Soundyngs has posted quite a bit in recent months about the infrastructures for maintaining and disseminating traditional music in Scotland, from record labels to folk festivals.
Although traditional music may have come from an oral tradition, from the 18th century onwards, print has also made an important contribution, making the borders between oral and literary musical tradition increasingly porous.
When a composer himself straddled the classical-folk divide, this further undermines any sense of hard dichotomy. Such a musician can be found in J Scott Skinner.
The Musician: J Scott Skinner
J Scott Skinner (1843-1927) was born as the orally transmitted world of Scottish fiddling was rapidly giving way to a more modern, commercial concert-driven environment of professional playing. His early training with a touring children’s company (Dr Mark’s Little Men) had brought him in contact with Manchester classical violinists, particularly the French violinist Charles Rougier and Hallé orchestra regular, with whom he studied. His style therefore combined indigenous fiddling with classical techniques. Even so, biographies point out that his earliest teachers included first his older brother Alexander (Sandy), then, after his time in Manchester, with Aberdeenshire mentor and dance teacher William Scott, whose name he incorporated into his own. Preparation for a possible career as a dance teacher saw him becoming steeped in fashionable European dances such as polkas and quadrilles (Ballantyne, 2003).
Success in fiddling competitions lifted his ambitions to be a solo performer as well as a dance teacher, and by the time he hit his mid-20s, Scott Skinner was enjoying an international touring career not only around Britain but in North America. By the time he was 40, he was able to sustain himself as a concert performer, augmenting live performance by being an early adopter of electronic recording. A series of records marketed under the name ‘The Strathspey King’ appeared between 1905 and 1922, and allowed his playing style to have global influence wherever diasporic Scots gathered around gramophones (Alburger, 2004). In Scotland, you find his name scattered in many local newspapers, tirelessly touring until the end of his life.
Scott Skinner’s published collections include pieces attributed to other historic traditional musicians alongside new compositions with his own name attached. According to Mary Alburger, his affection for innovative air-and-variation sets (e.g. the famous ‘President’ set prepared for his first American tour) was influenced by bagpipe music combined with contemporary concert classical style (Alburger, p.167). Techniques used on stage which were not strictly ‘traditional’ included tunes in different meters (no dance teacher would do that for a dance set), styles and keys, transforming a repertoire originally learnt as a dance repertoire into one designed for careful listening.
A quick look at one of Scott Skinner’s most popular tunes, ‘The Bonnie Lass O’ Bon Accord’ (an old name for Aberdeen) shows careful bowing instructions, articulation marks such as staccato and slurs, the use of dramatic pauses, a dramatic ‘rall.’ (slow) instruction approaching the final cadence, and careful use of crescendo and diminuendo marks. First appearing in the Logie Collection (Keith, 1888), this tune is the opening number of Scott Skinner’s most popular anthologies, The Scottish Violinist, published in 1900, and reflects a ‘traditional’ reel which has been inflected with classical violin styles. Other tunes in The Scottish Violinist suggest ‘martello’ bowing (hitting the string with the bow at speed), pizzicato (plucked strings), harmonics, and virtuosic use of the upper zone of the violin’s pitch range, and double stopping (playing 2 strings at the same time) (e.g. all found in ‘The President’).
A very useful online resource compiled by Aberdeen University, which contains both manuscript images and compositional notes alongside letters and other documents, draws attention to the Strathspey King’s use of scordatura – tuning the 4 open strings of the violin to pitches other than E, A, D and G, a technique that allows for unusual resonances and faster position changes. This is also a technique imported from classical violin playing, and shows again how Scott Skinner used this to transform what might be done with the traditional repertoire. The strathspey dedicated to the Laird of Drumblair William McHardy also uses ‘spiccato’ – off the string bowing – alongside scordatura tuning (see here for both music and compositional notes). Rather wonderfully, this also cross-links when it can to Scott Skinner’s historical recordings.
Modern Multi-Media Publication
These days, Scott Skinner’s The Scottish Violinist can be obtained from Taigh na Teud, the publishing wing of fiddler, clarsair and teacher Christine Martin’s ScotlandsMusic.com. Founded in 1985, this publisher is a leading supplier of sheet music to traditional musicians, functioning pretty much as an online, mail order music school out of their Skye home base for trad music novices. Many young fiddlers start off with the four Ceilidh Collection books – red, yellow, green and purple (currently available in a 4 book bundle for only £28 including P&P). Their website acknowledges funding support from Skye and Lochalsh Enterprise, and for particular books, from Creative Scotland, the Gaelic Books Council, and local enterprise funding, allowing these to be sold at absolutely accessible prices.
When it’s not publishing, Scotland’s Music also brokers online skype lessons in accordion, mandolin, fiddle and harp.
For more advanced players, Scott Skinner’s most popular collection – The Scottish Violinist, originally published in 1900. Another more general anthology, The Elphinstone Collection, includes some previously unpublished tunes by the same composer. Both books contain concise notes with some background information about the repertoire and its musicians.
The Taigh na Teud website also has a range of additional resources – ebooks and audio – to help learners get to grips with the tunes and performance styles. Information on the site lets you know at least the name of the singer or player, a nod to the personal nature of tradition bearing. Repertoires covered include fiddle, guitar, accordion, harp and song, while tuition resources add in mandolin, whistle, dance, drums and bagpipes (this last signposting resources from the National Piping Centre in Glasgow).
Other historical collections listed in the catalogue might highlight these, mostly in ebook format:
- The Patrick McDonald Collection of Gaelic songs (from c1784)
- The Daniel Dow Collection: Ancient Scots Music for the Violin, Harpsichord, or German Flute (from c1778)
- The Patrick McDonald Collection of Gaelic songs, with extensive introductions (from 1784)
- The John Bowie Collection of strathspey reels and country dances, with bass (from 1789)
- The Eliza Ross Collection (compiled c1812, from Raasay)
- Keith Norman MacDonald’s Puirt-a-Beul book with notes by William Lamb (from 1901), originally published using sol-fa, but this edition using conventional stave notation; including English translation for non-Gaelic speakers.
- And more….
Alongside these, you have collections of tunes composed by contemporary Scottish musicians such as Fraya Thomsen.
To conclude, both in Scott Skinner’s own career, and in the contemporary 21st century dissemination of his music alongside that of other historical musicians, we can see traditional music is not simply an oral person-to-person repertoire but one that was, by the 19th century, being transformed by international classical music and printed music practices. In the modern digital age, carefully packaged as the Taigh na Teud material is, I’m tempted to say that streaming is the ‘new orality’. But the truth is, this is a radically intermingled tradition, combining both oral and written music – something that is true of most modern music.
Further Reading and Listening
- Taigh na Teud via Scotlands Music website – and about the company
- ‘James Scott Skinner’ , website of music, documents and other information compiled by Aberdeen University , accessed 24 Feb 2026
- Mary Anne Alburger, Review, ‘The Strathspey King by James Scott Skinner’, in The World of Music 46(3), (2004), pp.165-167. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41699599.
- Pat Ballantyne, ‘Fashionable Dancing: The Dance Manuals of James Scott Skinner’ in Northern Scotland 23(1) first series (2003), pp. 107-116, https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2003.0006
All this invaluable and interesting stuff- thank you, Jane!