It’s ages since I posted here – I feel just a tad guilty about this! I last blogged when I had just sent my book manuscript to the publisher. Things have moved on a bit since then: the book has gone to ‘editing/production’, and is advertised on the Ashgate website. It was rather exciting to realise that it really is going to happen, and is there for all to see:-
Our Ancient National Airs: Scottish Song Collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Era
However, life goes on, so my music librarian self has continued to sort out reading lists for the new curriculum, catch up with cataloguing, and generally do all the stuff that music librarians do. And blog for the departmental performing arts blog, Whittaker Live, naturally. (Do take a look, and tell me if you like it!)
In my spare time, I’ve recently written and submitted a completely fresh article about a Victorian song collection that I stumbled across a couple of months ago. This one was published in Glasgow, and is the earliest I’ve encountered with sol-fa as well as conventional notation. The editor was a music professor at what became the University of Strathclyde.
The other day, I got an earlier article returned to me. Our team didn’t win. (The paper was somewhat savaged, to be honest.) That hurt, but hey, that’s life. I took on board the bits of the criticism that made sense, and revised it again last night. So far, so good. But this morning, I awoke with the realisation that I could not send it out into the world again until I’d done a bit more information-gathering. No point in stating the equivalent of, “And I haven’t bothered to source those twelve books of correspondence.” It’s okay to say, “I tried but was unable to”, but it’s just not good to do a literary shrug and fling one’s hands up in the air. So I’ve taken steps. Here’s hoping I manage to find what I’m looking for!
I’ve kept the most exciting news until last: I’m to be seconded as a part-time post-doc research assistant for an AHRC-funded project at the University of Glasgow! I can hardly believe that I get to do research for two solid days a week for the next three years. I mean, I didn’t even get to do that when I was doing my PhD, so this really does feel like a honour and a privilege. We start later on, in the Autumn. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it again once it’s under way.
