Music in early modern Scotland
Music in early modern Scotland includes all forms of musical production in Scotland between the early sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. In this period the court followed the European trend for instrumental accompaniment and playing. Scottish monarchs of the sixteenth century were patrons of religious and secular music, and some were accomplished musicians. In the sixteenth century the playing of a musical instrument and singing became an expected accomplishment of noble men and women. The departure of
Despite the attempts of the
The court and noble households
In this era Scotland followed the trend of Renaissance courts for instrumental accompaniment and playing.
These fashions permeated noble households, where resident musicians were employed, including viol and lute players. As elsewhere in Europe, musical ability became one of the major achievements expected of a nobleman or woman. Musicians were clearly employed as teachers for the children of the household, both male and female.
Church music
The outstanding Scottish composer of the first half of the sixteenth century was
The Reformation had a significant impact on church music. The song schools of the abbeys, cathedrals and collegiate churches were closed down, choirs disbanded, music books and manuscripts destroyed and organs removed from churches.[12] The Lutheranism that influenced the early Scottish Reformation attempted to accommodate Catholic musical traditions into worship, drawing on Latin hymns and vernacular songs. The most important product of this tradition in Scotland was The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (1567), which were spiritual satires on popular ballads composed by the brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn. Never adopted by the kirk, they nevertheless remained popular and were reprinted from the 1540s to the 1620s.[13]
The
During his personal reign James VI attempted to revive the song schools, with an act of parliament passed in 1579, demanding that councils of the largest burghs set up "ane sang scuill with ane maister sufficient and able for insturctioun of the yowth in the said science of musik".[16] Five new schools were opened within four years of the act and by 1633 there were at least twenty-five. Most of those without song schools made provision within their grammar schools.[16] Polyphony was incorporated into editions of the Psalter from 1625, but in the few locations where these settings were used, the congregation sang the melody and trained singers the contra-tenor, treble and bass parts.[13] However, the triumph of the Presbyterians in the National Covenant of 1638 led to and end of polyphony and a new psalter in common metre, but without tunes, was published in 1650.[17] In 1666 The Twelve Tunes for the Church of Scotland, composed in Four Parts (which actually contained 14 tunes), designed for use with the 1650 Psalter, was first published in Aberdeen. It would go through five editions by 1720. By the late seventeenth century these two works had become the basic corpus of the psalmody sung in the kirk.[18]
Popular music
The secular popular tradition of music continued, despite attempts by the Kirk, particularly in the Lowlands, to suppress dancing and events like
The first clear reference to the use of the
There is evidence of ballads from this period. Some may date back to the late Medieval era and deal with events and people that can be traced back as far as the thirteenth century, including "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Thomas the Rhymer", but for which we do not have evidence until the eighteenth century.[22] Scottish ballads are distinct, showing pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad "Tam Lin".[23] They remained an oral tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the eighteenth century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy to publish volumes of popular ballads.[23] The oppression of secular music and dancing began to ease between about 1715 and 1725 and the level of musical activity was reflected in a flood of musical publications in broadsheets and compendiums of music such as the makar Allan Ramsay's verse compendium The Tea Table Miscellany (1723) and William Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius (1725).[19]
Classical music
From the late seventeenth music became less an accomplishment of the gentle classes and increasingly a skill pursued by professionals. It was enjoyed in otherwise silent concert rooms rather than as incidental entertainment in the houses of royalty and nobles.
A group of Scottish composers began to respond to Allan Ramsey's call to "own and refine" their own musical tradition, creating what James Johnson has characterised as the "Scots drawing room style", taking primarily Lowland Scottish tunes and adding simple figured basslines and other features from Italian music that made them acceptable to a middle class audience.[29] It gained momentum when major Scottish composers like James Oswald and William McGibbon became involved around 1740. Oswald's Curious Collection of Scottish Songs (1740) was one of the first to include Gaelic tunes alongside Lowland ones, setting a fashion common by the middle of the century and helping to create a unified Scottish musical identity. However, with changing fashions there was a decline in the publication of collections of specifically Scottish collections of tunes, in favour of their incorporation into British collections.[29] By the mid-eighteenth century there were Italians resident in Scotland, acting as composers and performers. These included Nicolò Pasquali, Giusto Tenducci and Fransesco Barsanti.[30] Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie (1732–81) was one of the most important British composers of his era, and the first Scot known to have produced a symphony.[27]
References
Notes
- ISBN 0-7614-7650-4, p. 1264.
- ^ A. Frazer, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Book Club Associates, 1969), pp. 206–7.
- ISBN 0-19-518838-1, p. 452.
- ^ ISBN 0-521-29418-5, pp. 83–5.
- ISBN 0-521-79273-8, pp. 280, 300, 433 and 541.
- ISBN 3-03910-948-0, p. 99.
- ISBN 0-7546-6049-4, pp. 44–6.
- ISBN 0-7486-1299-8, pp. 216–18.
- ISBN 3-03910-948-0, p. 269.
- ISBN 0-7486-1455-9, p. 118.
- ISBN 0-19-211696-7, pp. 130–2.
- ISBN 0-19-162433-0, pp. 198–9.
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-0276-3, pp. 187–90.
- ^ T. Duguid, Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English 'Singing Psalms' and Scottish 'Psalm Buiks', 1547-1640 (Ashgate, 2014), pp. 171-179.
- ^ Thomas, "The Renaissance", p. 198.
- ^ ISBN 0-253-00455-1, p. 67.
- ISBN 0-19-211696-7, pp. 431–2.
- ISBN 0-8108-6981-0, pp. 143–4.
- ^ ISBN 3-03910-948-0, p. 22.
- ^ ISBN 0-7486-1455-9, p. 169.
- ISBN 3-03910-948-0, p. 35.
- ISBN 0-86241-477-6, pp. 9–10.
- ^ ISBN 1-55111-611-1, pp. 610–17.
- ^ Edward Lee, Music of the People: a Study of Popular Music in Great Britain (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970), p. 53.
- ISBN 0-7546-3160-5, p. 79.
- ISBN 0-7546-3160-5, p. 4.
- ^ ISBN 1-74059-382-0, p. 33.
- ISBN 0-8071-3278-0, p. 41.
- ^ ISBN 1-139-46608-9, p. 30.
- ^ Gelbart, The Invention of "Folk Music" and "Art Music", p. 36.
Bibliography
- Baxter, J. R., "Music, ecclesiastical", in M. Lynch, ed., The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ISBN 0-19-211696-7.
- Black, J., et al., eds, "Popular Ballads" in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (Broadview Press, 2006), ISBN 1-55111-611-1.
- Breslaw, E. G., Doctor Alexander Hamilton and Provincial America (Louisiana State University Press, 2008), ISBN 0-8071-3278-0.
- Brown, K., Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), ISBN 0-7486-1299-8.
- Carter, T., and Butt, J., The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-521-79273-8.
- Cowgill, R., and Holman, P., "Introduction: centres and peripheries", in R. Cowgill and P. Holman, eds, Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ISBN 0-7546-3160-5.
- Dawson, J. E. A., Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-7486-1455-9.
- Duguid, T., Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice: English 'Singing Psalms' and Scottish 'Psalm Buiks', 1547-1640 (Ashgate, 2014), ISBN 9781409468929.
- Frazer, A., Mary Queen of Scots (London: Book Club Associates, 1969).
- Gelbart, M., The Invention of "Folk Music" and "Art Music" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 1-139-46608-9.
- Holman, P., "A little light on Lorenzo Bocchi: an Italian in Edinburgh and Dublin", in R. Cowgill and P. Holman, eds, Music in the British Provinces, 1690–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ISBN 0-7546-3160-5.
- Le Huray, P., Music and the Reformation in England, 1549–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), ISBN 0-521-29418-5.
- Lee, Edward, Music of the People: a Study of Popular Music in Great Britain (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970).
- Lyle, E., Scottish Ballads (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2001), ISBN 0-86241-477-6.
- MacKinnon, D., "'I have now a book of songs of her writing: Scottish families, orality, literacy and the transmission of musical culture c. 1500-c. 1800", in E. Ewan and J. Nugent, Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Ashgate, 2008), ISBN 0-7546-6049-4.
- McLucas, A. D., "Forbes' Cantus, Songs and Fancies revisited", in J. Porter, ed., Defining Strains: The Musical Life of Scots in the Seventeenth Century (Peter Lang, 2007), ISBN 3-03910-948-0.
- Munro, G., "'Sang schools' and 'music schools': music education in Scotland 1560–1650", in S. F. Weiss, R. E. Murray, Jr., and C. J. Cyrus, Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Indiana University Press, 2010), ISBN 0-253-00455-1.
- Patrick, J., Renaissance and Reformation (London: Marshall Cavendish, 2007), ISBN 0-7614-7650-4.
- Porter, J., "Introduction" in J. Porter, ed., Defining Strains: The Musical Life of Scots in the Seventeenth Century (Peter Lang, 2007), ISBN 3-03910-948-0.
- Smith, D. J., "Keyboard music in Scotland: genre, gender, context", in J. Porter, ed., Defining Strains: The Musical Life of Scots in the Seventeenth Century (Peter Lang, 2007), ISBN 3-03910-948-0
- Spinks, B. D., A Communion Sunday in Scotland ca. 1780: Liturgies and Sermons (Scarecrow Press, 2009), ISBN 0-8108-6981-0.
- Spring, M., The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), ISBN 0-19-518838-1.
- Thomas, A., "The Renaissance", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-162433-0.
- Wilson, N., Edinburgh (Lonely Planet, 3rd edn., 2004), ISBN 1-74059-382-0.
- Wormald, J., Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-7486-0276-3.