Music of Scotland
is internationally known for its traditional music, often known as Scottish folk music, which remained vibrant throughout the 20th century and into the 21st when many traditional forms worldwide lost popularity to pop music. Traditional Scottish music comprises a variety of different styles such as ballads, reels, jigs and airs. Traditional Scottish music is closely associated with the bagpipes which is credited as having a prominent role in traditional music originating from the country. The bagpipes are considered an "iconic Scottish instrument" with a history dating back to the 15th century. Other notable Scottish instruments include the tin whistle, the accordion and the fiddle.
The origins of Scottish music are said to have originated over 2,300 years ago following the discovery of Western Europe's first known stringed instrument which was a "lyre-like artefact", which was discovered on the Isle of Skye. The earliest known traces of published Scottish music dates from 1662. John Forbes of Aberdeen published the earliest printed collection of music in Scotland which ultimately became recognised as the first known published collection featuring traditional Scottish songs. Modern contemporary Scottish musicians within popular genres of rock, pop, and dance include Calvin Harris, Paolo Nutini, Amy Macdonald, Lewis Capaldi, Shirley Manson, Lulu, Sheena Easton, Susan Boyle, KT Tunstall, Emeli Sande, and Nina Nesbitt. Successful bands originating from Scotland include Travis, Texas, Simple Minds, the Bay City Rollers, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Fratellis, Glasvegas and the Cocteau Twins.
Music in Scotland is celebrated and recognised in a variety of different methods such as music festivals and award ceremonies. The countries major music festival, TRNSMT replaced the former T in the Park, and is held annually in July in Glasgow Green. Other music festivals include Celtic Connections, Eden Festival, Glasgow Summer Sessions, the Skye Live Festival and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Scottish music is celebrated through awards such as the Scottish Album of the Year Award, the Scots Trad Music Awards, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards and the Scottish Music Awards.
Early music
have been known in Scotland since at least the Iron Age. The first evidence of lyres was found in the Greco-Roman period on the Isle of Skye, making it Europe's oldest surviving stringed instrument. Bards acted as musicians but also as poets, storytellers, historians, genealogists, and lawyers, relying on an oral tradition that stretched back generations in Scotland as well as Wales and Ireland. Often accompanying themselves on the harp, they can be seen in records of Scottish courts throughout the medieval period. Scottish church music from the later Middle Ages was increasingly influenced by continental developments, with figures like the 13th-century musical theorist Simon Tailler studying in Paris before returning to Scotland, where he introduced several reforms of church music. Scottish collections of music, like the 13th-century "Wolfenbüttel 677", which is associated with St Andrews, contain mostly French compositions but with some distinctive local styles. The captivity of James I in England from 1406 to 1423, where he earned a reputation as a poet and composer, may have led him to bring English and continental styles and musicians back to the Scottish court on his release. In the late 15th century, a series of Scottish musicians trained in the Netherlands before returning home, including John Broune, Thomas Inglis and John Fety. The latter became master of the song school in Aberdeen and then Edinburgh, introducing the new five-fingered organ playing technique.In 1501 James IV re-founded the Chapel Royal within Stirling Castle with a new and enlarged choir and it became the focus of Scottish liturgical music. Burgundian and English influences were probably reinforced when Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor married James IV in 1503. James V was a major patron of music. A talented lute player, he introduced French chansons and consorts of viols to his court and was patron to composers such as David Peebles.
The Scottish Reformation, directly influenced by Calvinism, was generally opposed to church music, leading to the removal of organs and a growing emphasis on metrical psalms, including a setting by David Peebles commissioned by James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray. The most important work in Scottish reformed music was probably A Form of Prayers, published in Edinburgh in 1564. The return in 1561 from France of James V's daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, renewed the Scottish court as a centre of musical patronage and performance. The Queen played the lute and virginals and, unlike her father, was a fine singer. She brought many influences from the French court where she had been educated, employing lutenists and viola players in her household. Mary's position as a Catholic gave a new lease of life to the choir of the Scottish Chapel Royal in her reign, but the destruction of Scottish church organs meant that instrumentation to accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors.
The outstanding Scottish composer of the era was Robert Carver whose works included the nineteen-part motet 'O Bone Jesu'. James VI, King of Scotland from 1567, was a major patron of the arts in general. He rebuilt the Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1594, and the choir was used for state occasions like the baptism of his son Henry. He followed the tradition of employing lutenists for his private entertainment, as did other members of his family. When he came south to take the throne of England in 1603 as James I, he removed one of the major sources of patronage in Scotland. The Scottish Chapel Royal was now used only for occasional state visits, as when Charles I returned in 1633 to be crowned, bringing many musicians from the English Chapel Royal for the service, it began to fall into disrepair. From now on the court in Westminster would be the only major source of royal musical patronage.
Folk music
There is evidence that there was a flourishing culture of popular music in Scotland during the late Middle Ages, but the only song with a melody to survive from this period is the Pleugh Song. After the Reformation, the secular popular tradition of music continued, despite attempts by the Kirk, particularly in the Lowlands, to suppress dancing and events like penny weddings. This period saw the creation of the ceòl mór of the bagpipe, which reflected its martial origins with battle tunes, marches, gatherings, salutes, and laments. The Highlands in the early seventeenth century saw the development of piping families, including the MacCrimmonds, MacArthurs, MacGregors and Mackays of Gairloch. There is also evidence of the adoption of the fiddle in the Highlands, with Martin Martin noting in his A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland that he knew of 18 players in Lewis alone. Well-known musicians included the fiddler Pattie Birnie and the piper Habbie Simpson. This tradition continued into the nineteenth century, with major figures such as the fiddlers Niel and Nathaniel Gow. There is evidence of ballads from this period. Some may date back to the late Medieval era and deal with events and people that can be traced back as far as the thirteenth century. They remained an oral tradition until they were collected as folk songs in the eighteenth century.The earliest printed collection of secular music comes from the seventeenth century. Song collecting began to gain momentum in the early eighteenth century, and as the Kirk's opposition to music waned, there was a flood of publications, including Allan Ramsay's verse compendium The Tea Table Miscellany and The Scots Musical Museum by James Johnson and Robert Burns. In the late nineteenth century, there was renewed interest in traditional music, which was more academic and political in intent. In Scotland collectors included the Reverend James Duncan and Gavin Greig. Major performers included James Scott Skinner. This revival began to have a major impact on classical music, with the development of what was in effect a national school of orchestral and operatic music in Scotland, with composers that included Alexander Mackenzie, William Wallace, Learmont Drysdale, Hamish MacCunn and John McEwen.
File:Runrig, farewell at Stirling, 18-08-2018.jpg|thumb|right|The folk band Runrig sang mostly in Scottish Gaelic and found commercial success in mainland Europe.
After World War II, traditional music in Scotland was marginalized but remained a living tradition. This marginal status was changed by individuals including Alan Lomax, Hamish Henderson and Peter Kennedy through collecting, publications, recordings, and radio programmes. Acts that were popularised included John Strachan, Jimmy MacBeath, Jeannie Robertson and Flora MacNeil. In the 1960s, there was a flourishing folk club culture and Ewan MacColl emerged as a leading figure in the revival in Britain. They hosted traditional performers, including Donald Higgins and the Stewarts of Blairgowrie, alongside English performers and new Scottish revivalists such as Robin Hall, Jimmie Macgregor, The Corries and the Ian Campbell Folk Group. There was also a strand of popular Scottish music that benefited from the arrival of radio and television, which relied on images of Scottishness derived from tartanry and stereotypes employed in music hall and variety. This was exemplified by the TV programme The White Heather Club which ran from 1958 to 1967, hosted by Andy Stewart and starring Moira Anderson and Kenneth McKellar.
The fusing of various styles of American music with British folk created a distinctive form of fingerstyle guitar playing known as folk baroque, pioneered by figures including Davey Graham and Bert Jansch. Others such as Donovan and The Incredible String Band abandoned the traditional element and have been seen as developing psychedelic folk. Acoustic groups who continued to interpret traditional material through into the 1970s included The Tannahill Weavers, Ossian, Silly Wizard, The Boys of the Lough, Battlefield Band, The Clutha and the Whistlebinkies.
Celtic rock developed as a variant of British folk rock by Scottish groups including the JSD Band and Spencer's Feat. Five Hand Reel, who combined Irish and Scottish personnel, emerged as the most successful exponents of the style. From the late 1970s on, the attendance at and numbers of folk clubs began to decrease as new musical and social trends began to dominate. However, in Scotland, the circuit of ceilidhs and festivals helped sustain traditional music. Two of the most successful groups of the 1980s that emerged from this dance band circuit were Runrig and Capercaillie. "An Ubhal as Àirde " by Runrig made history by becoming the first song to be sung in Scottish Gaelic to chart on the UK Singles Charts, peaking at number eighteen on the UK Singles Charts. It also became a top five single for the band in Scotland, debuting at number three on the Scottish Singles Charts. At the height of their success during the 1980s and 1990s, Runrig were described by Billboard as one of the "most celebrated" Gaelic language bands in Scotland.
A by-product of the Celtic Diaspora was the existence of large communities across the world that looked for their cultural roots and identity to their origins in the Celtic nations. From the US, this includes Scottish bands Seven Nations, Prydein and Flatfoot 56. From Canada are bands such as Enter the Haggis, Great Big Sea, The Real McKenzies and Spirit of the West.
Since the early 2000s, Scotland has experienced a growing wave of small acoustic folk duos and instrumental groups blending traditional dance tunes with modern arrangements. This period has seen increased festival activity, independent album releases, and rising international interest in Scottish acoustic folk music.