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Choral Societies and Nationalist Mobilization in the Nineteenth Century a Scottish Perspective

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Choral Societies and Nationalist Mobilization in the Nineteenth Century a Scottish Perspective CHAPTER 4 Choral Societies and Nationalist Mobilization in the Nineteenth Century A Scottish Perspective Jane Mallinson A meaningful examination of Scotland’s choral societies in the nineteenth cen- tury and their role in society cannot be undertaken in isolation. Some knowl- edge of Scotland’s historical, political and cultural background and institutions is required to put the study into context. Along with England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, Scotland is one of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Since 1999 Scotland has had its own devolved parliament in Edinburgh. Prior to 1603, Scotland was a nation state, often at odds with England, its larger southern neighbour. When Queen Elizabeth I of England died without an immediate heir, the English crown passed to the Scottish king, James VI, who was her distant cousin. For the next hundred and four years, the two countries were ruled by one monarch based in London, while continuing to have separate parliaments in Edinburgh and London. In 1707 the Act of Union brought both the parliaments together, with the seat of government fixed in London. Thereafter, despite the guarantee of continuing independence of the church, the educational and legal systems, and the mint, Scotland, subsumed into the Union as North Britain, experi- enced a loss of identity. Many Scots welcomed the Union and the economic advantages they saw it would bring, in the wake of several years of very poor harvest and the failure of the disastrous Darien venture (1698–1700).1 However, many others vigorously opposed and resented the treaty, as it was alleged that English money had been used to buy votes. Discontent continued to be felt at the apparent loss of nationhood experienced at the time of the treaty, and was articulated for a later generation by the poet Robert Burns in his poem “Such a Parcel of Rogues in the Nation.” 1 This was an enterprise to establish a Scottish colony on the isthmus of Panama to trade with both the Atlantic and Pacific simultaneously. Half of Scotland’s total available capital was lost, and the ensuing failure had wide-ranging economic and political repercussions. For full details, see Prebble (1968). © Jane Mallinson, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004300859_006 Jane Mallinson - 9789004300859 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 from license. Brill.com09/27/2021 04:53:06AM via free access Choral Societies & Nationalist Mobilization in the 19th Century 71 After the Act of Union, Edinburgh “awoke painfully to the fact that it had become, culturally and politically, a satellite of London.”2 London set the tone for all matters cultural, and Scottish culture and language were perceived by many Scots to be inferior. Thus the English language replaced Scots as the lan- guage of the law, the educated classes, writing and publishing. Although Scotland was a small and poor country, the Scottish court had enjoyed a relatively rich cultural life prior to the Union of the Crowns. Several Scottish monarchs married into European royal families. There were trade links with France, the Low Countries, and the Baltic. Thus European ideas of music, literature and architecture were introduced and developed into a pecu- liarly Scottish renaissance. The Protestant Reformation (begun in 1560) and the ensuing religious turmoil that continued for more than a century effec- tively ended all cultural activity identified with the Roman Catholic church. Music in particular was badly affected. In the Presbyterian Calvinist church, music was limited to the plainest singing. Instrumental accompaniment was forbidden, and the debate as to whether it was appropriate to have an organ in a church was to continue well into the nineteenth century.3 The use of elevated liturgical music continued solely in the Scottish Episcopal Church, whose musicians tended to be imported from England, among them Musgrave Heighington (1679–1764), who in his later years was organist at the Episcopal Church in Dundee and founded the Dundee Musical Society. A later example is the London-born Thomas Poulter (1837–1901), who trained as a church musi- cian in Warwick. Around 1855, he moved to Greenock to take up the post of private organist to Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, 7th Baronet, who had built a pri- vate Episcopal chapel, St Michael and All Angels, on his Ardgowan Estate.4 Poulter took an active part in the musical life of Greenock. At various times he was organist at the Mid Parish Church and at St Paul’s Church, and he also held the post of town organist.5 He was director of the Greenock Choral Society from 1864 to 18706 and also conducted his own Select Choir. Most significantly he was the first harmony and composition teacher of one of Scotland’s best- known composers, Hamish MacCunn (1868–1916). 2 Johnson (2003), 133. 3 For a detailed account, see Farmer (1947), 365–79. 4 Baptie (1894), 150. Baptie incorrectly gives Poulter’s year of birth as 1838. He also mis- spells Wasperton as “Warperton.” The “Specification of Work Relative to Plans of Chapel at Ardgowan” (Mitchell Library, Glasgow T-ARD/1/6/623) required the work to be completed by 1855. 5 Idem. 6 Marr (1889), 22. Jane Mallinson - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:53:06AM via free access 72 Mallinson In the eighteenth century, although some Scots were composing in the classical tradition,7 many musicians, following the trend set by the Romantic movement, tended to concentrate on the collection, arrangement, and publi- cation of traditional songs8 and traditional instrumental music.9 In Scotland there was not the same degree of separation between classical and folk music as there was in most European countries where a classical tradition was firmly established. To quote David Johnson: Eighteenth-century Scotland possessed two distinct types of music: ‘folk’ and ‘classical.’ These coexisted within the same cultural framework and even, to some extent, interacted, while retaining their individualities and behaving, in a sociological sense, quite differently from each other.10 Organized classical music flourished only in the small number of cities and towns able to support professional musicians. As in England, most musical activity and knowledge was confined to the wealthy and professional classes. The capital city, with its Edinburgh Society of Musicians founded in 1728, was the centre of musical excellence, and there was also musical activity in Dundee and Aberdeen.11 In Glasgow, organized music emerged only towards the end of the century with the establishment of societies such as Gentlemen’s Private Concerts (1788) and the Sacred Music Institution (1796–1805).12 In the early nineteenth century, musical activity in Scotland continued to be at a low ebb. To quote from Henry George Farmer’s History of Music in Scotland, it was “almost as barren as the Outer Hebrides.”13 In Scotland, as in England, there were some choral societies, but they were few in number and in general remained the prerogative of the wealthier educated classes. In the 1840s there was a major expansion in the number of choral societies in the United Kingdom with the growth of the sight-singing movement, first in England, then closely followed by Scotland. This movement, which originated 7 For example, Thomas Alexander Erskine, sixth Earl of Kelly (1732–81) and James Oswald (1711–69). 8 For example, Allan Ramsay’s The Tea-Table Miscellany (4 vols., 1723–37), and The Scots Musical Museum (6 vols., 1787–1803), a collaboration between the Edinburgh publisher James Johnson and the poet Robert Burns. 9 For example, by William McGibbon (c. 1690–1756) and Charles McLean (1712–ca. 1770). 10 Johnson (2003), 3. 11 Aberdeen Musical Society (1748); Dundee Musical Society (1757); [Glasgow] Amateur Music Society (1831). 12 See Moohan (2005), 231–50. 13 Farmer (1947), 382. The Outer Hebrides are islands off the west coast of Scotland. Jane Mallinson - 9789004300859 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 04:53:06AM via free access Choral Societies & Nationalist Mobilization in the 19th Century 73 in France, had as its main aim the education and improvement of the adult working classes. In Britain this aim coincided with the Victorian desire for the betterment of the lower classes; time spent singing was time spent away from unsuitable activities such as drinking. “Popular song was thus seen to consti- tute an ‘important means of forming an industrious, brave, loyal, and religious people.’ ”14 Choral singing was now open to a much wider participation, and to some extent allowed for the breaking down of the rigid class barriers which operated in Victorian society. An 1849 account of a choral class in a market town on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk gives ample evidence of this. Seated in groups, arranged with methodical irregularity, so that none should be ‘below the salt,’ in their best dresses and in their best behaviour too, everyone feeling as much at home as when at home, and yet brought into free and friendly intercourse with the classes that are separated from them in ordinary life by an impassable barrier of convention; a pleasanter sight than these working people cannot well be imagined.15 The advantage of teaching singing in preference to an orchestral instrument or piano is immediately obvious: the voice is the most portable of instruments, costs nothing, and everyone has one. The two rival sight-singing systems which were to have such an impact on singing in the United Kingdom, those of Wilhem16 and Mainzer,17 arrived in England at approximately the same time. These methods use staff notation in combination with a system of letters or names using a fixed ‘doh’; each note of the scale is given a fixed name, using those of the Guidonian gamut, with the addition of ‘si’ for B.
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