TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
9th Biennial Conference on Baroque Music
ABSTRACT
Scots song in the later eighteenth-century: philosophical attitudes, performance
practice and dissemination
Claire Nelson
Throughout the eighteenth-century, the attitude of members of every strata
of Scottish society towards their native song culture was extremely positive.
Songs were as much a part of daily life in the drawing rooms and concert
rooms of the upper classes as in fields and rural celebrations of the peasant
population, and no-one was exempt from participation in their performance.
The discussion of traditional songs in the philosophical discourses of
James Beattie and John Gregory, literary discussions of Alexander Campbell
and William Tytler and other writings from Hugo Arnot's History of Edinburgh
to Edward Topham's Letters from Edinburgh, is therefore informed by practical
experience as well as critical observation.
Encompassing elements of the Scottish Enlightenment's primitivist theories,
these writers establish a new justification for the performance of native
music, thus paving the way for the incorporation of Scots song into the
newly composed art music of the latter part of the century. Their descriptions
of the performances of Scots songs by the Italian castrato Tenducci, as
well as other native Scottish singers, provide today's performers with
clear indications of the appropriate performance practices, and also indicate
routes for the dissemination of this music to a British, rather than merely
Scots, audience. This paper will therefore aim to demonstrate the profound
effect of Scotland's intellectual culture on both the performance practice
and reception history of Scots song, through the musical discourse of the
latter half of the eighteenth-century.
Last updated on 22 March 2000 by Yo
Tomita