Karen McAulay

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Library and Information Services, Music & Academic Services Librarianedit

Other Affiliations:
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Research Interests:
History of the Book, Cultural Studies, Thomas Moore, and 26 more19th Century Victorian Literature, Information Management, Music, Scottish music, Scottish Culture, Scottish Enlightenment, Fakery and forgery in literature and song, Welsh music, Cultural Nationalism, Nineteenth-Century Music, Metaphor, Irish Music, Scots, Crossover Ballads, Cultural Memory, 18th and 19th Century Ballad Collecting, Sir Walter Scott, Career Development, Research Support, Song collecting, 18th Century Scotland, 19th Century Scotland, Alexander Campbell, Folksong Arrangements, Authenticity, Nineteenth-Century Harmony, and Orchestration and Arrangingedit
About:
Music Librarian & musicologist of 18th-19th cent. Scottis... moreMusic Librarian & musicologist of 18th-19th cent. Scottish music. My forthcoming book, Our Ancient National Airs, is in editorial/production at Ashgate, for publication March 2013. It includes a new chapter researched and published subsequent to my PhD (2009). (You can find out about my recent publications here:- trueimaginaryfriends.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/writing-written.html)

Although I commenced my career with a research Masters in mediaeval English plainsong uses, and doctoral studies into mediaeval English polyphony, a subsequent postgrad librarianship diploma left me insufficient time to finish the research.

Librarianship (at the UEA, the Borough of South Tyneside, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland*) has filled in the time before I resumed research. After 5 years' part-time study concurrently with my full-time work, I graduated with a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2009. Commencing in October 2012, I've been seconded to work part-time on an AHRC-funded project into bass culture in Scottish traditional music - in other words, what went on 'beneath' the tunes.

Besides my research interests, I also sustain a professional interest in research support, information literacy and the use of social media in a Higher Education context.

My PhD was driven by the question: What motivated compilers of published Scottish song collections between 1760 and 1888? I explored cultural influences starting with Macpherson's Ossian, looking at the effect of the so-called Scottish Enlightenment, and considering the impact of early travel & tourism in the Highlands (especially during the Napoleonic Wars) on song-collectors.

I considered the questions of fakery and forgery, a source of mystery and annoyance to many antiquarians in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; and traced echoes of the distinct literary genre known now as minstrel-writing in musical collections of this period.

From the 1840s onwards, authority was as important as authenticity, but cultural nationalism gave rise to a lot of arguments on both sides of the Scottish Border.

My postdoctoral interests include the use of metaphor and other imagery in the paratexts of song collections, and I'm particularly interested in the literary trends which clearly influenced their compilers. I've also explored parallel Irish and Welsh collections, and recently devised a crowdsourcing project to examine some key compilations.

*The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland was RSAMD prior to September 2011.edit
Supervisors:
I was supervised by Warwick Edwardsedit

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

by Karen McAulay

More Info: Publication by Ashgate, March 2013.

Research Interests:

Cultural Nationalism, 19th Century Music, 18th Century Music History, Cultural Musicology, Folklore, and 2 moreSong collecting and Scottish songsedit

View on ashgate.com

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Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song-Collecting c.1760-1888 (doctoral dissertation, 2009)more

by Karen McAulay

"Abstract

This thesis explores the influence of cultural nationalism on Scottish song-collecting between the years c.1760 and 1888, focusing on musical as opposed to verse collections. The collections also reflect the more general cultural influences at play on their compilers, starting with the trends emerging during the period now commonly known as the S