Drawing aside the veil, Soundyngs is mostly written by Jane Pettegree of the University of St Andrews, and as that persona would like to thank the Scottish Studies journal editor for publishing a long essay exploring the role of brass bands in Thurso and Wick in aligning local identities in Caithness with wider period ‘British’ politics.
The featured image for this post shows where the research started – with an astonishing photograph of the Thurso band in the 1860s that prompted questions like, why tartan and not more neutral military costume? And, what tartan? And, where did those instruments come from? (That last question is still one that ideally needs someone to discover an order form and inventory in the back of a cupboard or at the bottom of an old trunk).
The piece sketched in a wider picture of town entertainments in the 19th century that involved the local militia turning out to play tunes in a variety of guises for a range of different reasons. However, I didn’t have space in this article to explore in more depth the connections between the uptick in musical activity and the undoubted enthusiasm of the county in activities that didn’t involve alcohol – that is, the relationship between the temperance movement and music in the north.
Much more could be said about this – but for now, here’s a lovely poster from my trip to the Nucleas archive in Wick, that shows how folk in the north liked to relax in the Victorian era, in March 1867:
With the Reverend Dr Lillie overseeing the occasion, and appropriate readings, the Young Men’s Association of Wick also needed to consider the prsence of ladies (Miss Forsyth at the piano, and her pupils). Input from the Artillery and Violin bands implies both brass (or wind) and string players – although in practice some folk might have polayed in both groups. Tea, Cake and Fruit furnished the evening with uncontroversially safe refreshments.
Critically, in Wick as in Thurso, there was a venue – the Temperance Hall – that hosted many of these entertainments. These buildings provided a civic architecture that preceded, in many places, the town or village hall, and perhaps set up patterns of cultural expectation for what local get-togethers might involve, musically. More work probably needs to be done on the civic spaces in which music took place from the 19th century into the 20th century. Maybe in another article.
Further Reading
- Jane Pettegree, ‘Volunteer Bands and Local Identity in Caithness at the Time of the Second Reform Act’, Scottish Studies 40 (2020), pp.83-111
- Nucleus: the Nuclear and Caithness Archives