Concerto Caledonia
David Greenberg, violin 1
Sarah Bevan-Baker, violin 2
Nicolette Moonen, viola
Alison McGillivray, cello
David McGuinness, fortepiano, glockenspiel (2), director
with
James Gilchrist, tenor (1)
Michael Marra, narrator (1), voice & fortepiano (2)
Paul Rendall, tenor (chorus) (1)

Produced by David McGuinness
Tracks 1-3 recorded live in The Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh, Scotland on 26 August 2009 by Steve Portnoi
Track 4 recorded in PianoFort’ino, Basel, Switzerland on 26 April 2010 by Catherine Motuz
Mixed in 2023 by David Donaldson

Cover image by Joe Davie
Notes by David McGuinness

Thanks to Peggy Marra, James Gilchrist, and to Sandy Matheson for the reminder to revisit these recordings

In the final concert of our 2009 concert series at the Edinburgh International Festival, there were a few things that for one reason or another didn’t make it onto the live album, but were just too good to leave abandoned in the archives. So here they are – some music by two of Robert Burns’s Edinburgh collaborators, the Italian tenor Pietro Urbani, and the Hungarian cellist Christoph Schetky.

Michael Marra narrates the Battle of Bannockburn as depicted by Urbani, with tenor James Gilchrist as William Wallace in ‘Scots Wha Hae’. Michael also sings his own celebrated arrangement of Burns’s Green Grow the Rashes, and there’s the full three-movement version of Christoph Schetky’s quartet in E flat. Finally, recorded in Switzerland a few months later, Schetky’s set of piano variations on the strathspey The Indian Queen is played on a Viennese-style piano from 1830, with an outrageous janissary pedal that sets off snare and bass drum effects and a bell tree.

Robert Burns gave song lyrics to Schetky and Urbani to set to music, but apparently with different motivations in each case. Schetky, who was from a Hungarian family but also had a Gaelic-speaking Mackenzie grandmother, had been hired from Darmstadt by the Edinburgh Musical Society to be its principal cellist. He became a good friend and drinking companion of Burns, who presumably hoped that his setting of ‘Clarinda’ would be just the thing to win the heart of Agnes Maclehose, writing to her in January 1788:
"Schetki has sent me the song set to a fine air of his composing. I have called the song ‘Clarinda’. I have carried it about in my pocket and hummed it over all day."

The tenor and impresario Pietro Urbani was less of a friend, but Burns still found him useful for his own advancement in Edinburgh’s artistic circles, as he noted to George Thomson in 1793:
“Urbani is, entre nous, a narrow, contracted creature; but he sings so delightfully, that whatever he introduces must have immediate celebrity.”

So with all that in mind, enjoy some more of what we got up to on a Wednesday night in August 2009, at the Hub in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. 

© David McGuinness 2023

1 Urbani: The Ever Memorable Battle of Bannockburn

Festival director Jonathan Mills took the rather provocative step of opening the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival with a performance of Handel’s oratorio ‘Judas Maccabeus’, which celebrates Butcher Cumberland’s victory at Culloden. So it seemed only fair for us to end our concert series with a celebration of Bannockburn, in the interests of political balance.

Despite Burns giving Urbani the words of ‘A Red Red Rose’ to set to music, he specifically forbade the composer to use his name in his advertising. So it may be that this piece was Urbani’s attempt to cash in on his connections with Burns as soon as possible after his death. The titlepage of the souvenir score reads ‘The ever Memorable Battle of Bannockburn, as performed at St Cecilia’s Hall to universal applause. Wherein is inserted Bruce's address to His Troops previous to the Action by the late R. Burns’.

The text that surrounds a slightly butchered version of Burns’s ‘Scots wha hae’ implies that there was still a spirit of optimism about Scotland's rebranding as North Britain, 90 years after the Act of Union. After the depiction of the ‘total rout of the English army’, the final Grand Chorus suggests that Scots could nonetheless ‘still more happy be’ as Britons!

Urbani’s score (entered in Stationers Hall in 1799, but probably published earlier) is designed for domestic performances on piano and violin, but it notes that originally in St Cecilia’s Hall there were at least clarinets and horns in the band too. I expanded his arrangement for piano and string quartet, and skipped over some of the repetition in the Grand Chorus. The published score is now available on the British Library website, so if you want to, you can reinstate the cuts and imagine Urbani’s celebration of being guarded by freedom and the sea in all its original ridiculous glory. 

2 Green Grow the Rashes

It is essential to quote here from Michael Marra’s habitual onstage introduction: “This is the song in which Burns had the courage to make the assertion that God is a Woman”.

3 J. G. Christoph Schetky: Quartetto op.6 no.1 in E flat
I. Allegro
II. Largo non troppo
III. Allegretto
(Six Quartettos for two Violins, a Tenor, & Violoncello 1777)

If Schetky had had a more Scottish-sounding name, he would very likely have been immortalised in Burns’s song “Willie brew’d a peck o’ Maut” as he was a member of the drinking circle along with Willie (Nicol), Allan (Masterton), and Rob (Burns) himself. This is a useful lesson in how easy it can be to write immigrants out of history, consciously or not.

The first movement of this quartet made it onto our Late Night Sessions album, so this seemed like a good opportunity to let you hear the rest of the piece. As far as I know (in 2023), there are still no other recordings of Schetky’s quartets.

4 J. G. Christoph Schetky: The Indian Queen - A favorite Strathspey Made into a Rondo for the Piano-Forte And Dedicated To Miss Wilson, Queen’s Street

Piano by Caspar Schmidt, Prague 1830, courtesy of Sally Fortino

Besides his quartets, cello sonatas, songs, arrangements of traditional tunes for the military band of the Edinburgh Volunteers, and much else, Schetky made some superior contributions to the genre of piano variations on Scots tunes. These were usually composed for unmarried wealthy young women in Edinburgh’s New Town, so that they could display their impressive technique on the city’s new pianos, which had begun to appear in music shops in 1784.

Although janissary pedals didn’t appear on British pianos at the time, the opportunity to include some Turkish percussion at the end of this piece was too good to resist. All of the additional effects at the end were controlled by just one of the piano’s six pedals.

© David McGuinness 2023

The Ever Memorable Battle of Bannockburn

Prelude or Introduction to Bruce’s Address
Wrote by a Gentleman.

Of all the Battles which in former days,
added to Caledonia’s warlike praise,
None e’er so bold, so rout e’er so complete,
as when at Bannockburn the hosts did meet?

No day so fatal to the English name
so prosp’rous[?] none to Scottish freedom’s flame.
Proud Edward’s hosts came on in fierce array,
while Bruce address’d his troops and thus did say.

(Segue Aria.)

Bruce’s Address to his Army
By R. Burns.

Scots! wha hae wi’ Wallace bled;

Scots, wham Bruce has often led,

Onward to your gory bed,

Or to glorious victorie!

Now’s the day, and now’s the hour!

See the front o’ battle lour!

See approach proud Edward’s power,

Edward, chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward’s grave?

Wha sae base as be a slave?
Traitor, Coward, Let him turn and flie!

Wha for Scotland’s King and Law,

Freedom’s sword will boldly draw,

Freeman stand, or Freeman fa;

Caledonian, on wi’ me!

GRAND CHORUS
Wrote by a Gentleman.

May Scotia’s sons, as Bruce be free
And always hail sweet Liberty!
As Britons, still more happy be,
By freedom guarded and the sea.

Green Grow the Rashes

There's nought but care on ev'ry han',
In ev’ry hour that passes, O:
What signifies the life o' man,
An' 'twere not for the lasses, O.

Chorus
Green grow the Rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent among the lasses, O.

The warly race may riches chase,
An' riches still may fly them, O;
An tho' at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.
Green grow, &c.

But gie me a canny hour at e'en,
My arms about my dearie, O,
An' warly cares, an' warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!
Green grow, &c.

Auld Nature swears, the lovely Dears
Her noblest work she classes, O:
Her prentice han' she try'd on man,
An' then she made the lasses, O.
Green grow, &c.

no. 77 in The Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1 (1787)