Image: Advert for Rob Roy (Westminster Films, dir. W. P. Kelling, 1922), in The Bioscope, Thursday 21st September 1922, p.7. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.
Arguably, “Scottish music” has reached the widest global audiences via the medium of film. There are definite historical traditions of music in such contexts, although the extent to which such music is ‘historical’ is clearly contentious.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, the musical implications of this sonic scene-setting arguably reached a cultural low-point in films such as Brigadoon (1954), based on an American musical that relocated an originally German story to the Scottish Highlands. Yes, this has musical numbers in which Scots snaps admittedly feature, but with orchestration and both melodic and harmonic treatment which could hardly be heard (by Scots at least) as traditionally ‘Scottish’. Simon McKerrell is one of many who has criticised “the kitsch and often fake representations of Scotland in light entertainment scores to films of the 1950s and ‘60s” (McKerrell, p,120). McKerrell and others go on to contrast this era of Hollywood’s hegemonic dominance with the more carefully researched soundtracks to more recent films such as Pixar’s Brave (2012) which he suggests is more respectful of indigenous tradition.
In this rather long post, Soundyngs wonders about the feedback loops in which Scots themselves have contributed to the musical representation of Scotland in film.
Early Cinema in Scotland
Maria Velez Serna, currently lecturing at the University of Stirling, has researched early cinema audiences in Scotland as well as in her native Colombia, seeing film as a site where global competes with local strategies of representation. Her doctoral dissertation documents the distribution of film in Scottish Music Halls and travelling fairgrounds, before moving into public halls in the early decades of the 20th century (Velez Serna, 2012). The dissertation does not specifically consider music but presumably, any live piano accompaniment to these silent films would have drawn on the repertoire of those who normally played in those places, which would likely have included music from the traditional dance and song repertoire, as well as popular Music Hall numbers (given the early venues). When early film was advertised as part of “concerts”, her research finds that advertisements mention anything from a piano to a “full orchestra” (p.130). The latter must have used some kind of pre-rehearsed score, but exactly what is not here described.
After her doctoral dissertation, Velez Serna contributed to the AHRC-funded Early Cinema in Scotland project. Caughie, Griffiths, and Velez Serna’s edited collection of essays on Early Cinema in Scotland (2018) documents the popularity of purpose-built cinemas in Scotland in the 1920s and 30s, discussing Scotland’s failure to grow an indigenous film-making industry other than small-scale ‘documentaries’ of local life and events. The job of ‘representing Scotland’ was ceded to overseas filmmakers, for whom images of wild, romantic Scotland, and romantically orchestrated arrangements of national songs, became an easily reproduced set of conventions.
Early Cinema in Scotland largely sidesteps detailed discussion of music and sound, but various chapters are suggestive. Trevor Griffiths writes in chapter 5 about those working in local cinemas, including musicians, who presumably used their knowledge of indigenous repertoire as well as popular and “easy-listening” classical music to accompany films on Scottish topics. A highlight of Griffith’s chapter is the story of the November 1928 screening of the silent film Annie Laurie (1927) in the Rialto Cinema, Kirkaldy, which saw heather festooning the cinema, the ushers decked-out in tartan, and a warm-up act featuring the singing of the traditional Scots song ‘Annie Laurie’, completed by the playing of a Highland reel (Griffiths, 2018, p.74). This anecdote suggests that Scots were active partners in the construction of what McKerrell might consider a ‘kitsch’ repurposing of their national repertoire in the age of silent films.
A suggested line of musical association might be found by looking again at representations of Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy as compiled in a chapter by Caroline Merz. The Scottish-made Rob Roy was an early 3-reel Scottish project made in Glasgow by United Films in 1911. Advertising posters for later, non-Scottish, remakes of the story suggest how popular national songs such as “Ye Banks and Braes” might be attached to this plot, suggesting generically ‘Scottish’ sounds in the age of silent film were present in ever broader brush-strokes, as the film-makers increasingly moved outside of Scotland itself.
Folk Song in Film
Paul Mazey’s book British Film Music: Musical Traditions in British Cinema, 1930s-1950s includes a chapter on folk music (Mazey, 2020, pp.83-113) that meditates on the use of indigenous traditions to negotiate local identities in the face of the international film industry of the time. Mazey suggests that composers for British films from the 1930s to 60s were less constrained by the ‘factory’ nature of the dominant global industry, and therefore more able to draw on more individual and national styles (Maxey, p.14). The book highlights films that include elements of authentic folk song within the soundtrack, such as Michael Powell’s (dir.) The Edge of the World (1937), a fictional story based on the true history of the evacuation of St Kilda. Similarly dealing with a uniquely powerful landscape and an isolated community is The Brothers (dir. David MacDonald, 1947), with a score by Cedric Thorpe Davie, which includes piping and female funeral “keening” as well as orchestral segments. Although Thorpe Davie was English, his long attachment to Scotland as lecturer in music at St Andrews gave him time to develop interests in national songs, many of which he arranged for students to sing. Thorpe Davie’s musical style is art-song rather than folk song, but nevertheless informed by local idiom. Contrasting ‘Scottish folkmusic’ and ‘English’ musical idioms are also used to support contrasting characterisation of indigenous Scots and with incoming English characters in Whisky Galore! (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949). The use of a classical orchestra in this case places much of the soundtrack within the usual global film tradition i.e. late-Romantic art-music, but there are nevertheless moments e.g. using mouth-music (puirt a beal) that are well-researched. Mazey suggests the “combination of folk song and location shooting produces a persuasive sense of documentary authenticity” (p.106).
Mazey’s discussion takes some care to tease out the tensions between ‘art’ and ‘folk’ music, diegetic (embedded in and arising from the action) and non-diegetic sound. The representational strategies associated with mid-century non-diegetic soundtracks using orchestral arrangements are suggested to fit with Colin McArthur’s coinage, the ‘Scottish Discursive Unconsciousness’: a “feminised”, “mystical”, and musically romantic, style. He notes that the most evocative use of folk song in this period’s films often accompanies points of action where the relationship between the collective community and the local landscape is foregrounded. The ‘Scottish’ music therefore seems to emerge from a ‘natural’ conjunction of people and place, using methods which would seem to be an extension of the ethnographic techniques used in film documentaries of the period.
Later 20th Century
Scottish feature-film (that is, using fictional, narrative plots) arguably took some time to digest and recognise the implications of the folk music revival and its resultant pressure on national repertoires to demonstrate their ‘authenticity’. By the late 20th century, however, there were signs that lessons had been learned, but one outcome of this was that the more obvious repertoire – Burns song, or jigs and reels – had already been tarred by association with the ‘Hollywood’ versions of Scotland. Alternatives were needed, and found in a kind of vague Celticism. In films such as Braveheart (Paramount, 1995), the soundtrack by American composer James Horner deploys the kind of generic ‘Celtic’ music that could equally well be heard as Irish as Scottish (Horner also composed for Titanic in 1997).
Colin McArthur’s short but punchy edited book, Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television (1982) notes the regrowth of an indigenous film industry was substantially unsuccessful where it relied overly on the existing tropes of Scottishness (and also, by hard lack of finance). Tom Nairn’s writing on new forms of national political identity informs much of the writing, and McArthur’s own chapter in the book follows several lines of attack to tease apart romantic, global kitsch from also-flawed indigenous strategies of self-representation, including both the reductionist ‘kailyard’ and its more upbeat cousin, ‘tartanry’ (McArthur, pp.40-69). Douglas Allen’s chapter on films about working class life in 1930s and 40s Scotland contrasts the clichés (including musical) of films influenced by popular musical hall representation, with the documentary tradition of that period influenced by Soviet realism (Allen, pp.93-99). Again, there is little on music, but much to think about in the oppositional positions of socialist narratives to historically romanticised representations, and more research might be done on how this specifically impacts music.
A collection of McArthur’s essays has recently appeared together as Cinema, Culture, Scotland (2023). Again, there is little on music, although some useful discussion of the ‘vaguely Celtic motifs which, as it happens, sound more Irish than Scottish’ (p.337) in the film Braveheart, as part of a chapter that discusses historical inaccuracy in that particular case, criticising the ‘tartanry’ aesthetic of the film as an example of ‘debased Romanticism’ (p,338). McArthur finds the music in Braveheart to be part of a strategy of emotional manipulation, which “seeks to bludgeon the audience’s emotional response’ (p,339). Viewed this way, ‘Celtic’ music in historic Scottish film seems to be another form of kitsch rather than an expression of historical authenticity.
21st Century
All in all, anxiety about the manipulative power of music gives Scottish film-makers a bit of a challenge when it comes to using traditional music in films. I’ve yet to read an academic comparison between the music of Robert the Bruce (2019) (composed by Mel Elias) (a film which does not seem to have done well with either critics or audiences) and Outlaw King (2018) on the same historical events. Outlaw King has a soundtrack by the group ‘Grey Dogs’ performed using contemporary folk styles, which includes some re-imaginings of historic music, including ‘Scots Wha Hae’, and ‘The Land o the Leal’, both songs based as much in Jacobite history as in the medieval wars of independence. Musical tradition is a palimpsest in these films, folding together different layers of time.
Robert Munro’s article ‘Performing the National? Scottish Cinema in the time of indyref’ (2020) brings this post to a close. Munro runs through a creditable list of recent cinema, using for one of his two central case studies Sunshine on Leith (2013). This is a musical juke-box compilation of the music of The Proclaimers which accompanies the relationship between a Scottish squaddie and an English girl in Edinburgh. The discussion of music in this article is more focussed on lyrics than on the sound itself. Like Brigadoon, with which this Soundyngs post started, Sunshine on Leith is a musical as much as a film: in this case, reversing the journey of Brigadoon, the film was subsequently adapted to be a successful stage musical. Munro has some interesting things to say about the ability of the ‘musical’ genre to reconcile and smooth over areas of potential societal tension ‘through escapism and wish-fulfilment’. While acknowledging contemporary political differences in a realistic manner, the romantic plot archetype, accompanied by Scottish-flavoured upbeat songs, drives towards a happy ending. The Proclaimers themselves are well-known as supporters of the Indyref ‘Yes’ position and must have been supportive of modelling a story that shows cross-border difference to be no barrier to personal fulfilment narratives. The soundtracks of some of the other films mentioned by Munro would also be worth listening to: Sunset Song (2015) and Trainspotting (2017), in particular, might offer an interesting contrast between rural and urban versions of modern disenchantment.
As this long post draws to an end, happy or otherwise, it’s clear there are musical gaps in the literature. Influential research and books on Scottish cinema focus more on narrative and on images than on sound. Someone wishing to write a longer dissertation on Scottish film music could be reassured that there is more work still to do. This blog hasn’t made any attempt to dip into the National Library Moving Image archive (see websites, below), which is particularly strong on the kinds of documentary and educational film which has evidently played such an important role in transforming and localising the sound of Scottish film.
Further Reading
- Douglas Allen, ‘Workers Films: Scotland’s Hidden Film Culture’, in Colin McArthur (ed.), Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television (London: British Film Institute, 1982), pp.93-99
- John Caughie, Trevor Griffiths and Maria Velez Serna (eds.), Early Cinema in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
- Trevor Griffiths, ‘Making a Living at the Cinema: Scottish Cinema Staff in the Silent Era’, in Early Cinema in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), ppp.68-90.
- Paul Mazey, British Film Music: Musical Traditions in British Cinema, 1930s-1950s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
- Caroline Merz, ‘Rob Roy: Britain’s First Feature Film’, in Early Cinema in Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp.110-129
- Colin McArthur, Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television (London: British Film Institute, 1982)
- Colin McArthur, Cinema, Culture, Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
- Simon McKerrell, Focus: Scottish Traditional Music (London: Routledge, 2016)
- Robert Munro, ‘Performing the National? Scottish cinema in the time of indyref’, in Journal of British Cinema and Television 17(4) (2020), 425-448
- Maria Velez Serna, Film Distribution in Scotland before 1918. Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow (2012) http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3605/
- Maria Velez Serna and Sarah Neely, ‘Introduction: From Silent to Sound: Cinema in Scotland in the 1930s’, Visual Culture in Britain 20(3), pp,195-201
Listening
- Grey Dogs. Outlaw King, on Spotify
Websites
- Early Cinema in Scotland Research Project – AHRC funded, Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh
- National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive