Alison McMorland and Geordie McIntyre’s Blog

We are very familiar with MSS material, from our own personal and shared researches, and were delighted to be asked to act as consultants to this worthy project. Alison’s family roots and associations with the Dumfries and Galloway area gives her an added interest in this venture.

             The Macmath collection includes printed material from chapbooks and broadsides but is predominantly in MSS form. The first general point to make is that songs, be they in print or MSS, are essentially in shackles and can only be set free when sung! In 1810 Margaret Laidlaw, mother of James Hogg reproached Sir Walter Scott who had printed some of her songs in his published Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.                                                                                                                             ‘ There were nane o’ my songs prentit til ye prentit them yourself and ye hae spoilt them a’ thegither. They were made for singin’ and no for readin’ but ye hae broken the charm noo and they will never be sang mair’. Fortunately Margaret’s gloomy prediction was proved wrong.                                                                                                                                                                                     On a similar theme, Edwin Muir in his ‘Complaint of the Dying Peasantry’ ( Collected Poems, Oxford 1965) and we quote from the last verse                                                                                                                                                                                     ‘The singing and harping fled                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Into the silent library                                                                                                                                            But we are with Helen dead                                                                                                                                                                                                              And with Sir Patrick lost at sea.’

   There has been a fruitful inter-action between the oral and printed tradition. However we believe that the oral nature within the Macmath Collection is its artistic strength and dynamic. This is indeed a quality collection which ranges from classic ballads such as Hynd Horn and Sir Patrick Spens to the light hearted The Wedding of the Frogge and the Mouse and children’s songs. The Queen of the Fairies is an excellent and distinctive version of Tam Lin, and Queen Jeannie was in Labour are just some of the many items awaiting liberation. In most cases there are no tunes given and one of our tasks was in marrying airs from our own repertoire or knowledge and in suggesting possibilities for performance. It was interesting to build up a picture of the area where Macmath had collected songs and from whom. His four sisters featured and especially his mother’s sister Jane Webster.                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The process we undertook in reading the handwritten texts of this professional copyist, giving our comments and melodies for items throughout, was recorded and filmed for immediate and future reference. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads edited by Francis James Child (5 vols Dover New York 2003) and the Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads edited by Bertrand Bronson (4vol s reprint 2009 Loomis Press) proved to be both fitting and invaluable.

Alison Burns has assembled a talented group of singers and musicians to bring the songs back to the living oral tradition via public performance and compact disc where they belong. We are sure William Macmath would have approved!

May 2015 A McM and G McI

Claire’s Blog

This week saw the beginning of the final intense rehearsals before our ‘World Premiere’ of Macmath: The Silent Page at the end of May. The first two days saw a return to Wallaceton Village Hall where we set about playing through the songs, finalizing the arrangements and structuring the set that we will perform. After the last rehearsals we had all been working independently, learning lyrics and fine tuning our parts for the songs so it was lovely to put it all together and hear the songs really coming to life.

As well as bringing the collection to life musically, the performance will incorporate information on Macmath’s background and include selected passages from his correspondence with Francis Child, the song collector for whom Macmath so feverishly set about notating and collecting the local songs of Dumfries and Galloway. Ali has worked very hard, not only to script the spoken passages, but also to thread them into the concert so that it remains informative and fun without affecting the flow of the music. Not to give anything away but I think the audience are in for a treat!

Macmath was not originally from Dumfries and Galloway but he loved the region and, like myself, considered it ‘home’ and so it has been very special to us all that we are the first to breathe life into his collection. It’s clear from the considerable number of sources that Macmath credits, that song and storytelling were an important part of daily life in nineteenth century Dumfries and Galloway. Our regions musical legacy can only benefit from this considerable re-injection of it’s traditional song and it’s exciting and an honour to be a part of that revival.

Alongside the final tweaking of the concert set we also made time for a photo shoot. Not exactly the weather for a photo shoot this week but when in Scotland! Yes, it was blustery and rainy but we did manage to get a brief break in the weather to head outside into the beautiful countryside and get some nice shots taken. So, look out for us in various press over the next few weeks in the lead up to the premiere.

The final day of rehearsals was a technical run through at Berkeley 2 Studios in Glasgow. Our three hour slot, in a building bustling with Glasgow’s finest pub bands and ‘future stars’ all busy honing their licks, was a chance to run the music through a PA system to give us a great idea of how things will sound on the night. The good news is it is all sounding great, everyone contributing and creating a synergy and ensemble sound that I’m sure William Macmath would have been very happy to listen to.

And so we parted until the next rehearsal, each one of us with our list of things to do, harmonies to remember and lyrics to memorise. We meet again in Stranraer on the day of the premiere where we will get to rehearse with the choir and our fantastic narrator for the evening, David Sumner. Although it’s already sounding fantastic, these additions will be the icing on an already exciting cake and I for one cannot wait to hear the concert. I hope you feel the same and we’ll see you there!

Getting Started

Finding a day when 7 busy musicians are all free is the biggest challenge of meeting up! We finally managed to nail everyone down to a day a couple of weeks ago and holed up at Emily and Jamie’s cottage in the wilds of Galloway. It was a bleak old blustery day outside but the wood stove was lit, the coffee was on and everyone was looking forward to getting started.

We’re working from photocopies of the original manuscripts, not only to cut down on handling of the hundred-year-old fragile books but also as the photocopies have enlarged print.
Although Macmath’s handwriting is beautifully clear and legible the books also have songs written down by others. Here’s Macmath’s writing (top) and (below) examples of some of the other hand’s we’re working to decipher. The enlarged print – and a magnifying glass – really helps when you’re stuck on a word.

Altogether the 2 books we’re looking at have 56 songs or song fragments between them. We decided to choose which ones we thought were worth working on for the project. This entailed going through each song and looking at 1) Was it unusual or rare or unique to the collection? 2) Was the text complete? 3) Did it have a tune included or referred to by Macmath or did we know of a tune to a similar song or version? By pooling our knowledge of tunes, similar versions of the songs and ‘people who might know’ missing information we gradually made a clear choice of 20 songs we’re interested in taking further.

 

 

 

Some of the songs in the collection are just small fragments of songs. You get the impression that Macmath was very meticulous in his research and wrote down everything he knew or found out – sometimes just one verse of a song that differed slightly from other versions he’d already found.

Emily Smith searches for alternative versions of a song.

 

So we then divided the songs up between us – we all had favourites or ones we were interested in ‘taking on’. Some were drawn to songs without tunes that need new tunes writing. I work with choirs, so was particularly looking for texts that were simple, not too wordy and that would lend themselves to folk-choir settings. Robyn’s choice included 3 versions of The Death of Queen Jeanie – an extraordinary song about Queen Jeanie going into to labour, an account of an emergency caesarean and the Queen’s subsequent death. An amazing glimpse into another time. (It is thought that the queen may be Jane Seymour the third wife of King Henry VIII. If that is the case the birth referred to would have taken place in 1537). Aaron took on the ‘Lads of Whamfrey’ – an epic composition contemporary to Macmath rather than a ballad – that was included in the books as a newspaper cutting. In other circumstances we might not have included it but for the fact that Whamfrey is local to Dumfries and Galloway and so of interest to us as local musicians.

Wendy Stewart and Aaron Jones researching songs.

We also decided that our criteria for this project is about making a collection of singable songs with good arrangements and to make that we are allowing ourselves the freedom to edit and tweak songs. We’re coming at it as musicians who are singing the collection back to life rather than academics striving for ‘correct’ versions.

The Photoshoot Day

One of the first tasks to be done for the project was to take some photos of the musicians taking part in The Silent Page project.  The copy deadline for the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival programme is coming round soon and we need a great photo that can be used for publicity, posters and a cd cover.

So on a wet miserable Tuesday in November we gathered at Broughton House. The light was gloomy even though we were meeting in the morning. We’d chosen the library to work in – it overlooks the wonderful garden. Here’s a shot of Wendy Stewart – who’s a keen gardener as well as an amazing harp player – admiring it from the second floor up.  In the far right of this photo you can see the extension on the back of the house that Edward Hornel used for a studio. It has north facing skylights – giving a steady, even light for painting by – and opens onto the garden.

Kim Ayres from Castle Douglas was photographer for the day. You can see more of his work on his website or Facebook page

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent some time talking about where and how we’d take the shot and then left Kim to set up in the library while we headed to the toilets to change and get ready.  Broughton House was closed to the public that day so we had the run of the building. Even when the house is full of visitors it’s not hard to slip into a ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful to live here’ fantasy, but when you’ve got the run of the place to yourselves it’s impossible not to imagine living in those lovely rooms!

The library has a whiff of that wonderful old fashioned slightly musty smell – and lots of old books, polished wood and beautiful carpets in soft colours. We’d shared a photo of the library before the photoshoot day so that we could all choose something to wear that would fit with the soft colours and the mahogany bookshelves. No patterns or very bright colours!

As you can imagine – it can take a while to get a good photo of one person but when there are  seven of you to capture the time frame extends.       I think it took us about an hour in the end to get to the final shot. Kim kept an eye on what he was shooting and directed us carefully – trying to make a visual dialogue appear between us. And here’s the result – thanks Kim! I love they way they yellows work together – Emily’s cardigan, Jamie’s fiddle and the edge of the book I’m holding.