Competitive Music Festivals in Scotland

This spring, various social media posts told me that the Caithness Music Festival was celebrating its 70^th anniversary (1956-2026).  The Caithness Festival is one of a number of local competitive music festivals, which were set up in the 20th century to promote knowledge and performance of various forms of music and poetry.

These are different in focus, although possibly inspired by, the Gaelic ‘Mòd’ competitions, which specifically set out to curate Gaelic traditional music and poetry. The first national Mòd was held in 1892, in Oban, organised by An Comunn Gàidhealach (the Association of Gaels) before these other festivals were founded. The Mòd is a network of events rather than just one, and currently has about 28 local centres funnelling towards national finals. It runs classes for both beginner and proficient Gaelic speakers, in a wide range of vocal and instrumental performance, and has played a key educational role in keeping the Gaelic language and its culture alive.

Those resident outside of Gaelic-speaking areas, looking also to events taking place around the UK, developed their own local solutions which accommodated the range of music, dance and poetry taught in local schools. For quite a few young Scots, these amateur performance competitions provided their first steps on eventual professional careers.  For others, they were just a jolly day away from school, maybe even on a bus (if education authority budgets allowed): a chance to bring recorder groups, school orchestras, poetry readers, and more, to compete against neighbouring schools and communities.  For many singers, this was also a change to to learn songs from different repertoires: classical, ‘Burns’, ‘Hebridean’ (for non Gaelic speakers translated into English), and other categories, with ‘set works’ (or ‘own choice’) appropriately calibrated to age and stage of study.

Festivals in different parts of the country could also reflect unique local repertoires, often with trophies donated by local worthies to encourage youthful efforts.  The Caithness one, for example, had classes both for local Caithness dialect poetry, and for poetry in “standard” English; as memory serves me, despite being in the far north corner and a locality never personally visited by the National Bard, there were also Robert Burns recitation and singing classes. My memory of the Caithness one in the 1970s was that it even had a competitive class for church choirs, both in unaccompanied psalmody and in hymn singing. Episcopalians vs Presbyterians, a game of two halves.

These festivals serve several functions.  Primarily, they are educational, encouraging school choirs, instrumental ensembles and solo performance, alongside curating particular local and regional repertoires.  Many children will have owed their knowledge of standard musical repertoires to learning and performing in these contexts.  Performing – especially imperfectly – in front of an audience builds resilience, it might be argued, as well as providing a focus for practice.  However, ‘education’ is not simply aimed at school children, as most festivals have a wide range of adult classes in their syllabus, for both solo and group performance, thereby encouraging music making as a community-wide activity.

Competitive performance is sometimes criticised by musicians: should music ever be competitive? If you search this topic on the internet, you’ll find a plethora of opinion – see Milton, below, whose views in 1945 continue to be echoed in modern commentary, particularly at the level when amateurs begin to transition towards professional careers. Negative comments have suggested that performance nerves and occasionally rigid application of judging criteria might deter rather than encourage some performers: music, some say, is not the same as sport. For early-stage professionals, there may be as many negatives as positives.

However, at a grass roots level, these annual events do provide early-stage musicians with a targeted event for sharing and experiencing performance, and for those researching local music making, provide lively evidence of local musical interests and activity. They also begin the formation of understanding of different repertoires – however provisional these categories might be.

The British Federation of Festivals for Music, Dance and Speech list the following in Scotland:

• Ayrshire Music Festival (spring)
• Caithness Music Festival (June)
• Edinburgh Music Competition Festival – founded in 1920, this and the Glasgow one has a pull from around the central belt, and includes a concerto class which gives young performers the opportunity to perform with an orchestra.
• Glasgow Music Festival – looks to be the longest-running of these non-Gaelic festivals, according to its website, founded in 1912 and first run alongside the Scottish Exhibition of Natural History, Art and Industry in 1911 (March).
• Inverclyde Music Festival – advertised 2026 as its 99^th festival, so probably also founded in the 1920s (March).
• Lochaber Music Festival – advertising 2026 as its 51^st festival. This is also in a Gaelic speaking part of Scotland, which must mean local preparations are especially busy; it might be interesting to see how classes divide between this event in March and the local Mod a little later in June.
• Perform in Perth – has just celebrated its 102^nd anniversary (earlier ones probably not under this name). (March)

Not all Scottish music competitions festivals are currently BIFF affiliated.  The Fife Festival of Music, for example, is not on the BIFF website but has run for many years mostly from venues in Kirkcaldy, encouraging both school and community musicians. The Inverness Music Festival Association advertises on its website that it has been running for at least 100 year, and is also currently outside of BIFF. Other towns – Aberdeen and Dundee – do not currently seem to run these events, although in the past this did happen and currently, musicologist Karen McAulay is currently looking into past recipients of the Dundee Schools Music Festival ‘Leng’ medals (see McAulay, below: contact her if you have more to add to her stories).

Funding for all these festivals is on a charitable basis, involving local committees who work tirelessly through the year to book venues, engage adjudicators, manage the engraving and curation of certificates, medals and trophies, and administer registrations. In addition to organising committees, the actual events muster an army of local volunteers to usher, assist adjudicators with paperwork, and generally keep venues running smoothly.

There are, of course, other ‘festivals’ of music in Scotland which encourage, simply, performance at amateur and professional level rather than competition.  But for many who grew up in Scotland, ‘the Festival’ meant listening to 64 eight year-olds singing the same song to various levels of competency.  It was epic.  My thanks and appreciation, in retrospect, to the adults who lovingly sat through this.

Further Reading

• An Comunn Gàidhealach, founders of the National Mòd
• Dundee Schools’ Music Festival, Dundee Evening Telegraph, 16 June 1993:6
• Ruairidh Graham, ‘A Short History of the Mod’, in Historic Environment Scotland 11 October 201, accessed 8/6/26
• Alan Hendry, ‘Caithness Music Festival to Celebrate Platinum Anniversary’, John O Groat Journal 3 June 2026, accessed 8/6/26
• Karen E McAulay, ‘Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories, Update No.1’, 26 March 2026,  and ‘Silver and Gold Leng Medal Memories, Update no.2’, Uplifting Conversations’, 27 April 2026, on Karen McAulay Musicologist blog https://karenmcaulaymusicologist.blog/
• Robert W Milton, ‘On School Music Contests and Festivals’, Music Educators’ Journal, 32(2), 1945:30-67, https://doi.org/10.2307/3386850
• Alison I. Shiel, ‘Aberdeen’s Competitive Music Festivals, 1909-1913’, in Northern Scotland 22(first series)(1), 2002:121-152  https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2002.00