# Scottish Music



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

We are going to a concert on Burns night, with some baroque music described as a tribute to Burns. As somebody who grew up in Scotland in the 1950s when there was a lot of genuine folk music on TV and radio, I find that many of the classical imitations of Scottish music are just not that good.

The Écossaise - a type of contra dance in a Scottish style - isn't really that Scottish. So we can excuse Schubert, Beethoven and Chopin for not sounding properly Scottish.

However, if you look at Antonín Dvořák Scottish Dances op.41, it could be from anywhere! Compare it with Malcolm Arnold's Four Scottish Dances and you can hear how it could sound. Neither of them match Jimmy Shand!

Mendelssohn's 3rd Symphony the Scottish is nowhere near as Scottish as his Hebridean overture. Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy does have some nice touches.

Am I being too harsh? Are there any other composers or works which genuinely catch the Scottish atmosphere?


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

I must confess that I would struggle to recognise exactly what the Scottish sound is. That is an area of folk music I have yet to explore in any great depth. Nevertheless, Haydn made lots of Scottish Folk Song arrangements, which sound pretty authentic, I guess.

e.g. I love the song "The last time I came o'er the muir" which starts at 6:24:


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I agree that 'The Hebridean Overture' always sounds Scottish to me, but I think it may be because in my earliest childhood, it was played as an 'interlude' on BBC television, with pictures of waves breaking against the rocks of Fingal's Cave. I'd have to have brain surgery before that image could be eradicated.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Dvorak? Mendelssohn? Get yourself some aboriginal scottishness:


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Winterreisender said:


> I must confess that I would struggle to recognise exactly what the Scottish sound is.


Difficult to define, easy to recognise. Several things - the Scottish snap, droning or double stops following on from pipes, "odd" cadences because it's coming from pipe tunes, rhythms of reels and strathspeys.



Aramis said:


> Dvorak? Mendelssohn? Get yourself some aboriginal scottishness:


I've avoided McCunn and Lamond because they should know what they're on about.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

The Scottish composer William Wallace composed some works with Scottish influence (e.g. A Scots Fantasy, and the tone poem Sir William Wallace). Hyperion has issued a few CD's of his works.

Would Peter Maxwell Davies' An Orkney wedding with sunrise (including bagpipes) count?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I have a piece by Granville Bantock, the Hebridean Symphony, and I have no idea how Scottish it sounds other than it's fairly enjoyable. I'll stick with Dougie MacLean, though in truth I have no idea how authentic he is either.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Max Bruch wrote one of my favorite pieces, the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra; supposedly was inspired by Scottish themes.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Weston said:


> I have a piece by Granville Bantock, the Hebridean Symphony, and I have no idea how Scottish it sounds other than it's fairly enjoyable. I'll stick with Dougie MacLean, though in truth I have no idea how authentic he is either.


Anybody who attempts a Pibroch is worthy of attention. Granville Bantock had a Scottish father, which definitely helps.






Dougie MacLean is certainly well worth listening to. I liked him best with the Tannahill Weavers and Silly Wizard. He's probably best known for Caledonia, but the one I like is his own intro to Rescue Me - about a friend who took him climbing.


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## revdrdave (Jan 8, 2014)

To me, one of the more interesting 20th century composers was a Scot: Thomas Wilson. In the music of his I've heard, I can't claim to hear anything that strikes me as particularly Scottish but maybe I have and just didn't recognize it. You can explore for yourself in, of all places, iTunes. The Wilson estate appears to have licensed the rights to Apple. There are multiple volumes available of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano music.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I don't know about genuinely Scottish, but you could try Britten's _Scottish Ballad_ op.26.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

Chadwick's take on Tam O'Shanter.






Or Arnold's take on the same subject.


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2014)

One of my favorite composers was born in Glasgow, though she lives in London now.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

some guy said:


> One of my favorite composers was born in Glasgow, though she lives in London now.


This excellent, stylized work inspired by Scottish folk idiom depicts the heathlands, misty mountains and seashores of Scotland with utmost imagery. I can hear Diana Salazar missing the days when she was simply Diana Simpson, a young and innocent shepherdess whose life was like that of a wild, Scottish flower. One of greatest examples of modern national school music I've heard.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Jimmy Shand!!!

a blast from the past there!

I'm tempted to say what you search for should sound like the inside of a cloud .... but as I'm just an hour south of the border (and the weather is pretty much the same here), of course I won't do so!


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2014)

Aramis said:


> This excellent, stylized work inspired by Scottish folk idiom depicts the heathlands, misty mountains and seashores of Scotland with utmost imagery. I can hear Diana Salazar missing the days when she was simply Diana Simpson, a young and innocent shepherdess whose life was like that of a wild, Scottish flower. One of greatest examples of modern national school music I've heard.


I'll be sure to tell her this next time I see her.

I think she'll grin at "young and innocent shepherdess."


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2014)

I'm not sure if Beethoven's Op 108 "Twenty-five Scottish songs" have been mentioned. Some of them would appear to be the ""The real McCoy" insofar that they are based on words written by the likes of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns.

Here they are:

No. 1 Music, love and wine
No. 2 Sunset
No. 3 O sweet were the hours
No. 4 The Maid of Isla
No. 5 The sweetest lad was Jamie
No. 6 Dim, dim is my eye
No. 7 Bonny Laddie, Highland Laddie
No. 8 The lovely lass of Inverness
No. 9 Behold, my Love, how Green The Groves
No. 10 Sympathy
No. 11 Oh! thou art the lad of my heart, Willy
No. 12 Oh, had my fate been join′d with thine
No. 13 Come fill, fill, my good fellow!
No. 14 O, how can I be blithe and glad
No. 15 O cruel was my father
No. 16 Could this ill world have been contriv′d
No. 17 O Mary, at thy window be
No. 18 Enchantress, farewell
No. 19 O swiftly glides the bonny boat
No. 20 Faithfu′ Johnie
No. 21 Jeanie′s Distress
No. 22 The Highland Watch
No. 23 The Shepherd's Song
No. 24 Again, my lyre, yet once again
No. 25 Sally in our Alley


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Aramis said:


> This excellent, stylized work inspired by Scottish folk idiom depicts the heathlands, misty mountains and seashores of Scotland with utmost imagery. I can hear Diana Salazar missing the days when she was simply Diana Simpson, a young and innocent shepherdess whose life was like that of a wild, Scottish flower. One of greatest examples of modern national school music I've heard.


Yep. I definitely got instant mental images of the Five Sisters Of Kintail with that!

(Kidding aside, I did rather enjoy it.)


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

Bagpipe concerto









I don't know this piece, I just made a google search for bagpipe concerto, sounds Scottish to me.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I think that unless you are looking for a quoted folk tune, and then perhaps variations of it, that seeking any folk music or a form in classical is not going to yield much joy.

So much folk music is modal, does not modulate, or modulate much, and is often based on drones using the interval of the fourth or fifth. Like all good basic melodies, those are self-contained, "closed circuit music." and have little harmony needed to be remembered, i.e. the harmonic context is not the interesting or important part. Ergo, unless extensively varied, or 'deconstructed' they are of not much interest or value in composing longer and larger scale pieces.

The most "satisfactory" finds in this context are straight ahead charming arrangements (Haydn has been mentioned. His arrangement for Baritone voice and string quartet of "All through the night." for example, is lovely and deeply moving, as are a number of his other arrangements, done in a very similar treatment.) where 'the tune,' remains central, with a lovely and simple harmonization, adhering completely to the verse-chorus format of the original.

Larger instrumental works based on folk tunes will either be a medley sort of affair, or the tune will be subjected to variants to a degree where the 'native feel' and color will more than likely disappear -- they are used only as a starting point for "something else" other than what you seek, hope for.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

There are also flute/piano variations of familiar Scottish and Irish tunes in Beethoven's Opp. 105 and 107...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> One of my favorite composers was born in Glasgow, though she lives in London now.


Now there is a _*can only be a Scots name*_ if I ever clapped eyes on one


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Aramis said:


> This excellent, stylized work inspired by Scottish folk idiom depicts the heathlands, misty mountains and seashores of Scotland with utmost imagery. I can hear Diana Salazar missing the days when she was simply Diana Simpson, a young and innocent shepherdess whose life was like that of a wild, Scottish flower. One of greatest examples of modern national school music I've heard.


This surpasses former bon mots, which have already been noted as dripping satire, to now being _positively runny_. Some might think they are now so runny that the clinical diagnosis is you are leaking brain fluids at an alarmingly high rate of loss, which is a degenerative condition, those fluids irreplaceable


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

PetrB said:


> This surpasses former bon mots, which have already been noted as dripping satire, to now being _positively runny_. Some might think they are now so runny that the clinical diagnosis is you are leaking brain fluids at an alarmingly high rate of loss, which is a degenerative condition, those fluids irreplaceable


They crystallize, though, and the resulting gems salt these pages for the likes of me to delight in stumbling across...


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Crystallise into amethysts, cairngorms & rock crystals?

A gem's a gem, for a' that...






Burns was a European as well as a Scot; Scotland in the eighteenth century was 'the Athens of the North', an outward looking place of refinement, and by Regency times, Walter Scott had made the culture cool in Europe - hence Beethoven's Scotterie, I suppose...


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Crystallise into amethysts, cairngorms & rock crystals?


Yes, though some are more priceless still!

(I almost died laughing at his parody of the 'atonal music is horrible' genre)


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

Jean Redpath, along with Serge Hovey, started setting all of Burn's poems to music. Unfortunately, they were about a third of the way through when Hovey died and the project was abandoned. I'm particularly fond of her take on "A Parcel of Rogues".

I cannot think of Burns without recalling my wife on my 60th birthday. She took my hand, looked into my eyes, and recited "John Anderson, My Jo".

John Anderson, my jo, John, 
When we were first acquent, 
Your locks were like the raven, 
Your bonnie brow was brent; 
But now your brow is beld, John, 
Your locks are like the snow; 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 
John Anderson, my jo!

John Anderson, my jo, John, 
We clamb the hill thegither; 
And monie a canty day, John, 
We've had wi' ane anither: 
Now we maun totter down, John, 
But hand in hand we'll go, 
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.

Of course, if we are going to speak of Scots poets, we cannot ignore the inimitable William Topaz McGonagall.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

I always enjoyed Vaughan Williams' arrangement of Loch Lomond.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote over .... I don't know what the huge number was .... Scottish songs.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

OK, this isn't classical but I couldn't resist this title by Fairport Convention which was the b-side to a single of theirs in 1970:

"Sir B. McKenzie's Daughter's Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancer's Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our Lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie"

Although it sounds real enough it was a spoof title apparently created by someone in the band in order to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest song title. The track itself incorporates a couple of folk tunes but not specifically any Scottish ones, although around this time they did record a couple of versions of the old Scottish song 'Sir Patrick Spens'. Here's the second one:


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## chalkpie (Oct 5, 2011)




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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Come on, Taggart!

let's have the report from last night, please (when the haggis and whiskey have worn off ..... or perhaps there'll be merit in having the report written under the influence)


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Last night was Baroque delights, we had our Haggis today.

Actually, some entertaining points emerged from the concert last night. We had some Thomas Arne - a Scotch Gavotte full of Scottish snap - and it went fairly flat - there wasn't enough snap! Basically rather than as a semi-quaver and a dotted quaver they were playing them in triplet rhythm so the balance was 1:2 rather than 1:3. The other thing when they were playing reels, they were too smooth. You could count the 1-2-3-4 all right but there was not enough emphasis on the opening note of the bar. As a dancer, used to dance music, I felt that you could count the notes but not the bars so that it would be difficult to dance to because you couldn't phrase your movements easily against the bars. 

The audience enjoyed it because the playing was excellent. However,as a Scot who has listened to this music for sixty years and danced to it for thirty years, I'm just a little picky about it.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

maybe you should have taken your Jimmy Shand 78s with you and popped them on in the interval?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

He's at least half Scottish, and I love Richard Thompson.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I just 'randomly discovered' Malcolm Arnold, a twentieth-century English composer, and I see that someone above posted a work from him. Here are his Four Scottish Dances - slightly parodic imo but fairly pleasant:






I like this little excerpt even better - Scottish Dance No 3, complete with heathery lochy landscape photos. Celtic flummery maybe, but there's just something about the sound of the harp...


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

What exactly do you define as Scottish? The Hebrides doesn't have a national identity to me; it conjures an atmosphere definitely.
The symphony on the other hand with it's use of the snap does.

A friend of mine has just released the piano works of Roland Center (a Scottish composer) although I have no idea what it's like -whether it's national music or not.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The Hebrides are certainly Scottish, by political affiliation, history, culture and everything else. So are Orkney & Shetland too, though they have some Norse links.

There is a Scottish 'style' that involves the Scottish snap & use of drones, and there are folk rhythms, jigs and reels, that are found also in English, Welsh & Irish tunes. And there are composers who are ethnic Scots, born in Scotland, grew up in Scotland, or chose Scottish identity. I would think music could be considered as 'Scottish' on any of these bases.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

There's a lovely catalogue of fiddle styles here. I think the interesting thing is the link between Shetland and Norwegian fiddle styles. The site also has a section on fiddle tunes which covers both snap and Strathspey.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

Speaking of fiddle styles, here is Yitzhak Perlman playing bluegrass


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Fortinbras, that's delightful. I feel that bluegrass, like other American folk music, Appalachian ballads et al, derives one of its strands at least from Scottish folk culture, so it's totally relevant too. Just hear those double stops!


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> The Hebrides are certainly Scottish, by political affiliation, history, culture and everything else. So are Orkney & Shetland too, though they have some Norse links.
> .


I meant the overture itself doesn't immediately make me think of Scotland the way Elgar makes me think of England.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

mikey said:


> I meant the overture itself doesn't immediately make me think of Scotland the way Elgar makes me think of England.


 :cheers: Well, yes ------->



Ingélou said:


> I agree that 'The Hebridean Overture' always sounds Scottish to me, but I think it may be because in my earliest childhood, it was played as an 'interlude' on BBC television, with pictures of waves breaking against the rocks of Fingal's Cave. I'd have to have brain surgery before that image could be eradicated.


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## southwood (Jul 25, 2012)

Ah, Taggart, sir, a fellow Caledonian ! Hope we don't cross claymores too often !


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## southwood (Jul 25, 2012)

Weston said:


> I have a piece by Granville Bantock, the Hebridean Symphony, and I have no idea how Scottish it sounds other than it's fairly enjoyable. I'll stick with Dougie MacLean, though in truth I have no idea how authentic he is either.


I especially like DM's versions of Burns' Ca the Yowes and Tannahill's Gloomy Winter's Noo Awa'.


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## southwood (Jul 25, 2012)

Thanks for introducing me to this excellent ensemble, the Baltimore Consort.


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