Album: Orpheus Caledonius, 1725

Album Summary: William Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius (1725) was a landmark publication; the first ever large-scale collection of "Scotch Songs" in print — 50 songs arranged with un-figured bass, most with lyrics from Allan Ramsay's Scots Songs and Tea-Table Miscellany, plus an appendix of melodic reductions. It was an instant hit and in 1733, expanded into 2 volumes with 100 songs. Indeed, Thomson's Orpheus set the standard format for Scots Song settings for the rest of the eighteenth century, including those of Robert Burns in The Scots Musical Museum. This ScotMus.com album is a faithful reprint of the song arrangements from the historic 1st edition of 1725.

Edition Notes: This album is a literal transcription from the official online digital facsimile at the National Library of Scotland, whose music and I.T. staff I'd like to take this opportunity to thank for making this important source available to the world. My edition faithfully reproduces all 50 of this 1st edition's songs. However, at least for the time being, I chose to omit Thomson's appendix of the tunes arranged as simpler instrumental solos (more on these below). The practical consideration here is one of how much web-server space I can currently afford for the project. However, more space will have to be bought at some point soon, so, once I've also got a wider range of albums online, I'll return to the Orpheus and add the 50 instrumental solos, too.

One thing singers will soon notice is that, unlike modern vocal scores, early eighteenth century lyrics aren't necessarily all type-set by splitting words into single syllable-to-note alignments. However, you soon realise that there's generally only one logical solution for which syllable actually can be sung on which note, and that Thomson's word-settings therefore do make sense, once you've taken the time to work them out. And when you do, you find that the general rule to follow here, at least in Thomson's case, is that syllables carried over multiple notes are indicated by slurs (the curved lines connecting two or more notes). A good case in point here is at the start of "The Lass of Paties Mill" (Track No.1), where the two-syllable word, "Paties" isn't typographically split, but whose 1st syllable is to be sung across 2 slurred quavers (ie. "Pa-a_") followed by the 2nd syllable on 1 crotchet (ie. "_ties"). The same rule can be applied to almost all other cases in the Orpheus, although the guiding slurs seem to have been missed out in a few cases, presumably as an editorial oversight on Thomson's part (as usual, I've faithfully reproduced all of the source's errors, too! — also see my notes on Playford's Scotch-Tunes regarding "incorrect" section-endings in Early Modern scores).

For my audio realisations, I've opted for the extreme coward's solution (at least for the time being). Thomson, of course, scores his songs for unspecified voice + an even more instrumentally-vague bass part. Technically, this apparently-"simple" bass line is, like any eighteenth century bass from anywhere in Europe, a "thorough-bass" part. And although thorough-bass parts were written as single-line basses, the standard contemporary instrumentation that they conventionally imply (unless otherwise stated) is generally a chordal instrument — most commonly, the harpsichord or spinet (or even the "chamber" organ, pedal-harp, various ancestors of the guitar, etc.; with the piano entering the scene in the late C18th). The trick is that the keyboardist (or other) was expected to provide their own chordal fills above the thorough-bass, according to well-understood conventional harmonic rules. Indeed, learning the rules of such semi-improvised harmony constituted a major part of learning most chordal instruments (especially keyboard) — all accomplished accompanists knew how to do it, which is one reason it wasn't necessary for composers, arrangers or editors to include the full chords in their scores. So, to be absolutely historically-"authentic", I'd have had to work out appropriate chord fills for the whole album — which takes a lot of time. What's worse is that Thomson's bass part is un-"figured", which means that he doesn't bother supplying the kind of Baroque "chord symbols" above his bass parts that many other arrangers of his time did. So without those kind of handy guidelines already in the scores, this increases the labour-time even further (largely because it instantly multiplies the number of theoretically-possible solutions).

However, thorough-bass lines were often not just played by a keyboardist (or other) alone — they could be accompanied by, for example, a cellist who played just the bare bones of the bass-part as written while the keyboardist played the same bass plus their own vamped fills. Many thorough-bass scores specifically request this. Furthermore, at least in early eighteenth century performance practice, there was still a significant hangover from the previous century of melodies being accompanied by viola de gamba, bass-viol, etc. (the cello's ancestors), without a chordal instrument filling out the harmony. So that's the at least half-baked theory behind the coward's solution I've adopted in my audio realisations for now — a MIDI flute taking the vocal line, and a MIDI cello-y thing taking the bass line, and nothing else. And for most of Thomson's tunes, this seems to work fairly well — I'd even recommend it as one (albeit of several possible alternative) solutions for live performers dealing with the Orpheus. I should probably also add that although it would be perfectly historically-"authentic" to play both melody and bass parts of Thomson's song arrangements as harpsichord solos, to my ear at least, in most of his songs this doesn't actually sound as good as the flute + cello solution I'm currently using. Thomson's melodies seem to be idiomatically-powered by human breath, whether blown through a singing throat, or through a word-less woodwind instrument attached to the end of it.

But why have I chosen the flute for the melody part? Thankfully, I'm on far more solid ground here. As I mentioned above, Thomson included an appendix of instrumental solo arrangements of all 50 tunes, set "For The Flute". However, this isn't as simple as it might first appear. Prior to roughly the 1730s, "flute" can often mean, in fact, the "Baroque" (treble or "alto") recorder. In those days, what we'd call "the flute" was often more specifically called "the German flute" instead, as a way of distinguinging it from "the flute" (recorder). The easiest way to work out which instrument is actually meant is to look at the pitch-range of the score — what we'd call a flute can play down to middle-C, while a treble recorder can only play down to the F above it. And in the case of Thomson's "flute" arrangements here, none of them go below the treble recorder's lowest note (F above middle-C). Intriguingly, though, the pitch-range of his vocal arrangements of the 50 songs has its lowest note as middle-C, which makes them impossible to play on the treble recorder, but perfectly within the range of what we'd call "the flute". So both instruments seem to be catered for (at least in theory). And, significantly, in the 2nd edition of Orpheus Caledonius (1733), Thomson re-works his "flute" (recorder) arrangements for "The German Flute" (modern flute), which by that time was beginning to overtake the treble recorder as a popular woodwind instrument. So — whichever way you look at it, Thomson clearly has the modern flute in mind as an instrumental option for the Orpheus, from the start. However, even modern descant recorder--players shouldn't necessarily feel excluded from any of the Orpheus arrangements — the ("German") flute range of Thomson's 1st edition vocal versions also fits on the descant recorder we're more familiar with these days (like the modern flute, its lowest [written] note is middle-C), which he might also have had in mind as another viable option in the 1725 edition I've reproduced here.

Overall, the obvious lesson to be learned from all of this is that it's entirely "within the rules" to adapt early eighteenth century albums like Thomson's Orpheus to pretty-much any instrumental forces that work for you. Above all else, what counts is the tunes — and, perhaps most importantly of all, the tunes with or without the bass part. The only real "rule" is: feel free to do whatever sounds good!

* Ramsay Note: Thomson's songs that I've labelled Ramsay use or adapt lyrics written or printed by Allan Ramsay in his Tea-Table Miscellany (1724). Thomson himself didn't make any of these "borrowings" clear in Orpheus Caledonius (1725). Ramsay, however, provided a detailed key to his own sources, by means of a labelling system in his Contents section, which I have adopted above:

The following marked C, D, H, L, M, O, &c. are new Words by different Hands, X, the Authors unknown; Z, old songs; Q. old songs with Additions. (Ramsay 1724, 179)

Ramsay omits one important label here: "I" for The Gaberlunzie-Man (Thomson No.43). Presumably, this letter refers to the traditional attribution of this song to one or other King James (Iames / Iacobus), and Ramsay no doubt assumed his readers would know this.

Overall, the main point is that the tunes I've marked simply as "(Ramsay)", without any additional label, were lyrics claimed by Ramsay as his own work, while those with an additional letter-label were printed by Ramsay, but either written by someone else or claimed to be traditional.

† Riccio Note: Thomson's attribution of 7 melodies to the sixteenth century Italian musician, David Riccio ("David Rezzio") is notoriously spurious (although perhaps bears further investigation). Nonetheless, it seems to have given rise to an infamous C18th tradition of such attributions of tunes to the alleged tragic lover of Mary, Queen of Scots. No doubt this Romantic association was good for sales — not least within the gullible London market. Of course, the Mary & Riccio story is still one of the most lucrative brands we flog in order to mercilessly fleece the modern tourist market. Thomson was just the first great pioneer of this particular brand.