Tributes after death of piping legend Alasdair Gillies

• Evening Times (Glasgow) 30th August 2011 - Tributes after death of Alasdair.
• Daily Record 30th August 2011 - Lament for late Alasdair Gillies
• North American Pipers Series at BagpipePublishing.com - Alasdair's page
• AlasdairGillies.com - this was Alasdair's own website
• Sadly missed by friends at the National Piping Centre.

Beethoven manuscripts and sketches digitised

Beethoven MSS and sketches online at two American libraries:- 

• Morgan Library and Museum. Music Manuscripts online.  Here's the Beethoven direct link.
• The Juilliard Manuscript Collection.  Again, here's the Beethoven link.

I think you'll agree with me these are fantastic resources, and they'll be great when Christina Guillaumier leads our undergraduates' research into original Beethoven sources. I'll "catalogue" both websites online, so the links will be permanently in our catalogue when you need them.

And how did I get these gems?  I asked my music library colleagues on Twitter, and got a quick response from the Yale Music Library.  (and that, my friends, is the value of so-called social networking.  Or should we call it socio-professional networking?)

NB RSAMD becomes Royal Conservatoire of Scotland tomorrow, 1st September.  The catalogue link will change to http://prism.talis.com/rcs/

Musica Scotica 2012

Musica Scotica's seventh annual conference

Saturday 28th April 2012

Concert Hall, University of Glasgow

Papers, 20 minutes in length, are invited on any aspect of Scottish music.

Topics presented in previous years have included chant, Gaelic song, music publishing, the Scottish diaspora, opera performance, cultural organisations, fiddle and bagpipe music, George Thomson and Haydn, manuscript sources, Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser, Learmont Drysdale, Hamish MacCunn, and James MacMillan.



Please submit an abstract (250 words) as a Word document or rtf file by Wednesday 30th November 2011 to: 
Dr Jane Mallinson
musicascotica2008@yahoo.co.uk

You will be notified by the end of January if your abstract has been accepted.

A poster session may be included; delegates are invited to indicate whether they would be interested in availing themselves of this opportunity.

Proposed conference fees 

• Full day to include lunch, morning and afternoon tea/coffee: £35 (£25 for students)
• Morning and/or afternoon session to include tea/coffee, but not lunch: £10

The registration form will be available in due course on the Musica Scotica website.
.
Publication of proceedings

Musica Scotica will publish papers from this conference along with a selection of papers from previous conferences.

Denholm, Teviotdale - birthplace of scholar, poet & scholar John Leyden

ON THIS DAY, 200 years ago ...
Poet, scholar and song-collector John Leyden died in Java, on 27th August 1811.  He was from the village of Denholm in Teviotdale, in the Scottish Borders, and helped Sir Walter Scott in his ballad collecting.  His 18th century cottage still stands to this day. 

To celebrate the bicentenary of Leyden's death, a wreath is being laid by Lord Minto at the Leyden monument in Denholm tomorrow, 28th August 2011, and the local television company may be there. 

• Denholm village website - find out more about Leyden and other famous names!

• BorderReivers.co.uk website also has a brief bio of Leyden.  This picture of his monument comes from the Border Reivers page, with thanks.
• Click on the "ballads" label below, to find a recent blogpost about Child ballads.

Beethoven Haus, Bonn - Digital archives

• Beethoven Haus - Digital archives

If you're seeking digital Beethoven material, why not start here?

Image from the Beethoven-Haus Bonn homepage

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Child Ballads - Loomis House complete corrected 2nd edition

The Child Ballads are a key component of the British traditional repertoire. Collector Francis James Child assembled and published a vast collection. Mark and Laura Heiman have prepared a corrected second edition for Loomis House Press; we've just acquired the fifth and last volume for the Whittaker Library at RSAMD (soon to be the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).

 

 

Loomis House Press: Home

Useful online links:-

• RSAMD Catalogue. Check the Whittaker Library's holdings of Child Ballads.  (The Loomis House Press collection is not the only edition.)
• Search on Child Ballads on Scran, which offers educational access to digital materials representing Scottish material culture and history. The Whittaker Library subscribes to this, for the benefit of our  staff and students. 
• Lesley Nelson (aka the Contemplator)'s Child Ballad Website:- http://www.contemplator.com/child/ 
• Youtube is a good source of Child Ballad videos

Scoop It - a new online journal for researchers, by The Thesis Whisperer

Scoop It - online journal for researchers, by The Thesis Whisperer

 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies

Welcome to the Beethoven Center at San Jose State University - a useful source of information about Ludwig van Beethoven.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Golden pages - conference listings for musicologists

Golden pages - conference listings for musicologists

Anyone doing music research will be grateful for this website, if they haven't yet come across it:-

Conference listings in musicology and other links for musicologists

  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Support and advice for research students

Have you come across PhDChat?  I blogged about this before - you can join in the Twitter conversation with Nasima Riazat on Wednesdays, follow Nasima's tweets, read the blog or get involved in the  wiki.

Then there's The Thesis Whisperer (aka Inger Mewburn, a research support lecturer in Australia).  This is a fantastic resource - do take a look! 


And here's the THE (Times Higher Education) article which has just come out, about The Thesis Whisperer.

Why don't readers ask?!

In a fit of pure introspection, I tried to work out what my motivations were when I went to Waterstones and W H Smiths today. Obviously, I can’t tap into my subconscious, so the exercise was hardly scientific.


Amazon was promoting Grace Dent, How to leave Twitter. I wanted to see it before deciding whether to buy. I’d also come across Maureen Callahan's Poker Face: the Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga, about Lady Gaga’s astounding success at self-promotion. Again, I wanted to assess how much of it actually was about self-promotion.  I started in Waterstones. But where would I find these titles?

• What did the Twitter book come under?  No catalogue, no classification to help me. A mass-appeal paperback on promotion (piles on tables, special displays)? Autobiographical? Humour? No sign of it. Did I ask for help? Not initially. Finally, I learned it wasn’t currently in stock. As for Lady Gaga - I found the music section, but that title wasn’t there. (Mind you, there was an interesting book about Beethoven - Harvey Sachs, The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. I have an obsessive research interest in musical culture in the 1820’s…)

Given that I wanted to see the books, I gave up and went to Smiths, where I faced the same conundrum, although I asked sooner!

But why don’t we want to ask? Reticence? Pride? Reluctance to fall prey to a pushy salesperson?  Transfer all this to a library, though, and the parameters change.

• Catalogues available to the readers, for a start.
• A more detailed classification, too - at least in an academic library. I spotted the new Beethoven book on a promotional display at Waterstones, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have found it. On the other hand, books on the same narrow subject will be side by side on a college bookshelf.
• No financial risk - and if you don’t like the book, you just return it, read or unread. There’s a lot to be said for libraries!

So, that leaves us with my initial question: Why won’t we ask? Would you ask for help finding something in a bookshop? In a library?  If the librarians were more visible, would that change things at all? Should we be more proactive, or sit in our office like books on shelves, waiting to be consulted?


Which is one of the reasons why I blog.  Someone commented on Twitter the other day that libraries aren’t just books - they’re also people. Knowledgeable people, who not only know their subjects, but also know how to interrogate a catalogue!  (See 'Libraries are about People', by The Wikiman.)  But we need to reach out to our readers, who perhaps don't realise our "unique selling point".


So I’ll share something with you right now. I ordered the Twitter and Beethoven books on Amazon at home just now. I’ll let you know if they’re any good. Promise!

RSAMD becomes Royal Conservatoire of Scotland soon

There's a crane outside.  They're not demolishing us - just changing our name ...!

http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/ just a few days longer ...

The [Research] Student as Customer

Does paying uni fees make you a customer?  A customer like someone who buys something in a shop?

Here's a thought-provoking blogpost on The Thesis Whisperer (an esteemed Australian research-support blog) about the relationship between student, institution and research supervisor.  The author of the post, Dr Sarah Louise Quinell, is at Kings College London, so there are interesting comments about the UK situation.

I'm a Paying Customer - read it here.

James Simpson of Dundee - Flute Manuscripts

On this day ...

ANNIVERSARY - Today, 23 August, James Simpson married Cecilia Elder in Dundee in 1834. 

The three precious flute manuscripts that he'd begun compiling in 1828-1830 went with him to their first home. Who knows, maybe he went on adding to them. 

RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) has these MSS in Special Collections.  Music and Academic Services Librarian Karen McAulay has indexed and published articles on them.Find out more about the manuscripts here. 

• See also posting on RILM's Bibliolore blog, 11th September 2011.

Odissi Indian classical dance

Indian summer: Surupa Sen brings classical dance to the Festival.  Cover story, The Herald Arts [Magazine] 20 August 2011 - about the Indian classical style Odissi.  The Whittaker Library has kept the paper copy.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Watch out for a new exhibition commencing 30 November 2011: Photos by our own Ken Dundas will be shown at the re-opening exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.  They'll also be part of a larger exhibition next year, 2012.

Different Class : Ruby Wax and a Cast of Famous Faces

The Herald Magazine
20 August 2011

Different Class : Ruby Wax and a Cast of Famous Faces reveal what really goes on at Scotland's School of Performing Arts. 

Read the cover story about RSAMD (soon to be Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) - about

• Dawn Steele
• Alan Cumming
• Colin Morgan
• Bill Paterson
• David Gant
• Robert Carlyle
• Mary Marquis
• Hannah Gordon
• David Hayman
• Ruby Wax

Photos are by our own Ken Dundas, and a selection of his photos will be shown at the re-opening exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery starting on 30 November 2011.  Also to be part of a larger exhibition next year, 2012.

Not available online but the Whittaker Library is keeping the paper cutting on file.  Look in the Catalogue ... it's already there!

Using Googledocs in Drama

Have you tried sharing documents on Googledocs yet?

'Using Googledocs in Drama' has been blogged on the Drama Teacher' s Network: Lesson Ideas and Web Tools for the Drama Classroom.

William Chappell's anniversary

LITTLE-KNOWN TODAY, FAMOUS IN HIS DAY...

20th August.  William Chappell, antiquarian author, ballad and song collector, died 123 years ago on 20th August 1888.  Although seldom mentioned except amongst musicologists nowadays, he was certainly an influential - and controversial - figure in his day.  His views about English and Scottish national music set the heather on fire and irritated many north of the Border.


But what did he write?  See below for a brief list of his musical publications.  Check in COPAC to see where your nearest copies are.  RSAMD also has a copy of Popular Music of the Olden Time.

• William Chappell, and others, A Collection of National English Airs, Consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad and Dance Tunes, Interspersed with Remarks and Anecdote, and preceded by An Essay on English Minstrelsy (London: Chappell, 1838)
• Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time: a Collection of Ancient Songs, Ballads, and Dance Tunes, Illustrative of the National Music of England, airs harmonized by G. A. Macfarren, 2 vols (London: Cramer, Beale and Chappell, [1855–59])
• Chappell, The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time: a History of the Ancient Songs, Ballads, and of the Dance Tunes of England, with Numerous Anecdotes and entire Ballads; also, a Short Account of the Minstrels, airs harmonized by G.A. Macfarren, 2 vols (London: Cramer, Beale and Chappelll, 1859)
• Chappell, The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time […], new introduction by Frederick W. Sternfeld, 2 vols (New York: Dover, 1965)
• Chappell, The History of Music (Art and Science). Vol. 1, from the Earliest Records to the Fall of the Roman Empire, with Explanations of Ancient Systems of Music, Instruments, and of the True Physiological Basis for the Science of Music, Whether Ancient or Modern ( London: Chappell, 1874)
• Chappell, Old English Popular Music, new edn with a preface and notes and the earlier examples entirely revised by H. Ellis Wooldridge, 2 vols (London: Chappell and MacMillan, 1893)

Scottish Poetry Library

Have you come across the Scottish Poetry Library?  Their website is appropriately named, Reading Room. Click the link to find out more. 

• 5 Crichton's Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT, tel 0131 557 2876 (main number)
  http://www.readingroom.spl.org.uk
  Find us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, Read our blog, hear our podcasts
  Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10-5; Thursday 10-7; Saturday 10-4; Closed Monday, Sunday

• National Poetry Day - 6th October