How Alexander Munro and Charles McLean outsmarted the Italians

So there you are. We’re stuck with allegretto, arioso, adagio, presto, and a whole dictionary more of Italian words. Composers have tried every now and again to replace them with German, French and English, but their attempts don’t travel as well as Italian. As for the first half of the eighteenth century, it was Italian music itself that was dominating the whole of Europe. Even old Bach had copied Vivaldi and, would you believe it, nearly a century later Beethoven was learning Italian so he could set it to music.

So what has this to do with Alexander Munro (1697-1767) and Charles McLean (c.1712-c.1772)? It’s to do with claiming a place for Scottish music in an international context, that’s what. It was bold, innovative and striking. Apollo wasn’t just for the Greeks, and decades later, as far as Burns was concerned, you could hear him in the pub down the road.

We’ll start with Alexander Munro (also spelt Monro) who published a set of twelve violin sonatas in Paris in 1732. But here’s the difference: each sonata was based entirely on one Scots tune, but worked into foreign forms. The sonata based on Bonnie Jean of Aberdeen has an opening Allegro stating the theme, followed by the equivalent to the minuet, corrente, and gavotte and only coming home with the jig which was by then common to the whole of Europe. The adaptation works beautifully, as though the standard practice of improvising variations on Scots tunes required only a nudge to be turned into what was then the relatively simple form of the “Sonata da Camera” or “Chamber Sonata” –hence “chamber music”.

Munro’s “Da Camera” sonatas are unique in their formal adventure and should have gone down well amongst the exiled Stewarts in France, and have appealed to the nation that was soon to harbour the rustic ideals of Rousseau. It seems probable that he was the same Munro who was a member of the College of Physicians. Many medical people value and practice music. We shall be meeting the Scottish composer Dr David Foulis in a later article, and the eye-surgeon, William Wallace (1860-1940) was one of our leading composers. I wrote about him some time ago. I remember, too, listening to the piano playing of Ian Donald, who pioneered the medical use of ultra-sound, for which he should have received a Nobel Prize. Several of the subscribers to Munro’s publication were either physicians or doctors. So there is no surprise in the probability of Munro being both a physician and a composer.

We don’t know why Munro published his flute sonatas in Paris. All the subscribers were Scots, though two, a Mr Samuel and Le Chevalier Ramsay, lived in Paris. It’s possible there was a Jacobite connection, which may add some significance to the first of the pieces in his book being Walace which is a March followed by a gavotte variation. This has to be a patriotic statement right at the start of the publication. It’s as Scottish as they come, complete with “double tonic”, and you can’t buy it at the chemist’s.

I’m going to take a wee break here to explain this musical term, as it applies to a huge amount of Scottish music: so much so that it can be described as a defining element. Put a piece of music in need of a visa in front of the Home Office and ask the music to prove that it is Scottish. One of the main pieces of evidence would be that it uses the “double tonic”. If you’re not a musician and don’t know that the “tonic” is in fact the key-note of a piece, never mind. Imagine you are standing on the stage doing a wee dance, then take one step down to a lower bit of the stage and do much the same thing lower down. Then back up again. That’s like the “double tonic”. So the music takes a whole step down from the tonic level and a step back up, and it’s not the norm in most classical music. In fact there are even rules against it. But we know better here. It works especially well in dance music and we Scots love to dance – and that includes the March.

WALACE is a sturdy four-square piece. It has two lively variations with a rapid bass line set against staccato flute. Aargh, Italian again! Staccato sort of means “spikey”, but we don’t have a good English or Scots word for it. Anyway, don’t come complaining to me until you can tell me the Scots for spaghetti. In the second variation, the parts swap and the bass line imitates drums. It’s pretty nifty.

It was this same Alexander Munro who wrote to his daughter, Margaret, on “Musick”, noting that “musical performances improve the Ear and the Voice by which People acquire sooner the proper Accent of Languages and the Tone of Voice fitted to the different Subjects of Conversation.” He clearly had a critical ear in that he describes to her the folly of amateurs imposing poor performances on an audience.

If Munro’s Sonata based on Bonnie Jean of Aberdeen shows how a Scots song can, with a little rhythmic ingenuity and melodic gift, acquire a “proper accent of languages” and become as lovely a Sarabande or as lively a Gavotte as any thoroughbred classic, the same applies to Fy Gar Rub her o’er wi’ Strae; and in The Souters of Selkirk, the natural simplicity of the tune is turned into two disarming Largo movements alternating with two sturdy 9/4 jigs, the second a variant of the first, and proving that Munro’s revolutionary treatment of Scots tunes was not formulaic but varied within itself. Tweed Side for example, starts with a Preludio - a jig variation before we hear the tune. Kind of cheeky.

These ground-breaking sonatas have yet to be given a proper modern edition, and who knows what else Munro composed?

Almost certainly a number of songs which were published in Calliope in 1739 ascribed to a “Mr Munro” are by him.

The songs show a sophisticated variety of idiom and strong melodic invention and, Munro being a physician, he acknowledges the medicinal benefits of alcohol in the song The Pow’r of Drinking. No: you are not to confuse this with the “double tonic”. Please behave.

Charles McLean (c.1712-c.1772) also composed in a Scottish style with sonatas based on the tunes Pinkie House, The Birks of Invermay and others. He started off as a music teacher in Montrose, then Aberdeen, but moved to Edinburgh in 1738 to become a violinist in the Edinburgh Musical Society orchestra for a couple of years, after which he settled in London.

McLean worked in a variety of styles, with liveliness and, in the slow movements, feeling. In 1737 Edinburgh saw the arrival of his Opera Prima, Twelve Solo’s or Sonata’s … yup, that’s how it’s published showing that the apostrophe has always had a troubled life, except in the loving hands of yours truly. The Opera Prima (first work) was dedicated to the governor and members of the Musical Society. I know of no Opera Secunda. Too bad, because Prima is full of fun and beauty.

The first eight sonatas are for violin, cello and continuo. Continuo? Well, a sort of musical continuity – usually somebody at a keyboard with a full score of the music so they can hold everything together – sometimes very necessary if someone goes off the rails. Most musicians only play off their own part, not the full score, so if they get lost, the continuo comes to the rescue. It’s all part of the service and they don’t get paid extra. I doubt if McLean ever needed any help. On the evidence of his violin writing with its extended sections in double stops and rapid semiquaver passage-work, he must have been a highly accomplished violinist and very unlikely to lose the plot.

SOME of McLean’s sonatas were later reworked by Robert MacKintosh (c.1745-1807) who updated the genre in the 1770s with new bowing styles and occasional harmonic experiments, one of them parallel to a Haydn composition composed the year before, so McLean’s music had not a bad shelf life and the sonatas still can be heard today at the occasional concert and on CD.

McLean’s single-movement Sonata III in A – after a brief introduction – is a lively toccata with some vigorous moments for the cello as well. He could also follow the more thoughtful requirements of the Sonata da Chiesa (or church sonata), picking up the solemnities of Handel’s manner which was the fashion in London. Sonata IV in three movements with an Adagio introduction has over twenty bars of continuous double-stops in the Allegro. There is a lovely Effetuoso. It should be affetuoso and it means you are to play it with feeling. It leads into a Presto Gavott, one of many dance movements finding their way into more sober music.

The last four of McLean’s sonatas are for flute – transverse (German) flute and are equally good. Elizabeth Ford is the expert on 18th-century Scottish flute music, and this is what she has to say about them: “The writing is elegant, stylistically assured, with well-developed melodies and polished, intuitive harmonies. Of the contemporary sonatas for flute, McLean’s closely resemble those of Handel and Loeillet, and of the professional musicians in Scotland writing for the flute, his sonatas are the strongest and most interesting.”

The variety is impressive. But it is a sad fact that there is no complete edition of McLean’s music available – one which might answer questions such as: is Sonata V in E major meant to follow on directly from Sonata IV in A minor as the sign Volti would suggest, or is it just a printer’s error? The fun thing about McLean is that he might just have done something as unusual as this.

Next week I am headed for William McGibbon, who subscribed to McLean’s sonatas and was equally nifty on the violin and equally divided between Scotland and Italy.