An exhibition and a write up!

Last week, the Allan Ramsay exhibition opened at the National Library of Scotland and it has been wonderful to see so much activity about it on social media. My colleagues, Craig Lamont, Ralph McLean and I worked to pull together an exhibition that represented Ramsay’s life, work and the many folk in his circle. Some music highlights are Alexander Stuart’s Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Songs (c. 1726), Adam Craig’s A collection of the choicest Scots tunes (1730) – side note these two gents were two of the three paid musicians in the early days of the Edinburgh Musical Society and many of their arrangements are very similar in rhythm and style. There are also editions of The Gentle Shepherd complete with music in the exhibition.

The exhibition is free and open until the 16 May 2020. If you would like to see more please visit: https://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/treasures/allan-ramsay

In other news, I just discovered an article written by Christopher Suckling where he reviewed the Fourth Annual Conference, “Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity”. He has very graciously given me a generous mention and has summed up the parameters for my HIP research. I must confess, I have struggled to centre a lot of my theories in this area lately, but seeing such a positive review inspires me to press on. It is available here (please note institutional access is required to read the article or it can be purchased for a small fee): SUCKLING, C. (2020). HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE: THEORY, PRACTICE, AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON, 17–19 MAY 2019. Eighteenth Century Music, 17(1), 148-151. doi:10.1017/S1478570619000253

Final episode of Pop Enlightenments Season 2: featuring Brianna Robertson-Kirkland

On Monday this week, the final episode of Pop Enlightenments Season 2 was released and it was another opportunity for me to talk about the use of music in 18th-century film and television dramas with Dr Emrys Jones from King’s College London. In this episode, we focussed on a topic very close to my research interests: the castrato.

I have always be fascinated by the castrato, but that probably isn’t unusual. These exotic, singing sirens were once stars of the operatic stage. Their popularity and celebrity changed the world of opera completely, and though they have now disappeared, their presence is still very much felt. Many films and television shows including Casanova (2005), Farinelli (1993) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) have featured (or in the latter case, referenced) the castrato. They have even appeared in popular novels such as Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, and while many of these story lines highlight the barbarity of the operation, the castrato clearly continues to be alluring.

Though I spend most of time looking into the lives of “real” castrati, I was so grateful to have the opportunity to look at the many castrated characters appearing in a variety of 21st-century entertainments.

If you want to check out the episode, please listen here: https://soundcloud.com/user-845521566/pop-enlightenments-season-2-episode

Curious Caledonians out now!

In June this year, I had the wonderful opportunity to return to Australia and continue my research work on music Scottish emigrants who took their music collections with them to Australia. It was a crazy, invigorating, inspiring and exhausting trip! On my previous visit, I was mostly working alone and could only imagine the music in my mind (though I did record two if the songs as well) but this time a whole team of musicians were also part of the process! We now have a stunning album, which not only showcases some fantastic tunes, but also brings to life some really unusual music that hasn’t been performed in almost two hundred years. Here are some further details, taken from the Evergreen Ensemble Facebook page:

Evergreen Ensemble continues their fascinating journey into the sound world of colonial Australia with this enchanting album of instrumental and vocal music drawn from the music collections of Sydney Living Museums and the State Library of New South Wales. Bringing together Australia and Scotland’s finest Early Music talent and iconic folk artists, Evergreen Ensemble weaves stories back through time, rediscovering the sounds of folk melodies performed on period instruments.

For their new album Curious Caledonians, ensemble director and violinist Shane Lestideau has invited four renowned guest musicians to bring their specialised knowledge of eighteenth and nineteenth-century performance styles to the recording. With the help of Scottish researcher, Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, they have delved deep into the nation’s musical archives to discover treasures hidden in the personal music books and manuscripts lovingly bound together by their owners for safe-keeping. Much of this music bears the unmistakable flavour of Scotland: strathspeys and reels, haunting Gaelic airs and arrangements of favourite Scottish songs and tunes. It gives us the chance to ‘listen at the window’ of a Scottish-Australian house in the nineteenth century and consider what place these songs, piano duets and quadrilles may have had in their lives.

The album features the dulcet tones of mezzo-soprano Allegra Giagu and soprano Claire Patti, with Claire also appearing on Celtic harp. Australian violinists Shane Lestideau and Ben Dollman (Australian Brandenburg Orchestra) are joined by Aaron McGregor of the renowned Scottish Baroque ensemble Concerto Caledonia, with acclaimed Australian Baroque cellist Daniel Yeadon completing the string section. Performing on an authentic 19th-century Collard & Collard square piano are historical keyboard specialists Neal Peres Da Costa (University of Sydney) and David McGuinness (Concerto Caledonia).

Curious Caledonians offers a rare insight into domestic and public music-making in Australia since 1788, honouring the extraordinary contributions of Scottish culture to Australian society and exploring Scottish music’s unique ability to reinvent itself in new surroundings. Part classical, part folk, part Scottish, part Australian, this album captures the musical – and emotional – landscape of the early Australian settlement.

TRACKLISTING
1. Miss Susanna Baird’s Reel / Miss Johnston’s Reel
2. Black Mary
3. The Emigrant Highlander’s Wife *
4. The Blue Bell of Scotland
5. Morag
6. Laddie Oh Leave Me *
7. Hit Her on the Bum
8. The Favorite Scotch Rondo *
9. The Hen’s March / Sir George Murray’s Favorite / The Duke of Wellington
10. The Marquis of Huntly’s Welcome Home / [No] 6 Dance
11. Ye Banks and Braes *
12. Jenny Dang the Weaver
13. The Banks of Clyde *
14. Lord Moira’s Welcome / Miss Jeann Stewart of Bohally’s Reel
15. The Horse-man’s Port
16. Queen of France’s Lamentation *
17. Blackbird Waltz
18. La Fenella
19. Don Alphonso

Evergreen Ensemble
Shane Lestideau violin
Ben Dollman violin & viola
Allegra Giagu mezzo-soprano *
Claire Patti soprano & Celtic harp

Guest Artists
Aaron McGregor violin
Daniel Yeadon cello
Neal Peres Da Costa 19th-century square piano
David McGuinness 19th-century square piano & harpsichord

Research: Brianna Robertson-Kirkland

1CD + Digital album | Available 4 October 2019 | ABC 481 8774

Here is a link to the album playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mkVPeV0hxkV4Bh0EmZWQK5Rz7obURGogg

An academic brand

A few weeks ago I mentioned the academic brand and how it was pointed out to me that my brand is a little… haphazard. While a lack of brand or a confusingly vague brand is an external problem — others in the field may not think of you as a subject expert in anything specific — it is also an internal problem. I don’t necessarily have my brand entirely figured out but I have been thinking a lot about where I want to see a change, what I can do to bring about that change and ultimately what I want to be known for in the wider world.

What is an academic brand?
John Tregoning was writing about this very subject in 2016, where he described the brand as ‘selling yourself’. He sums it up nicely stating:

This brand comes into play when meeting potential collaborators, conference organisers and funders. Interactions with other academics tend to have three levels: an entry-level overview of your work to check you are in the same field, followed by a description of a specific piece of work and, if you really click, detailed dissection of experimental design. There is no space for English modesty: don’t say “you know, this and that, some stuff on respiratory infections”. Do define your brand and develop a snappy single-line pitch that summarises what you do, backed up with an exciting case study. You are pitching this brand so that when other academics need someone with a particular skill set they think of you.

The article continues to articulate clear advice about the brand – craft the brand by publishing and network so that the world realises who you are. This is excellent advice, but these are all external factors for creating a brand. An ECR coming out of the PhD doesn’t necessarily know who they want to be when they grow into senior lecturers, especially in a noisy academic world.

A graduating PhD has to face a plethora of issues, issues that were not as prominent in the academic job market 10 years ago. The job market is incredibly competitive, and while establishing a brand may help to get a job, in reality most ECRs are willing to try anything to get their foot in the door. Atma Ivancevic in 2017 wrote a huge list of things to help survive the ECR period of an academic life. Included were travelling, entering competitions, writing, networking both live and online, talking to people, taking advice, creating an online presence, maintaining a personal life, exercising and avoiding overwhelm. Whew! I was overwhelmed just reading the list and teaching, funding and building a brand weren’t even on it!

Then there is the real possibility that the brand the ECR wants to build doesn’t exist or isn’t easily fundable. What to do then? Build a different brand? What if there are no jobs in the area an ECR wants to work in? Do they press on with who they want to be albeit jobless? Do they pay their dues and hope that once they have a job they can manipulate it to suit their brand? Or what if they are interested in a lot of areas and need time to figure out how it all fits? That is certainly my problem, and while I am slowly narrowing down my specific area, it physically hurts to have to give up other activities I genuinely enjoy exploring.

Most of these articles explore external factors for establishing a brand, but what about internal factors?

I am speaking about personal motivations. The physical and mental reasons why a brand is important. This became really obvious to me at the end of the summer and I spoke about it a couple of posts ago. An academic brand gives focus, purpose and prevents a person taking on projects that sits out with their area (not necessarily their area of interest, but their brand). I have so many things I like to work on and because my expertise are in a broad area I justified to myself that I could make it all fit. Well, it doesn’t and it can’t. I never want to have a summer like I did this year and while I still have ‘off-brand’ projects I need to finish, thereafter I need to really focus.

So, who am I as an academic?

Well, that is the $64,000 question. Even as I write this post I am a little scared to admit it, but I shouldn’t be. It’s irrational to hide behind other topics all the while privately hoarding research data that centres on a true passion. So, here we go…

I love singers and singing, I love looking at treatises and I love historically informed performance. I have been working on all three areas for about 10 years, but not necessarily a the same time or in the same project. I was really inspired to write my thesis topic because I wanted to know how 18th-century teachers taught their students, but I realised the treatises alone were not enough to tell me how they did this. In fact, the treatises can’t really be fully understood without have a wider interdisciplinary knowledge of the cultural context (I did say my area is really big and I can justify looking at prety much anything!). This is why I (alongside another colleague) came up with the Eighteenth-century Arts Education Research Network — it’s aim was to bring practitioners and researchers together to explore these issues, and while the network has been really useful it brought up several other issues that got me off track. Singing treatises is actually what I want to explore in more detail. To figure out what parts of the treatise were used in lessons, what parts were idealised versions if a lesson created by the teacher, and what parts relate to the wider context. I truly believe that a more contextualised, interdisciplinary examination of treatises will help us understand historical vocal training, but will also dispell myths still passed down from teacher to student today. That’s who I want to be when I grow up… Oh yeah, I’m already grown up… So, let’s do this!

New Year’s Academic Writing Challenge

In my quest to get better at writing, I joined a couple of Facebook groups that were specifically set up for academics to provide support to one another. I had joined these at the end of last year, but have only just started to fully engage with the groups. They are useful, not just for moral support, but also to find out about upcoming events, hear helpful advice about overcoming issues (particularly with time management and writing) and knowing that I am not alone with my grievances. I felt I had a strong physical community during my PhD, making sure to join groups and engage in activities that forced me to socialise and not sit in solitude. As a hard-working ECR, my physical community has diminished. Friends have moved on to new positions or out of academia all together and I realise just how busy my senior colleagues were while I was a graduate student. The past year of ECR life has been a period of growth, challenges and reward, but there is little time to regularly talk about the bigger issues with a large group of people. The digital community has filled that hole that was starting to become a gaping chasm!

It was through one of these groups I learned about Cathy Mazak’s New Year’s Academic Writing Challenge. This was a Facebook live 5-day series, where Cathy challenged us to tune in and hear her strategies for setting oneself up for writing success in 2018. Many of the strategies are simple and easy to adopt, so long as you are committed.

A few pieces of advice really hit home and helped me to realise just how badly I am going about writing or rather finding the time to write. That statement is exactly the problem. Just like many other academics, I wait for the time to write. This magical ‘time’ never comes! Time can so easily be taken up by other activities, commitments, things that you hope will lead to success but actually encourage procrastination and a lack of focus. I have always been the type of person who likes to be kept busy. I jump at the chance to be involved in new opportunities, particularly if it is a chance to expand into a new area of research. I am hyper aware of the changing scholarly landscape and I have always believed that adaptability has been the key to success. To an extent, I still believe this, but I have realised I do need to have a somewhat sculpted garden of activities that make sense and hang together, rather than a never ending wild garden that very quickly becomes unruly! The academic mission statement was key to finding the focus in my future career!

Cathy’s first piece of advice was to quit something and I took that advice to heart. I quit something that I had been unhappy with for a while but had been reluctant to quit. Now that I have taken the plunge, I feel less overwhelmed and have more time to dedicate to my career.

Day two focussed on ‘Tiger time’, a system that helps a person identify areas of high energy and then dedicate these times for writing (or writing related activities). Having tracked my tiger time, I now know I work best between 10-12noon and can work between 2-4pm. Evenings are much less productive. In the past I have often had to force myself to continue working. For years, I have adopted the ‘work at all hours’ method, but often felt frustrated. Now I know why! The downside is that my tiger time is right around teaching time. Cathy recommends that a change in the following semesters to protect these times of high energy for writing will help to build a consistent writing schedule encouraging productivity and a feeling of achievement.

The following days centred on a change of behaviour rather than developing systems to manage work. ‘Start the day writing rather than checking emails’ is an age-old piece of advice. I have tried this in the past, but breaking the email addiction is particularly challenging, especially since the email app is on my phone. I know. I know! Just delete the app, but I hate opening my computer and seeing hundreds of emails and I have found that I miss more emails if I don’t deal with them right away. I refuse to be an unreliable person, who won’t respond to emails within a few days and hate it when I do have to take extra time. This is one area I may have to just deal with and adjust the advice to suit my personality. Perhaps, devoting tiger time to concentrated writing, then check emails out with this time…

‘Give yourself a break’ was another mantra spoken throughout the challenge but also had its own devoted day. I often feel guilty that I don’t have time to devote to my own research, but also guilty if I choose to ignore other things and give my research the time it needs. It is always present in my life, but with a heavy teaching load, it often feels like a sailing boat on the horizon – take your eyes off of it and it will be gone! In many ways, reading about writing techniques, taking part in this challenge and making a commitment to blog more is a vow to put my research at the forefront of my mind. I still haven’t picked up my thesis for a re-read and edit; I haven’t looked at potential article publications or even read books specifically recommended to improve my research. To be honest, at the end of the day I am too exhausted to do these things. However, learning about my strengths and weaknesses in writing and learning how to improve in these areas I am hoping moves the writing process into a positive experience rather than negative, thus improving my research output overall.

Having forgotten one of my past loves – drawing and painting – I have decided to approach writing with more creativity. I started a journal the first week in January and entitled it ‘My writing journey’. Not only do I get to incorporate new techniques and areas of advice with visual representations, but this is activity that feels like a hobby. It isn’t overladen with pressure and I can do it after a long work day, thereby keeping my research head on, but giving me the time to relax. This is not procrastination. This is a reminder that I am a creative person and the way I approach writing needs to have some amount of creativity to fully make sense!

EAERN at BSECS PG conference ’17 at Swansea University

The rain hammered down outside while I blearily woke from a restless night. Restless, not because of noise or lack of comfort but due to being in an unfamiliar place. I arrived late the night before after a near 8 hour journey from Glasgow to Swansea that involved all manner of public transport except a boat! But, I am pleased to say the long travel and sleepless night was well worth the trip. And yes, this is another, albeit brief, research adventure! 

Apologies for being away for a while. The summer has been spent writing, searching for employment and unfortunately, dealing with a close family bereavement. The adventures that I had so enjoyed at the beginning of this year feel almost a lifetime away now and as time passes some of the inspiration I felt is beginning to dwindle. That being said, this short trip away has reinvigorated me once again, reminding me that there are many scholars working on a whole host of fascinating material. 

It was fairly late on when Elizabeth Ford and I (who together make up our Royal Society of Edinburgh funded network – Eighteenth-century Arts Education Research Network) decided to submit an abstract to attend the British Society for Eighteenth-century Studies Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher conference and quite serendipitously, they offered us a longer slot that anticipated. We were invited to delivery a 40 minute workshop. We wanted to make the workshop useful to both the scholars in the room as well as our own network agenda. Ideas discussed had ranged from staging a music lesson, or doing a large roundtable discussion but neither felt like it would fit the variety of research interests in the room. We finally settled on an introduction to EAERN talking about why we came up with the idea, how it was inspired by WELEC (which if you don’t know anything about, has its own dedicated website https://welec log.wordpress.com) and what we hope to do in the future. We then invited everyone to get into smaller discussion groups and tell each other about their research, if education featured in their work and the challenges they faced, which a more interdisciplinary approach could solve. This turned out to be quite fruitful. Not only did Elizabeth and I get to hear more in depth about people’s work, I think the question triggered just how much a person’s education, whether they be from the 18th, or the 21st century, influenced their later professionalism, domestic life and/or parental motivations. We also were able to learn about other networks that focus on different aspects of education but do not consider specific branches of the arts and I wondered how we could bring these all together. Would our research not be more beneficial and cohesive if the individual networks were more connected? 

But, the main point that sealed how important EAERN could potentially be to researchers is that there is a consensus that having a database or a way to get in touch with area specialists who were happy to collaborate was a must and something that EAERN could facilitate. Dance, theatre, opera, music – these are only some of the areas that regularly intersect, and yet researchers and practitioners tend to work in isolation creating their own methodologies of working and using a variety of terminologies that essentially mean the same thing. And yet, a conversation across these disciplines reveals so many more ideas creating a shared discussion of research experience. How far can we extend this discussion? In doing so, will we gain a better understanding of our research as well as the wider 18th century? I think we would!

A truly fascinating conference and I am grateful to Jack and Jessica, the organisers, for inviting us to come along! 

If you haven’t checked out the EAERN website yet, I encourage you to do so! There will be many exciting activities coming up in the next few months (though it may distract me, once again, from blogging!) https://EAERN.wordpress.com.