Friday 9 December 2005

A nice mention of Geminiani in the Financial Times CDs of the year today.

Yesterday I was 12 floors up in Glasgow University Library looking at keyboard music (and songs) by Schetky, and by the middle of next week I should have a big pile of photocopies to keep me amused through the holidays. Among the sonatas for harpsichord and fortepiano were several 'Strathspeys made into Rondos', a nomenclature that's usually the signpost for some leaden and uninspiring pianistic variations. But some of these look like they're worth playing, and there was a helpful pencilled 'a Great Favorite' (note the spelling) above the first stave of one in particular, showing that in late 18th century Edinburgh, someone had real enthusiasm for this music. That enthusiasm has to have been inspired by something - my task in this case is to try to rediscover what.

Today I was interviewed for a Radio Scotland programme about the song Leanabh an Àigh, in English Child in the Manger, the tune better known as Morning has Broken. I made a 13-voice arrangement of this for Cappella Nova in 1998 which, hearing it again, I rather like.  But conversation with producer Louise Yeoman wandered off onto the subject of Scots song arrangements in general, and she tells me that there is an American recording on the Nonsuch label of Beethoven's Sir Johnnie Cope (WoO 157), in which the tenor is working from a less than clear copy, and sings throughout 'Hey Johnnie Cope, are you wanking yet?' which puts a whole new historical spin on the Battle of Prestonpans. Can anyone substantiate this?