St Cecilia’s Hall: Russell Collection of Keyboard Instruments and concert, Edinburgh

St Cecilia’s Hall is located in the Old Town and can be difficult to find.  It is near the junction of Cowgate and Niddry Street and tucked “up a side close”.  There are many cobblestones on the way and as Cowgate runs below all the bridges –George IV Bridge and South Bridge - the approach from north or south means a descent on lots of stairs or a trundle down the setts (cobblestones).

St Cecilia’s Hall is Edinburgh’s first purpose-built concert hall and the Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall are active in promoting the hall, collections of musical instruments and the recordings made on the instruments.  They also organise attractive and varied concerts. 

The University of Edinburgh houses many collections of musical instruments and on show is the Russell Collection of harpsichords and other keyboard instruments.  I was able to be taken round the collection, said to be one of the largest in the world.

The harpsichords are beautifully displayed with examples of a Vermeer or a Rubens which had inspired the lid of the instrument.  This is similar to the paintings on cassone in Florence.  Many of the harpsichords were made in Antwerp and the craftsmen were able to commission top artists to paint the lids with oil paints and the soundboards in watercolour.  Flemish and Dutch paintings were used as inspiration for many of the landscapes and scenes.  Vermeer’s pictures such as The Lady at a Virginal or Lady with Guitar hint at something other than courtly love, and the lids of these instruments suggest things may have gone even further - a common theme in Flemish and Dutch art.

The keyboards are also interesting and the captions when read out are very informative about how a clavichord, spinet, virginal and harpsichord work in theory. 

On show are many stringed instruments such as a massive theorbo, harps, guitars, banjos as well as more conventional ones.

Postcards are available and include pictures of:

a virginal from 1668 by S. Keene

a French spinet from 1680

detail of a painted soundboard with the aperture quite noticeable from a single-manual harpsichord by I Ruckers, 1637

Bent-side decoration of a double-manual harpsichord by L Baillon from 1755

Double-manual harpsichord by P Taskin from 1769

Two cards illustrating features on my peripheral vision with the curve and lines of the harpsichords: a soundboard of two-manual harpsichord by Ioannes Ruckers, Antwerp, from 1638; and a single-manual harpsichord with Venetian Swell by John Broadwood, London, from 1793

Soundboard Rose in Parchment from Ottavino or Octave Spinet by Petrus Michael Orlandus, Italy, from 1710

Square piano by Andrew Rochead, Edinburgh from 1805

Painting on Flap Lid of two-manual harpsichord by Andreas Ruckers the Elder, Antwerp, from 1608

I also purchased a cd of recordings of music played on some of the instruments from the Russell Collection.  Many technical notes on the mechanism and even the tuning frequency are provided.  The harpsichords are tuned at A=415 rather than the modern A=440.

What better way to enjoy the collection than to attend a concert showing off the work of the Friends. 

Concert Saturday 18^th August, 2012

The Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall has recitals on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons during the Festivals.  I went to one entitled European Odyssey given by the Eden Ensemble.  This featured works by various composers focussing on the guitar.  There were several duets with viola and with piano-forte and to conclude all three played a work by Rudolf Straube (1717-1785).  Apart from Telemann and Giuliani, the others were unfamiliar and included Marin Marais, Benedetto Marcello and Ferdinando Carulli. 

The guitarist, Stephen Morrison, played a guitar from the 19^th century.  It was reconstructed from its original parts, having fallen apart.  It is believed to have been made in London by “a French luthier”. 

The pianist was Susan Macleod, who introduced the piano-forte.  This has a wooden frame and not a steel frame and was built around 1805-1810 by Thomas Loud.  (At this point, a memory of Gerald Moore, the famous accompanist, who would always ask of those he was accompanying: Am I too loud?)  This piano-forte was certainly well-tempered as it had to be re-tuned and it was fascinating listening to the re-tuning of this instrument during the interval in the recital.  I was reminded of the scene in Watt by Samuel Beckett of the blind piano tuner.   Susan MacLeod had mentioned that it needed constant re-tuning, as did the guitar. 

The viola player, April Randall, not only accompanied the guitarist, but had to play almost all the bass line in the final trio as the piano-forte tinkled rather than providing a continuum bass line. 

This was a very enjoyable concert and a chance to mix with some of the Friends of St Cecila’s Hall.  We also ran into people who had been sitting in front of us at Greyfriars Kirk during the Iestyn Davies and Arcangelo recital from two days earlier. (  http://www.eif.co.uk/news/arcangelo-and-iestyn-davies-festival-blogger-review )

The Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall and Russell Collection: http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/friends/

Friends of St Cecilia’s Hall and Museum: www.stceciliasfriends.org.uk

The University of Edinburgh – St Cecilia’s Hall Museum of Instruments: http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/sch/index.html

Information on Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Instruments: http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/index.html#u

For details of 17^th Century Dutch paintings in the Torrie Collection at the Talbot Rice Gallery visit my post on: http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/dutch-paintings-part-2-torrie.html

Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Edinburgh

Update: 30/8/2012

My second visit to the Portrait Gallery.  Having been inspired to visit Pitlessie in Fife on account of the painting by Sir David Wilkie of Pitlessie Fair, it seemed appropriate to visit the painting again.  On reaching the second floor, we were offered help and on mentioning the trip I’d made to Fife, discussed the painting with a member of staff. 

We then explored the first floor and there is a selection of portraits of scientists.  There are also activity ideas for children including a selection of cards which attempt to engage them with what they have seen.  One is concerned with a portrait of Peter Higgs and the Higgs boson.  The portrait is exhibited along with a picture of formulae on a blackboard.  Another activity card concerns John Logie Baird, “the first person to publicly demonstrate television.”   A third card shows the death mask of Dolly the sheep, who was cloned at the Roslin Institute. 

There is a small exhibition of paintings by John Lavery who was commissioned to paint pictures of the River Forth and some of the defence installations during the First World War.  These include:

The Firth of Forth, September 1917

The Fleet: a misty day, Firth of Forth

The Forth Bridge

The Firth of Forth: Wind

The Air Station: North Queensferry

The Naval Base, Granton

A Deck Hand, North Sea Patrol, Leith

The Aerodome, East Fortune, 1918

Rosyth, the Principal Base of the Grand Fleet, 1918

The American Battle squadron in the Firth of Forth, 1918

Lavery also produced a painting titled German Naval Surrender.  Apparently, unknown to the German officers who had surrendered the German fleet, Lavery was present at the scene dressed in uniform.  The German fleet was later scuppered in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands to the north of the mainland of Scotland.

The bookshop is well worth a search for interesting items.  I bought Portrait of the Nation: an introduction to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.  This has a two page spread of Stornoway Harbour which featured an improvement in the form of a herring based industry and incomers with cattle and sheep.  This was also a port from which many islanders emigrated forming the diaspora found all over the world. 

The gallery has innovative ways of ‘looking’ at the people who have arrived and left Scotland, and even leaving a mark whether in history, science or the landscape itself. 

 

30^th July 2012

Growing up in Edinburgh, this Queen Street Museum (the locals used this name to differentiate it from the Chambers Street Museum) housed Scottish Antiquities as well as the National Portrait collection.  From memory we were much more interested in the gruesome guillotine in the historical section than some of the portraits.  We were marched down in school groups and got as much Scottish History as was available only in primary school. My recollection of history and art appreciation at secondary school was more about the US Civil War and WW1 and modern art (this was the 1960s).

With a major investment in the museums and galleries sectors within Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland, the building in Queen Street has been refurbished within and retains an almost neo-gothic appeal, with a nod to King Ludwig and the Marquis of Bute. 

Prof Whitestick outside the entrance to

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Queen St, Edinburgh

30 July 2012

We entered from the York Place, Queen Street end and there is construction work here on the roads.  Take care and keep close to the wall of the Portrait Gallery as you are walking up a ramp and soon a flight of stairs will appear on the right.  If entering from the other side tap the wall. 

At the door a guard indicated the information desk and I asked about general facilities and access for visually impaired people.  The desk contacted Meg Faragher, SNPG Learning Coordinater and has coordination role across the NGS portfolio.  I explained about my familiarity with some of the collection before I lost my sight and while could do the contextual analysis of the Scottish historical aspect, I was unable to see much of the detail. 

We discussed other galleries and I was told that the Edinburgh galleries have started installing Tablet information touchscreens with a pair of listening posts.  They have also invested in quite a lot of recorded audio description but funding for linking this to an accessible format has delayed the roll out at Queen Street. 

Meg had a list of events in large print format for visually impaired people and there is a good programme outside the peak summer.  However, The Drawing Room has been discontinued "due to low take-up".  Getting through to the various visually impaired demographics is difficult.  I have heard these comments in London, mainly when a programme has been disrupted through rebuilding, funds and staff changes. 

Prof Whitestick with Robert Burns

Great Hall

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

30 July 2012

That said we found the shop a real Alladin’s Cave with many books on various subjects which the National Galleries of Scotland had covered over the years.  We took the lift (a huge transporter/elevator) to the 3^rd floor and found ourselves staring at Mary Queen of Scots. 

At this point Heather, who had been at the desk, offered to go round the Reformation to Revolution Gallery (1).  This was a real treat and we discussed the characters from James IV to Queen Anne.  These include many “Parcels of Rogues-Burns” and we found a lot of features to talk about: the detail of Henry Lord Darnley, including his sword and feather in his bonnet; the pictures of Mary Queen of Scots as a widow in white mourning after the death of her first husband (she had three) and Mary of Guise, her mother.

Much of the popular knowledge of Mary can be summed up by Liz Lochhead’s poetry, and there is the (ghastly) book written by Antonia Fraser.  Many of the staff in galleries live with these paintings on a daily basis and I found Heather a mine of information on the detail.  For example, I could not make out the sparrowhawk in the hand of the young James VI (it is above a portrait of George Buchanan).  Heather was able to anticipate the unfolding of the history as portrayed in these pictures.  It was fascinating to hear this from another Scot; we probably had put the context of symbology, history and rewriting of Scottish history together in our own ways.  There was a fascinating BBCRadio3 Nightwaves programme which came from the gallery.  Robert Crawford summed up the context best in my opinion. 

This was my first visit to the refurbished gallery and now that I have re-familiarised myself with the building and found some very old chums (pictures), I look forward to dropping in again.  The guards have tartan uniforms and I found many of them knowledgeable about their own favourites.  Last year I had spent a whole day going round Modern1 and Modern2 and at less busy times it is usually possible to find some interesting painting, sculpture or other information. 

Many thanks to Meg and Heather for making my first visit so interesting and enjoyable.

These notes were compiled by my companion who noted down some old chums, surprises (Stornoway) and a new take on Renaissance Scotland and the Enlightenment. Lead extraction and production based on the Leadhills deposits are shown in 4 pictures.  Improvements in agriculture, manufacture and fisheries are painted and shown with the characters who initiated the 18^th Century improvements. 

The view of Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides (Western Isles) is the first known picture of this natural harbour.  I have often sailed in and out of Stornoway from Ullapool, also an example of a model village for fisheries.  Pitlessie Fair by Sir David Wilkie was an unexpected treasure.  Not long before I lost my sight I read an article about pictures of places from the past, juxtaposed with photographs of what they were now.  I remember driving my father to Pitlessie, having lunch in the pub in the painting and wandering around the village.  It is on a road from the M90 towards Falkland, Cupar and St Andrews (Fife)

Prof Whitestick in The Village Inn, Pitlessie with

copy of Pitlessie Fair by Sir David Wilkie

Pitlessie, Scotland

28 August 2012

View of Pitlessie Green

(location of Pitlessie Fair by Sir David Wilkie)

Pitlessie, Scotland

28 August 2012

Gallery 1 – Reformation to Revolution

Mary, Queen of Scots (The Cobham Portrait)

Pierre Oudry 1578

Sir James Balfour (1600-1657) after 1630

PG 1551

James VI

Artist unknown

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782) 1794

David Martin

PG 822

Gallery 3 – John Slezer: A Survey of Scotland

View of Stirling Castle c1670

Jan Vosterman

NGL 001.99

Seton Palace and the Firth of Forth c1639

Alexander Keirincx

PG2696

The Bass Rock – The East Syde of the Bass” c1693

Engraving

Rosslyn Chapel – The Chappell of Rosslin before 1693

Engraving

Gallery 7 - The Age of Improvement

A View of Stornoway

1798

James Barret

PG3291

Lead Processing at Leadhills 1780s

David Allan

Four paintings:

Pounding the Ore – NG 2834

Washing the Ore – NG 2835

Smelting the Ore – NG 2836

Weighing the Lead Bars – NG 2837

Pitlessie Fair 1804

Sir David Wilkie

NG 1527

Books bought include:

The Intimate Portrait by Stephen Lloyd & Kim Sloan

Warhol – a celebration of life … and death by Keith Hartley

Gerhard Richter – Paintings from Private Collections edited by Gotz Adriani

The Discovery of Spain: Goya to Picasso

Postcards bought include:

James VI and I 1566-1625, King of Scotland 1567-1625.  King of England and Ireland 1603-1625 (as a boy) about 1574

Arnold Bronckorst (active 1565/6-1583)

Oil on panel 45.7 x 30.6 cm

Purchased 1925

PG992

James VI and I 1595

Adrian Vanson (1581-1602)

Oil on panel 72.9 x 62.3 cm

Purchased 1886

PG156

Prince Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807) c1746-47

Maurice-Quentin de la Tour (1704-1788)

Pastel on paper 61 x 51 cm

Purchased with aid of the Art Fund 1994

PG2954

Lady Arabella Stuart (c1588-1615) c 1605

Robert Peake (c1551-1619)

Oil on panel 90.2 x 70.4 cm

Purchased 1884

PG9

Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley 1545-67

Consort of Mary, Queen of Scots

by Hans Eworth 1555

oil on canvas 70.4 x 55.2 cm

bought 1980

You can get more information about the Portrait Gallery's Access Programme for the visually impaired at http://www.nationalgalleries.org/education/access-programmes/

More general information about the gallery is available on the following links:

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/portraitgallery/

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/visit/introduction-298

Visit to Newhailes, by Edinburgh

Newhailes is on the outskirts of Edinburgh and way beyond the London Freedom Pass boundary.  If you travel to Edinburgh by train you will pass it and it is only a short distance from the A1.  Newhailes is a house well worth visiting and it is not on the tourist trail.  I didn’t go here on my own, but it’s technically possible to get there by public transport as the Number 30 bus passes by.  Railway stations are Musselburgh and Newcraighall, which can be reached from the main Edinburgh station.  The visitor centre is located in the stables area and includes a shop, cafe and the usual facilities. 

New Hailes House

Newhailes is a beautiful house which is based on a design by James Smith, a Scottish architect and businessman who had studied at the Scots College in Rome before giving up any chances of becoming a priest and fathered possibly 32 children.  When in Rome he had come across the villa designs of Palladio and the first house on the Newhailes site, built in c1686, faced north towards the Forth estuary. 

The location of Newhailes is at the extreme south eastern corner of Edinburgh and the property is near the main London to Edinburgh railway line, former coal mining villages and the ancient burgh of Musselburgh.  Technically the property is in East Lothian.  As a child I would travel along the Newhailes Road, which skirted outlying districts of Edinburgh on the way to an ice-cream shop known locally as Luca.  At the time, I was oblivious as to what lay behind the walls of a very dull road which emerged at the Fisher Row Harbour, where I learnt sea-fishing or rather failed to learn. 

James Smith, the original owner, was forced to sell the house as a result of a business failure with a mining investment.  Mining was an important activity at the time and many of the large houses in the area and around Edinburgh were built on coal mining in the Midlothian and East Lothian coal fields.  With the ending of deep coal mining in the Lothians, there has been some regeneration of the former villages and the adjacent village of Newcraighall has a huge retail park – Fort Kinnaird and Kinnaird Park - connected to it, a regenerated railway line, a marina nearby and there are great plans for the Newhailes estate as a whole. 

The house was gifted to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) in 1997.  The Trust purchased the contents of the house from money raised from grants, fundraising appeals and arm-twisting  and within the last few years has been able to open the house to the public.  The result is a real gem and one which contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18^th centrury through the Dalrymple family, which included Lord Stair and Lord Hailes.   

Lord Hailes or Sir David Dalrymple was a Lord of Justiciary in the 18^th century and a prominent figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.  Sir David was the fifth son of the 1^st Viscount of Stair while Sir David’s older brother John was the 1^st Earl of Stair and was Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Advocate and Secretary of State over a distinguished career.  Lord Stair is the writer most cited in Scots Law when trying to prove a point.  However, this is way beyond the brief of this blog. 

In the 17^th and 18^th century, there was a lot of political intrigue in Edinburgh following the two unions with England and the two Jacobite “uprisings”.  The Dalrymple family, being lawyers, were usually on the right side of events and though the house had a major refit and reorientation in c1730, it remained more or less unchanged over the years before it came into the guardianship of the NTS. 

There are thus many original features such as wrought iron railings, stairways fireplaces, carvings, furnishings, paintings and bookcases (the books are at the National Library of Scotland so the bookcases are bare).   Shortage of money prevented any wholesale modernisation through the years so the house offers an original look at 17^th century Scotland and of a family who, while not at the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment, were certainly in correspondence with and knew the likes of David Hume, Adam Smith etc.    The house also has works by famous painters such as Alan Ramsay.

I went round the house on a guided tour last year and at the weekend went back.  I was greeted with “I remember you from last year!” and my luck was in as I had another tour of the house from Jenny, who had guided me the year before.  We met in the stables and walked to the southern aspect of the house.  I could make out the Palladian lines of the original house and the ‘wings’ which were added by the Dalrymples in c1730.  I then walked up the entrance stairway and Jenny remarked that the wrought iron railings were original and had not been renovated but that the fine filigree work, though rusty, had nonetheless worn well. 

View from grounds at New Hailes House across Forth to Fife

© Professor Whitestick

The house is located on the raised beach which separates Edinburgh from the coastal fringes of Leith, Portobello and Joppa, so that there is a view of the Forth estuary and the hills of Fife which I could just about make out - though admittedly I am familiar with the landscape.  The rooms boast a lot of fine plasterwork which was crafted in 1742 by Thomas Clayton and features many scallop shells.  I found that I could make out many of the geometric lines in the plasterwork and carvings throughout the house in much the same way as I could in a Robert Adam property, though Newhailes predates Robert Adam by a few decades.  In the dining room, which is in the older part of the house, there is some original 17^th century panelling, which again I could make out.  Fireplaces in Newhailes are one of the major attractions, with both the fireplace decoration and the grates made locally.

The library wing of the house was completed in 1722 by Sir David Dalrymple and this is a stunning piece of architecture with furnishings to match and a fine Italian chimney piece.  The library housed so many books that it indicated both the influence and knowledge of the owner of the house and was doubtless a status symbol at the time.  The bookcases are bereft of books and this allows examination of the unique structure of the bookcases which surround virtually all of the wall space.  This is not something that you would buy in the nearby retail park, fit on top of a roof rack and then assemble with an allen key at home!

The Great Apartment mirrors the library wing.  In the dining room, there are Ionic columns which have wooden fluting round the supporting pillars illustrating the extension from Smith’s original villa into the 1730s expansion.  There is another fantastic chimney piece in the adjacent drawing room and so now I’m becoming an ‘expert’ in 18^th century chimney pieces as well as tactile crossings and movable bus shelters! 

The tour continues with two stairways of different designs and one can tap ones way down and feel the banister going up and down.  There is an opportunity to go backstairs within the house and visit the kitchen in the basement.  This has remained unchanged since the 1950s and was originally sealed as the kitchens were usually the cause of fire in the 18^th century.  The house is exited via a servants’ tunnel and I returned to the stables. 

The visit was a real treat and it was very kind of Jenny and the other staff who had remembered me from the year before.  If you are in the Edinburgh area and you have given up on the overrun tourist sites in the city, I would recommend that you persuade someone to take you to Newhailes.  There are other houses worth exploring in and around Edinburgh and I hope to be reporting on these in due course.  Again, many thanks to Jenny, who is normally on duty on a Sunday afternoon. 

Useful websites:

National Trust for Scotland: http://www.nts.org.uk/Home/

Newhailes : http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/47/

Local transport: http://lothianbuses.com/

 

I have recently posted on Hailes Castle.  Lord Hailes took his title from this estate.  The post is linked here: http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/hailes-castle-east-lothian-historic.html  A branch of the Dalrymple family is based at Oxenfoord Castle in Midlothian and I have included a brief discussion and picture of Oxenfoord Castle in a post on Walks in Midlothian: http://profwhitestick.blogspot.com/2012/02/all-weather-walks-in-edinburgh-area.html


 

© Professor Whitestick