'Scottish songs' being accepted as Scottish by repute as much as by established origin.

Where does that leave The Ashokan Farewell and Highland Cathedral?  We wouldn't venture to comment!

Useful resources in the Whittaker Library:-

• Joseph Ritson, Scotish Songs 
• James Macpherson, The poems of Ossian
• William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time 
• William Motherwell, Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern
• Robert Archibald Smith, Scotish Minstrel 
• Karen McAulay, Our Ancient National Airs
• Scottish songs in the Whittaker Library Catalogue  (a very long list!)

Waiting for Whittaker?

Whittaker is taking a couple of day's holiday, but "he" will be back very soon.  Look for his scheduled posting on Scottish songs and arguments about where they came from!  It'll go live on Tuesday afternoon.

The Bigger Picture

Karen has been talking to Scottish Music Degree students about historic Scottish song collections, aesthetics and the compilers' motivations for publishing their collections.

It's not so much a question of how these particular  books got onto these specific library shelves, but more looking at how the work of these compilers survives today.

Songbooks are essentially collections of stories set to music.  Take a look and see what you find!  

Karen's powerpoint and bibliography are uploaded to Mahara on the Library Guides pages for student readers.

Scotch Does Not Necessarily Mean Scottish

Find out what happens when a music librarian's alter ego - the musicologist - goes to town on an old Scots song collection - 

Thirty Favourite Scots Songs Untainted by the Caledonian Muse

Greig Duncan Scottish Song Collection - Edinburgh event

Harvest of Songs: The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection
Saturday 30th November 2013, Scottish Storytelling Centre.  For more info - click here.

Sourcing old Scottish Songs - Petrucci Music Library

Beethoven and Haydn both arranged large quantities of Scottish songs for the publisher George Thomson.  Maybe you're looking for classical settings for solo, duet or even vocal trio for an encore in a recital - these could be suitable choices.

How to find old editions online, though?  Unless you want to buy a very expensive rare edition, IMSLP (The Petrucci Music Library) may be your best port of call. 

 IMSLP and Petrucci are the same website.  They describe themselves this way:- "IMSLP stands for International Music Score Library Project. The logo is a capital letter A, taken from the very first press-printed book of polyphonic music, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, published in 1501. Its printer, Ottaviano Petrucci, is this library's namesake."

Here are a few examples of what you'll find:-

• Beethoven - Some of these havemore than one singer
• Beethoven – three singers
Tchaikovsky – Scottish ballad

• Try Soprano Baritone Scottish

(Just another helpful blogpost from your friends at the Whittaker Library, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland!)

Scottish Songbook by a Victorian Glasgow Music Professor

Readers may be interested to read the Summer issue of Musical Times, which contains an article on a Scottish Songbook by the first Euing Music Professor at what was to become the University of Strathclyde.

NB - The Whittaker Library has the paper copy of this journal - we don't have online access.  However, it'll be on JSTOR by 2017!

‘Appropriate melodies’ and ‘natural modes’: two Victorian Scottish songbooks, Musical Times, Summer 2013 pp.91-106 – we don’t have it online here at RCS, though we do have the paper version. 

Librarians Should Be Seen and Not Heard? Think Again!

A book was launched ...

Our Ancient National Airs

Fri 26th April 2013, 4pm
The Whittaker Library
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Talk from author and Conservatoire librarian Karen McAulay and music from Conservatoire students and Karen Marshalsay. 

Clarsair Karen Marshalsay

 WARNING

The author is torn between a conviction that a librarian is a "quiet" kind of person, and modest satisfaction at having published a Real Book!  This was not a quiet event.  (Hopefully it also demonstrated that research can indeed move from the academic sphere to genuine public engagement!)

Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era

Karen's book is published by Ashgate today, 18 March!  (Yes, it's in stock at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Whittaker Library.)

There's going to be a small book-launch in the Whittaker Library at 4 pm on Friday 26th April, with a few words spoken by Karen and by the Head of Academic Development, and musical illustrations by some of our students and Karen Marshalsay, clarsach.

Fred Freeman - Complete Tannahill Songs

Did you attend the Knowledge Exchange talk on Monday 5 March?

The Whittaker Library has all three volumes of The Complete Songs of Robert Tannahill - do come and hear them!

Three CDs in the Catalogue

Library Treasures

'Whittaker' is looking forward to talking to some of the BA Scottish Music Students about old Scottish song collections in our own Library, on Friday this week.

If you see 'Whittaker' (aka Karen) staggering under a HUGE PILE of old music books on the way to class, smile indulgently and try not to bump into her.  We do have quite a lot of Scottish song collections, and her challenge is to talk about as many of them as she can fit into an hour!

(She's also struggling with her two identities: a librarian who knows quite a bit about Scottish music.  If she wasn't a librarian, she wouldn't be talking about them.  If she didn't know about Scottish music, she couldn't say as much!)

Part of being a subject librarian is engaging with staff and students on our various courses, sharing information about what the Whittaker Library can offer, and how we can help.  Course-leaders at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland are encouraged to invite us to come and speak to classes whenever we can be of assistance.  Don't hesitate to ask us - it's one of best bits of the job!

Closer, Closer ... the Birth of a Book

Excitement is rising as publication date comes closer: 

Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era, by Music and Academic Services Librarian Dr Karen McAulay

Watch this space for further news of the book-launch on Friday 26th April at 4 pm.

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

Scottish roots - early song collection, Tea-Table Miscellany

For early Scots Songs, Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany is a must. Found that on Internet Archive, too. Favourite this!