Scotland Forever!—5&1 Classical Playlist #38

by Mark Meynell

Note: This post is part of Mark Meynell's 5&1 series on classical music. Taking a different theme for each post, the 5&1 series offers five short pieces followed by one more substantial work. Occasionally, playlist choices are not on YouTube, so alternatives are provided here.

To listen to the playlist for this post, follow these links to Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube.

Scotland is in my blood and bones. I have many Scottish ancestors and several Scottish cousins, and have very happy early memories of family holidays in the Highlands (where there’s no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothes). It’s only possible to get up there every now and then but I always love it. And yet . . . I can’t help but feel VERY English when I’m there. I am, and forever will be, a sassenach. That’s ok: It won’t stop me returning or feeling just a slight degree of belonging!

Historically and culturally, Scotland seems to have had a wholly disproportionate impact on the rest of the world (for reasons, no doubt, good and ill!). Its often rugged, barren but perpetually stunning (and sparsely populated) landscape affects every visitor. So it comes as no surprise that its presence is felt in music. There are so many strands we could pursue, but for the sake of this list, I’ve tried to narrow things down to music reflecting the interaction between landscape, folk music, and history.

1. Hebrides Overture “Fingal’s Cave” (1830)

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847, German)

CBSO, Edward Gardner (cond.)

Scottish history as it is imagined today was largely the invention of the nineteenth century, in particular the books of Sir Walter Scott (Did you know: Edinburgh Waverley, the Scottish capital’s primary railway station, is the world’s only one named after a work of fiction?!) coupled with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s obsession with the place. This has of course been “massaged” somewhat by the likes of Mel Gibson, but the less said about that the better.

The great brother-and-sister phenomenon that was Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn (both brilliant performers and composers) came to Scotland through invitations by an admiring Victoria and Albert. It inspired various compositions, of which Fingal’s Cave is the most famous. Felix took a boat trip around the Inner Hebrides, islands west of the Highland coast, and was transfixed. The cave itself is only accessible by sea (and is part of the same geological complex as The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland). The composer was inspired by the bizarre sounds and echoes emanating from it. This piece captures something of the sea’s majesty and the mystery of deep geological time as well as the excitement of a sea voyage, all in less than ten minutes.

2. Scottish Legend (from 2 Pieces for Piano, Op. 54, 1903)

Amy Beach (1867-1944, American)

Bengt Forsberg (piano)

Amy Beach (née Cheney) was a musically prodigious child who went on to become one of America’s truly great homegrown composers. She wrote concertos and symphonies, an opera, choral works and hundreds of songs. So don’t be deceived by the apparent slightness of this track. It is one of many she wrote for solo piano (her primary instrument) and displays her deep love for folk music of all kinds. As far as I know (and I did research this extensively with Mr. ChatGPT) she never visited Scotland on her various European concert tours. Nevertheless she does seem to have had an affiliation to a Gaelic heritage.

This is a deceptively simple meditation on an old musical culture. We might not detect a specific melody floating offstage somewhere, but from the very first bars, we somehow instinctively know where in the world we are.

3. Farewell to Stromness (1980)

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016, British)

Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Rory Macdonald (cond.)

Max (as he was known to his friends) grew up in Lancashire in England’s northeast; however, from 1971, he lived for more than half his life in the Orkney Islands. Toward the end of the ’70s, there were government plans to licence the construction of a uranium mine near Stromness on Orkney’s largest island, something which horrified thousands. Davies was inspired to write The Yellow Cake Revue, a cabaret program named after the form of uranium discovered there. Its most famous element was this piece, originally composed for solo piano.

It has become one of his most cherished pieces and arranged for countless instrumental combinations (such as this one for orchestra). It is a slow burn despite being less than five minutes. Like the Beach piece, it is simple but this is weighed down by a sense of foreboding, of potential environmental collapse that might drive inhabitants into exile. As such it is a lament made all the more powerful by its restrained fury.

(If you want more from Max, check out his Orkney Wedding and Sunrise, a glorious example of wordless storytelling; as it happens, I was driving just last month with friends from John O’Groats to Thurso (look at a map!) with Orkney in crystal clear sunshine to our north, listening to it full blast!)

4. The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond (c1745)

Trad.  (Scottish Folk Song. arr Adrian Hannan)

Ella Roberts (2018)

Ok, we had to have one or two straight-up folk songs, and of course there are too many to choose from. Ella Roberts is an Aussie singer with Celtic roots, and her voice does have a crystal clarity. But this crossover version is lots of fun because (unlike the Stromness lament) it abandons all restraint. So to accompany our beautiful Scottish lass with the siren voice, we’ve got: Acoustic guitars! Uilleann pipes! Cinematic orchestra! Marching bands! BAGPIPES! It’s got it all, so what’s not to love?

Historically speaking, of course, the song evokes rather less frivolity than this suggests, since it reflects the ancient and often bitter conflicts between the English and Scots. This dates from the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 when the Catholic Stuarts attempted (in vain) to wrest the British (let alone Scottish) throne back from the devotedly Protestant Hanoverian, George II. The uprising was thoroughly crushed.

5. Tam o’ Shanter overture (1955, Op. 51)

Sir Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006, British)

Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Sir Alexander Gibson (cond.)

Scotland’s greatest poet was undoubtedly Robert “Rabbie” Burns, so an omission from this list would have been unforgivable and probably get me deported. 

One of his longer works, Tam o’ Shanter, written in 1790, concerns Tam (Scots for Thomas) a farmer who often makes an evening of it down at the pub. During an alcohol-hazed ride home on his faithful nag Meg, they chance upon a witches and wizards bash in a haunted, disused church. They’re having a whale of a time, accompanied by the devil on bagpipes (which, I have on good authority, is his instrument of choice). Not ideal. 

Tam can’t help himself and shouts out in all the excitement, giving his presence away. Everyone, of course, looks up and immediately gives chase. Tam and Meg fly like the wind, only just managing to reach safety at the Brig o’ (bridge of) Doon.

Malcolm Arnold was only in his thirties when commissioned to compose for the BBC Prom concerts in 1955. He decided to tell the story of Burns’s poem musically and conducted the premiere in the Royal Albert Hall that year. It covers a lot of emotional ground in what he termed an overture despite being a stand-alone work. I defy you not to be swept up in the melodrama.

A Hebridean Symphony (1913)

Sir Granville Bantock (1868-1946, British)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley (cond.)

Bantock is unlikely to be a household name, even among classical music fans. Which is a shame because he left some great stuff out there. His problem is perhaps that he was eclipsed by a constellation of British contemporaries like Stanford, Elgar, Delius, Holst and Vaughan Williams. But he was highly regarded both as a composer and conductor; something I didn’t know until writing this is that Elgar dedicated his Pomp and Circumstance Marches to Bantock. (One of those marches will be familiar to North American teenagers because it seems a perennial of school graduations).

Bantock is writing at a time when fascination in all things Celtic (an umbrella term for the cultures from across the British Isles and northern France) and Gaelic (more specifically, the Irish, Scottish and Isle of Man languages) was only growing. Bantock would write his Celtic Symphony just four years after this one. 

But this symphony, his first, is very intentionally located. We are in the same territory here as the Mendelssohn we started with: huge seas, wild landscapes, big weather, not to mention the mysteries and histories of the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Even if you have never visited, try to listen to the images in the music (without even googling for images or videos, at least not initially). Listen out for how Bantock uses the entire orchestra to evoke the space and wildness, dangers even.

It was composed as an uninterrupted piece of music (symphonies conventionally have three or four distinct movements), but it is constructed around nine untitled sections. To navigate it, listen out for the shifts and twists in mood, complexity, and pace; be swept up in this aural voyage around these ancient landscapes. It is a wonderful, thrilling way to spend 35 minutes or so and so deserves far wider recognition. I leave you with the verse by Scottish poet John Galt with which Bantock prefaced the score.

From the lonely shieling of the misty island Mountains divide us and the mist of seas Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is highland And we in dreams behold the Hebrides

Bonus! The Bonny Earl o’ Moray

Trad.  (Scottish Folk Song. arr by Benjamin Britten)

Philip Langridge (tenor), Northern Sinfonia, Steuart Bedford (cond.)

I couldn’t resist a final bonus. Mainly because I think this list requires another number with “bonny” in the title. It’s another folk song with political and historical resonance, but this time arranged by the great Benjamin Britten (one of my all-time favorite composers). Its background is the vicious rivalry between the Earls of Moray (pronounced Murray) and Huntly (during the reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI/I of England; incidentally The Rest is History has just issued a superb six-part series about Mary). Huntly burns down Moray’s house and finally tracks and kills him on the estate. It was an act from which there would be all kinds of repercussions. Britten’s arrangement brilliantly captures the air of menace and violence behind the tale, while preserving the song’s simple musical structure.

On a lighter note, this song is the origin of the so-called Mondegreen phenomenon, as articulated in the 1950s by American critic Sylvia Wright. It will be familiar to all, despite ignorance of its official title. If you’re not sure what I'm talking about, look it up…!

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Mark Meynell is a writer, pastor, and teacher based in the UK, and he's been involved with the Rabbit Room since 2017. He has been involved in cross-cultural training for the last 25 years and is passionate about integrating life, theology, and the arts. He blogs at markmeynell.net.

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