Focus: Scottish Traditional Music engages methods from ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural studies, and media studies to explain how complex Scottish identities and culture are constructed in the traditional music and culture of Scotland. This book examines Scottish music through their social and performative contexts, outlining vocal traditions such as lullabies, mining songs, Scottish ballads, herding songs, and protest songs as well as instrumental traditions such as fiddle music, country dances, and informal evening pub sessions. Case studies explore the key ideas in understanding Scotland musically by exploring ethnicity, Britishness, belonging, politics, transmission and performance, positioning the cultural identity of Scotland within the United Kingdom. Visit the author's companion website at http://www.scottishtraditionalmusic.org/ for additional resources.

Focus: Irish Traditional Music is an introduction to the instrumental and vocal traditions of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as Irish music in the context of the Irish diaspora. Ireland's size relative to Britain or to the mainland of Europe is small, yet its impact on musical traditions beyond its shores has been significant, from the performance of jigs and reels in pub sessions as far-flung as Japan and Cape Town, to the worldwide phenomenon of Riverdance. Focus: Irish Traditional Music interweaves dance, film, language, history, and other interdisciplinary features of Ireland and its diaspora. The accompanying CD presents both traditional and contemporary sounds of Irish music at home and abroad.

This book examines the community-based learning and teaching of ‘traditional’ music in contemporary Scotland, with implications for transnational theoretical issues. The book draws on a broad range of scholarship and a local case study of a large organisation. A historical perspective provides an overview of new educational formats emerging from the mid-twentieth century folk music revival in Scotland. Practices through which participants encounter and perpetuate the idiom of traditional music include social music-making, learning by ear and participatory and presentational elements of musical performances. Individuals are shown as combining these aspects with their own learning strategies to participate in the contemporary community of practice of traditional music. The work also discusses how experiences of learning contribute to identity formation, including the role and practice of ‘tutors’ of traditional music. The author proposes conceptualising the teaching and learning of traditional music in community-based organisations as a ‘pedagogy of participation’.

Scottish traditional music has been through a successful revival in the mid-twentieth century and has now entered a professionalised and public space. Devolution in the UK and the surge of political debate surrounding the independence referendum in Scotland in 2014 led to a greater scrutiny of regional and national identities within the UK, set within the wider context of cultural globalisation. This volume brings together a range of authors that sets out to explore the increasingly plural and complex notions of Scotland, as performed in and through traditional music. Traditional music has played an increasingly prominent role in the public life of Scotland, mirrored in other Anglo-American traditions. This collection principally explores this movement from historically text-bound musical authenticity towards more transient sonic identities that are blurring established musical genres and the meaning of what constitutes ‘traditional’ music today. The volume therefore provides a cohesive set of perspectives on how traditional music performs Scottishness at this crucial moment in the public life of an increasingly (dis)United Kingdom.

Sound Teaching explores the ways in which music psychology and education can meet to inspire developments in the teaching and learning of music performance. The book is based on music practitioners’ research into aspects of their own professional practice. Each chapter addresses a specific topic related to musical communication and expression, performance confidence and enjoyment, or skill development in individual and group learning. It explains the background of the research, outlines main findings, and provides suggestions for practical applications. Sound Teaching provides a research-informed approach to teaching and contributes to music tutors’ professional development in teaching children and adults of various ages and abilities. Sound Teaching is written for vocal and instrumental music teachers, music performers with a portfolio career, and music students at conservatoires and universities. Music students undertaking practice-related research will find examples of research methodologies and projects that are informative for their studies. Musical participants of all kinds – students, teachers, performers, and audiences – will find new ways of understanding their practice and experience through research.

Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) was arguably the greatest violinist of the nineteenth century. But Joachim was also a composer of virtuoso pieces, violin concertos, orchestral overtures and chamber music works. Uhde's book will be thestandard work on the music of Joseph Joachim for many years to come.

This book celebrates and builds on Alan Clarke (1956–2021) and Allan Jepson’s 2015 book Exploring Community Festivals and Events. It showcases how far the study of community festivals and events has come in the intervening years, and in so doing it is a response to recent calls for researchers to take a more critical approach to event studies. This is an interdisciplinary book that draws together empirical research across a wide range of community event types, sizes and within diverse communities. Chapters in this book are grouped into four themes that highlight the breadth and depth of work being done: reviving and maintaining tradition(s); a focus on belonging; challenges and tensions; and innovations in teaching and research. Another of its core strengths is its international perspective – the book encompasses research from around the world including Turkey, Portugal, Greece, India, the UK, the US, Austria and New Zealand. There is also a diverse range of theoretical lenses applied to the study of community events, and some innovative methodologies used to achieve research aims and objectives. This volume will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of critical event studies, cultural studies, place-making, tourism, music, sociology and geography. Several chapters also provide insights and key learnings for those lecturing and working in event management and industry professionals.

Focusing on the Cornish Music and Dance Revival, this book investigates the revivalists’ claims about Cornwall’s cultural distinctiveness and Celtic heritage, both which are presently used as arguments to promote the English county’s political status as an independent Celtic nation. The author describes two different revival movements that aim at reviving Cornwall’s culture but seem to have entirely different ideas about the concept of authentic Celto-Cornish music and dance. In the first part, historical sources connect Cornwall to its Celtic roots, with an analysis of how the early Cornish revivalists used, changed and adapted this material during the 1980s in order to create a Celto-Cornish revival corpus. In the second part, the book addresses the desire of the Cornish people to express their local and Celtic identities through music and dance, and various practices musicians and dancers have developed to do so. The Nos Lowen movement, which started in the year 2000, is important in this study because it has expanded and newly interpreted the concepts of ‘traditional’, ‘Celtic’ and ‘authentic’.

To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book’s contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.