SCOTTISH MUSIC. Scotland is famed for a class Of national airs of a peculiar style and structure, possessing a wild, dignified, strongly marked, and expressive character. They are generally considered to be of great antiquity; the few notes on which the oldest of them turn, and the character of the modulation, lead to 04 inference that they originated at a time when the musical scale and musical instruments of the country wem in a rude state; but there is a deficiency of evidence regarding their early history. No musical MS. of Scottish airs is now known to exist of an older date than 1627; and we have no knowledge when and by whom the early Scottish melodies were composed, or how long they continued to be handed down traditionally from generation to generation. i They may not improbably have been committed to notation in the 15th and 16th cen turies; and their disappearance is not wonderful, when we take into account, first, the strong measures resorted to, about 1530, by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities, to put own all ballads reflecting on the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and afterward the ill will shown by the now dominant Presbyterians toward worldly amusements, including not a few that were entirely innocent. The most valuable of now existing early collec tions of Scotch melodies is the Skene MS., in the Advocates' library, noted down by sir John Skene of Hallyards about the year 1630. It contains a number of native airs, mixed with some foreign dance-tunes—upwards of a hundred in all. Many of the Scotch melodies differ considerably from the more modern versions, presenting in general a ruder outline; but often exhibiting beauties which the changes these airs have subse quently undergone have only tended to destroy.
Among the peculiarities which give its character to the music of Scotland, the most prominent is the prevalent omission of the fourth and seventh of the scale, and ccnsc quent absence of semitones, giving rise to such melodiC forms as E- I — • a./ Passages of this kind occur in all the airs of Scotland which hav9 any claim to popu larity, and form one of their most recognizable features. Anothc, characteristic is the substitution of the descending for the ascending sixth and seventh in the minor scale, as at the beginning of the air called Adele, Dundee, in the Skene MS.:
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A very prevalent course of modniation is an alternation between the major key and its relative minor, the melody thus ever keeping true to the diatonic scale of the principal key, without the introduction of accidentals. An air will often begin in the major 1:ey, and end in the relative minor, or the reverse. The closing note is l;y no means nieces sadly the key-note, a peculiarity especially remarkable in the Highland airs, which, if in a major key, most frequently terminate in the second; if in a minor, on the seventh. Closes are also to be found on the third, Milt, and sixth. The pecularities of modula tion of the music of Scotland have something in common with the modes of ancient ecclesiastical music, to which it may be more correctly said to belong, than to the modern major and minor keys; and the avoidance of the fourth and seventh may have origin ated in the imperfection of the ancient wind instruments; yet these peculiarities are not to be found in the national airs of other countries where ecclesiastical music may he supposed to have had the same influence, and the early instruments to have been equally imperfect.
Among the more modern printed collections of Scottish melodies words, the most important are George Thomson's collection, with symphonies and accompaniments by Pleyol, fozelctch, Haydn. Beethoven. Hummel. and Weher (vols. i.—iv„ 1793-1805; vol. v. and vol. vi. 1841). one di feature of which was the appearance of Burns's words conjoined with the old melodies of the ectnntry ; and a more recent col lection in 3 vols , published by Messrs. Wood 4.t Co , and edited, with historical, bio graphical, and critical notes. by Mr. G. F. Graham (1848-49).
On the subject of Scottish music generally, reference is made to Danney's Ancient Seottish AIPlodie.4 from a XS. (f the Reign of King James VI, with an introductory Inquiry Blustratire of the History of th Music of Scotland (Edin. 1838).