MUSICA SCOTICA NINTH ANNUAL  CONFERENCE

Aaron Macgregor played …

The Bass culture team took the first session at last weekend’s Musica Scotica conference in Aberdeen. David began by talking about ‘The urbanisation of Niel Gow’s music’.  Live illustrations went down a treat with the delegates!

Next, Barnaby talked about ‘The Campbell Canntaireachd Manuscripts of Pibroch (c.1782-c.1819): interpreting a ‘cloud of witnesses”.  Singing from Campbell’s unique canntaireachd notation, Barnaby made creative use of the audience by inviting them to hum the drone as accompaniment.  It’s fair to say that the drone was vigorously supportive!

A Cloud of Witnesses (Hebrews 11)

Low cloud over Aberdeen (image from Aberdeen STV)

Finally, Karen spoke about ‘Scottish airs in London dress: vocal airs and dance tunes in three 18th-century London collections’.  Whilst she struggled to find a way of getting live music into her talk, which was essentially about bibliographical detective work on some Scottish music from London’s publishing quarter in and around St Paul’s Churchyard, Mother Nature herself came to the rescue, adding to the ambience by illustrating the mists of time with a dense and almost tangible ‘haar’ over the north-east coast!