Well, the last few months have been a little silent - apologies! Shortly after Christmas, we discovered that our landlord was planning to sell our flat (after moving in less than a year before), and offered to sell it to us. We decided to give it a go, although it was incredibly unlikely that would manage to get a mortgage post-Truss with our complicated income-streams and a recent change of job for

Well, December got rather busy! Concert life was naturally a bit hectic at the beginning of the month with my group Ensemble Hesperi, and then I had a bit of an energy crash afterwards. But, as everything quietened down this week, and e-mail traffic has died down, I've finally been able to spend a few peaceful days at home, with the Christmas tree and my PhD.  This week, I've been planning a

Well, just as I started this blog in earnest, life got extremely busy! Last Wednesday I hoped to write a post on the train from London to Perthshire, but other pressing matters arose, mainly last minute practical changes to the itinerary of our mini-Scottish tour – and I was, for my sins, tour organiser! All was well in the end, and I write this from the car on the long drive home after three fantastic

My friends and colleagues have recently asked me some rather awkward questions, along the lines of: How is the PhD going? When do you finish your PhD? When can I read your PhD?  I'm delighted that they're so interested, and not particularly surprised: after all, I started my degree just before the pandemic - three long years have passed - and it is absolutely reasonable to wonder when I will have

My last day in Edinburgh. In fact, as I write, I'm on the train back to London. I have been awake now for 37 hours. Last night, I didn't sleep; not one wink. Not dozing in and out of sleep, getting an hour here and there, but genuinely wide awake all night. I am fortunate to suffer only very rarely from insomnia, and as a result, when it does happen, I am completely ill-equipped to counteract it. I

Today, after a slightly reluctant awakening, I headed to the Edinburgh University Library, which is a 40-minute walk from my flat, all of it uphill! The Special Collections is on the sixth floor of the main library, and by this point I was thankful for the lift... I had never been to Edinburgh University before, and really loved the campus: actually, I felt quite relieved to be on a university campus

Today, I rose at 6.30am to take a relatively early train to Dundee, to visit the Wighton Collection of National Music. This is the finest collection of Scottish printed music (over 620 volumes), the vast majority of which was collected by the 19th century Dundee-based merchant, Andrew Wighton. A lifelong and dedicated antiquarian, he was exceptionally knowledgeable about Scottish music, and was able

Apologies for the radio silence: non-work-related life events rather overtook me over the last few days, and I have only just surfaced. But I have been itching all weekend to write about my visit to National Library of Scotland on Friday. I had a 5 hour slot there: once I had signed up for a library card (I am going to have to buy a new wallet to carry all my library and archive cards), I headed up

Well, that's the National Records done! I'm exhausted, and quite frankly I never wish to see another receipt as long as I live. So many purchases! It's very odd to be examining receipts for exceptionally mundane items nearly three hundred years after the event. Not that they were all mundane, of course. I learnt, in passing, that the Duke of Buccleuch and his family spent a lot of money in the 1780s

Well, it's getting on for 10pm here, and I have only just started today's entry. That's because I have spent the last five hours labelling all the photographs of the items I have consulted so far at the National Records. As I was whipping through them at a rate of knots, my notes are very brief, and I knew I had to do it now or risk forgetting the details completely, rendering the entire visit useless!

Today has been a strange day, and in fact it began thus. I slept badly, woken up periodically by the heat and by sirens outside on the road, then by my own half-anxious thoughts. To tempt sleep, I listened to an episode of "In and Out of the Kitchen", a ten-year-old BBC radio comedy about a cookery writer, Damien Trench, his partner Anthony, agent Ian, their builder Mr Mullaney, and other characters

For the last year and a bit, I haven't travelled much alone, and certainly not for more than a day or two. In fact, like most of the rest of the world, I haven't gone anywhere at all, and when I have, it has usually been with my husband or musical colleagues. Now, after a busy week with my family in Aberdeen (whom I hadn't seen in person since Christmas 2019) I find myself rather startled to be flying

Hello, everyone! I'm M-J (Mary-Jannet sometimes, but never just Mary!) and I'm a Scottish professional musician based in London. Over the years, I've studied both music (mainly Historical Performance) and Ancient History, and now, I'm incredibly lucky to have an AHRC studentship to study for a PhD at the University of Southampton. There I'm studying the music of composers that I love to perform - London-based