1. Literature Review

Scots Tune collections have been discussed in various academic contexts, ever since the publication of Henry Farmer’s A History of Music in Scotland ¹ in 1946. These have included broad, sweeping, historical studies such as Farmer’s; systematic archival studies; biographical studies of individual composers; papers on issues of performance practice; and studies which chart the development of “folk” music as a category. This thesis differs from previous studies in several respects.

Farmer’s discussion of Scots Tune collections suffers from the fact that it is part of a study purporting to give an overview of the entire history of music in Scotland. Assessments of various collections and collectors are provided, although Farmer’s basis for making them is not always clear. Nonetheless, they provide an invaluable starting point for studying the reception history of these works in the mid-twentieth century.

Perhaps the only other study of Scottish music with comparable scope is John Purser’s Scotland’s Music,² which surveys the development of music in Scotland from the earliest notated sources of liturgical chant, all the way through to the music of living composers like James MacMillan. While Purser devotes several chapters to Scottish composers who published Scots Tunes settings, his study neglects (or perhaps deliberately excludes) similar publications by Italians living in Scotland. Pietro Urbani, for instance, is mentioned only as a performer, and Francesco Barsanti is ignored completely – both in the main body text, and in the accompanying annotated bibliography of Scots Tunes sources. It may be that Purser excluded their contributions for the sake of scope, on the basis that they were not natively Scottish, although this is not stated anywhere explicitly.

Other studies of Scottish music have been limited either by genre or by historical period. Collinson’s The Traditional and National Music of Scotland³ is similarly broad historically, but seeks to exclude all forms of composed music. Collinson, like many writers of the mid-twentieth century, is particularly pre-occupied with the classification and preservation of music circulating in oral tradition. He categorises music on the basis of geographical origin, antiquity, and the medium of its transmission, proposing the twin categories of “traditional” and “national” music. Collinson uses the term “traditional” to refer exclusively to orally-transmitted “indigenous folk” music, and the term “national” to characterise popular song, circulating (at least partially) in written form.⁴ These terms have been contested and redefined by successive researchers, and form part of a complex web of generic categories that have been used to define Scots Tune collections.

David Johnson’s landmark study Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century,⁵ is likewise limited in its scope – in this case by historical period rather than genre. Johnson, too, proposes twin categories for the classification of lowland Scottish music from this period, namely “classical” and “folk” music. In defining “folk” music, Johnson relies unquestioningly on the much-cited definition drawn up by the International Folk Council of 1954,⁶ which is somewhat more inclusive that Collinson’s conception of “traditional” music. Johnson situates Scots Tune collections within different categories depending on how they are notated, harmonised and varied. While some are categorised as “folk” music, other (more complex) collections belong to a third category, which Johnson describes as the “Scots Drawing Room Style.” Johnson makes the case for this categorisation in his compendium Scottish Fiddle Music in the Eighteenth Century,⁷ where he asserts that this style arose in response to the Act of Union in 1707. Johnson’s claims, although influential, have come under scrutiny in recent years.⁸ Despite these criticisms, Johnson’s remains one of the most thoroughly researched studies of the musical life of Edinburgh in particular, and includes biographical information of almost every notable musician active there during the eighteenth century, both Scottish and non-Scottish. Discussion of the flute and flute-players in Johnson’s works is seriously lacking, however – perhaps because of the precedence given to fiddlers and violin music.  

In the intervening decades since the publication of Johnson’s study, musicologists have grown more sceptical of the use of “folk” and “art” music as categories. Post-structuralist approaches have led to a reassessment of commonly accepted categories in music criticism, and have revealed biases and prejudices perpetuated by the use of these categories. Within this framework, musicologists have sought to examine how the categories of “folk” and “art” music came to exist in the first place, whose interests they serve, and how they continue to shape the ways in which we engage with music.

Mathew Gelbart has articulated these concerns in relation to the development of Scottish Traditional music in his The Invention of “Folk” Music and “Art” Music: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner.⁹ Gelbart’s study thoroughly examines the philosophical and theoretical rationale which gave rise to the distinction between these two categories, with particular emphasis on their development in Scotland and Germany. Gelbart describes how, at the turn of the seventeenth century, the primary issue in the categorisation of music was its “social function” – that is, whether the music was to be used for dancing, listening or praying – rather than its provenance or relationship to an oral tradition. An origin-centric view of musical categorisation would not become the dominant approach until much later in the century, thus preparing the way for “folk” and “art” music to acquire connotations consistent with their present meaning.

Gelbart was not the first to investigate the development of these terms in relation to Scottish music. Dave Harker constructed a Marxist reading of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century song collecting, arguing that compliers created their own false perception of a tradition through their attitudes toward their informants.¹⁰ Trevor-Roper likewise showed how the entire nineteenth century perception of Scottish highland culture grew out of the work of writers like James MacPherson and later Sir Walter Scott.¹¹ Karen McAulay examines similar phenomena in the collection of highland song between 1760 and 1788 in her book Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era.¹² A key difference between McAulay’s study and Harker’s, however, is McAulay’s contention that song collectors self-consciously created the tradition which they documented. While this study is concerned specifically with highland song collecting in the latter decades of the eighteenth century and beyond, her discussion of the motivations of song collectors is relevant to earlier iterations of the genre.

Biographical studies of Italian musicians living and working in Scotland in the eighteenth century are numerous. The most thorough and complete of these is doubtless Sonia Tingali Baxter’s PhD thesis Italian music and musicians in Edinburgh c. 1720 – 1800: a historical and critical study.¹³ Baxter systematically discusses almost every Italian musician to have worked in Edinburgh at this time, and unearths a whole host of lesser-known figures. Her discussion of reception history is particularly thorough, and provides fascinating context to the publications of these musicians. The role of the flute in Scottish musical life is discussed obliquely.

Other biographical studies relevant to this thesis include Michael Talbot and Jasmin Cameron’s numerous works discussing the lives of Barsanti and Geminiani. These studies expand on the work of Baxter, in particular by filling in the biographies of composers’ lives before their respective sojourns in Edinburgh. Talbot’s Francesco Barsanti and the Lure of National Song¹⁴ is particularly relevant to this thesis, as it makes some bold claims about Barsanti’s motivations as a collector, and his approach as an arranger of Scots Tunes. Talbot offers a discussion of the nomenclative challenges arising from this repertoire, eventually settling on Collinson’s term “national song” in describing the tunes published by Barsanti.

The PhD theses of Jennifer Macleod¹⁵ and Helen Goodwill¹⁶ likewise provide invaluable historical context, though their focus is not directly on Scots Tune collections or Italian musicians in Scotland. Their analysis of subscription lists, dedications, and minutes of the Edinburgh Musical Society paints a picture of the audience for which these collections were written. Amateur flute players are occasionally discussed.

Peter Holman’s Geminiani, David Rizzio and the Italian Cult of Scottish Music¹⁷ deals specifically with eighteenth-century Italian collections of Scots Tunes. This essay is perhaps the only extant study that systematically discusses these collections. Even the most perfunctory contributions to the genre of Scots Tunes are listed – Veracini’s quotation of “Lass of Peatie’s Mill” in his opera Rosalinda,¹⁸ and Johann Christian Bach’s transcription of Tenducci singing Scots songs,¹⁹ for instance. Likewise, Lorenzo Bocchi’s little-known contribution to Neale’s A Collection of the most Celebrated Scotch Tunes for the Violin²⁰ is scarcely mentioned in any other secondary literature.

Aside from addressing biographical concerns, the studies of Johnson, Baxter, Talbot, and Holman all seek to assess the merits of Italian Scots Tune collections from a stylistic standpoint. While a great deal of attention has been given to the way in which these tunes are harmonised, relatively little attention has so far been given to the way in which they are notated. Tables of concordance between these collections and those of native Scots abound, so as to establish possible textual sources for each Italian collection. The idea that these collections could have been inspired by non-textual sources (i.e. performance) has so far only been hinted at.

Laurel Swinden’s “Sophisticated Laddie”: Scottish Flute Music (1720-80) on a Stylistic Continuum²¹ holds the honour of being the first study to consider this repertoire specifically from the point of view of flute performance practice. Swinden is careful to avoid Johnson’s categorisation of this repertoire, instead using Gelbart’s high-middle-low functions as a starting point for her “stylistic continuum.” By use of a footnote, however, she asserts that Gelbart’s functions translate directly into performance practice, and that a “low” function essentially implies the use of “folk” or “Trad” performance practices.²² While Swinden does not explicitly invoke a folk/classical dichotomy, she concludes that a “blended” performance style, combining aspects of modern “traditional” and mainstream HIP performance practices, is best suited to the performance of this repertoire. As Swinden’s thesis is the only one of its kind, there remains, to date, no study of the flute performance practice of this repertoire that fully engages with Gelbart’s claims. Despite this, the compilation of alternative performance practice sources for this repertoire (including bagpipe treatises and Irish “Trad” flute tutors) makes this an invaluable resource for any flute player studying this repertoire.

Elizabeth Ford’s PhD thesis and subsequent book The Flute in Scotland from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries²³ is the first study to systematically define the scope and depth of the flute’s role in musical life of eighteenth Scotland. Ford’s logical and thorough approach has dispelled numerous myths surrounding the flute in Scotland, such as William Tytler’s assertion that the flute was virtually unknown in Scotland 1725.²⁴ Ford has shown not only that the flute was played in Scotland before this date, but that it was played widely, by people of all social ranks, and by women as well as men. Through systematic archival research, Ford adds considerably to the flute repertoire established by Swinden, and contests the inclusion of certain works which may be nominally for the flute, but which exceed its technical capabilities. Ford’s analysis shows that instrumentation was often arbitrary in publications of Scots Tunes, and that a wider repertoire may have been available to flautists than has previously been supposed. She concludes with a discussion of the flute’s role in Scottish Traditional music today, and the neglect it has received in comparison with the violin.

This thesis differs from previous studies through its synthesis of performance practice and biographical/archival evidence. For the first time, Italian collections of Scots Tunes will be analysed, not to assess their contrapuntal merits, but rather to find out what they might tell us about the performance practice of similar works. This study builds on the work of both Swinden and Ford, expanding the library of sources available to flute players interested in performing this music.