Heart of Midlothian: A singer salutes Sir Walter Scott
Fear not, dear reader, this is not an essay about football, although I must salute the return to the Scottish Premier League after only one season out in the Championship, of my team, Hearts! Their unfair relegation last year was deeply frustrating, but their immediate return to what we call the big time in Scotland, is well merited and impressive.
Scott by Sir Henry Raeburn
No, today I am looking, on the 250th anniversary of his birth, at the poetic writing genius who bore my name, and whom I always pretend was an ancestor of mine, Sir Walter Scott, and his importance, not just to world literature, but also to the world of music. Sadly, he is not often read these days, but I hope to explain his historical importance here, and also to encourage you to dip into his wonderful legacy. Without him, there would be no ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’, no ‘La Donna del Lago’, no ‘Ivanhoe’ and none of the superb songs set to his poetry by some of the finest composers. I read all the Scott novels in my 20s and found them fascinating. They are truly the first ever historical novels and were hugely influential in their time. For various reasons, Scott could never announce his novels as his own work and took great pains to pretend that they had been discovered by him, not written by him. In this way, he was very similar to MacPherson’s ‘discovery’ of the works of Ossian which he ‘translated’ back into English from the Gaelic! This subterfuge was immensely detrimental to the reading of Scott’s novels, as each novel had to have a long and desperately dull introduction, explaining to the reader how this work had seen the light of day through diligent scholarship etc. My advice to all potential readers of Scott’s novels is to ignore the long and tedious introductions and cut to the chase at Chapter 1 of the story. There you will find the most exciting and fascinating tales, based on Scottish history, with real life characters, speaking a variety of dialects, with plots which are full of tension, skulduggery and thrills to match any modern potboiler.
Walter Scott was born in College Wynd in Edinburgh’s Old Town on 15th August 1771, the son of a lawyer. He contracted polio in 1773, was left with a limp, and was sent to his paternal grandparents at Sandyknowe in the Scottish Borders, where it was hoped he would be able to recover in fresh country air. While at Sandyknowe, he was taught to read by his aunt, Jenny Scott, and picked up many sayings and stories from the Borders that were to feature in his mature writing. Water cures were sought in Bath and Prestonpans, and he returned to Edinburgh to live in the house at 25 George Square, which had just been built for his parents. He attended the Royal High School, founded in 1128 (making it one of the oldest schools in the world), which at that time was located very near where he was born, in High School Yards just down the hill from the present Blackwell’s bookshop, and as his health improved, he took to walking all over Edinburgh and its environs. He was an avid reader, laying the foundations for his own later writing, and, after another spell in the Borders, staying with his aunt in Kelso, and attending Kelso Grammar School, he enrolled at Edinburgh University in 1783 at the age of 12, studying Classics!
During this period, he was introduced to the poetry of Ossian and was enthralled by the strange stories of Scotland in the Dark Ages. We now know that James Macpherson invented the whole Ossian phenomenon, but it remains a hugely influential fiction, taking the literary world by storm, and fascinating composers enough to set these poems to music. Napoleon took a copy on his campaigns, and the legend of Ossian permeated European literature far more than we are able to comprehend nowadays, greatly inspiring Scott in his own writing. Around this time, the teenage prodigy began to be noticed in Edinburgh intellectual circles, and he famously met Robert Burns at a salon in the city during the winter of 1786/87. The Bard was at the height of his powers and fame, and everyone wanted to meet him. In fact, he was like a rock star these days, something we often forget in our desire to see him as a sort of naive son of the soil.
By this time, Scott was apprenticed to his father’s legal firm, and had decided on a legal career, which involved him taking a degree in law at the University, and eventually being admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He co-founded the Literary Society at the University, and, in 1797, alarmed by the threat of French invasion following the Revolution of 1789, he joined the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons. Already, we can see the beginnings of Scott the man, an essentially establishment figure and very much a Tory of the old sort.
Later in his life, Scott confirmed that he was influenced greatly at that time by the contemporary craze for German Romantic literature, particularly Goethe and Schiller, and this, combined with his fascination for Scottish, and especially Borders, folk tales and ballads, began to point the way to his own literary style and development. In 1802, along with John Leyden, he published a collection of ancient ballads under the title “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders”, even sneaking a couple of imitations of his own into the texts, and his career was started. He had married Charlotte Carpenter in 1797 and was appointed Sheriff Depute of the County of Selkirk in 1799.
I find it interesting that the two Scottish literary giants of the 19th century, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, both grew up in Edinburgh, and were both enormously influenced by women steeped in Scotland’s past. Stevenson was greatly attached to his nurse, Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy), whose mixture of fervent Calvinism and folk tales and beliefs had a huge effect on his writings, while Scott was devoted to his Aunt Jenny, who taught him to read, and to discover the wonders of Borders stories and history, a past which stimulated his own writings to a great extent.
I have dwelt at length on Scott’s early days because I think his future life and work revolved around his upbringing. His illness, his diligence and precocity, and above all, his love of the Border country all combined to produce the marvellous writer we know today. He became famous firstly as a poet, and it is his poetry that attracted composers first of all. He wrote long narrative poems which were steeped in Scottish mediaeval history (a subject I myself studied at St Andrews University, many years later). ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, ‘Marmion’ and ’The Lady of the Lake’ were the foundation stones of his fame. Who can fail to be moved by the first lines of the final stanza of The Lay:
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart has ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he has turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, Go, Mark him well,
For him no minstrel raptures swell.”
This was published in 1805.
The strong moral theme of the Lay was followed by ‘Marmion’ (1808), dealing with the corrupt passions leading up to the disaster of the Battle of Flodden in 1415. The most famous lines from Marmion, and I confess I did not know of their origin, are - “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
The third narrative poem which confirmed Scott’s status as a great literary figure was ‘The Lady of the Lake’ (1810), which Rossini was to turn into ‘La Donna del Lago’ in 1819, a story loosely based on James V’s habit of supposedly wandering round his kingdom in disguise. In 1825, Schubert set 7 songs, translated into German by Adam Storch, from ‘The Lady of the Lake’, published as ‘Liederzyklus vom Fräulein vom See’. Three songs (‘Ellens Gesänge’) are for female voice, two for male voice, one for female ensemble and one for male ensemble. I’ve never heard them sung all together – it might be fun to arrange in due course, perhaps at Abbotsford? One of Ellen’s songs is the great Ave Maria, one of the most famous songs ever written. Often performed in a garbled Latin version to fit the Latin prayer (Pavarotti often sang it, with orchestra and ethereal chorus, very beautiful but ghastly at the same time), it is one of Schubert’s most inspired settings, but I would bet that most listeners are unaware that the original words were by Walter Scott! Beethoven set three of Scott’s poems, in his ‘25 Scottish Songs’ and Berlioz wrote two overtures based on Scott: ‘Rob Roy’ and ‘Waverley’.
As Scott moved into the writing of novels, historical and romantic, his fame in Europe grew. He bought a farm on the River Tweed near Melrose in 1811 and, over the years, enlarged the building, and with the help of architects William Atkinson and Edward Blore, turned it into the Baronial masterpiece which is Abbotsford. If you haven’t visited Abbotsford, it is an absolute must on any trip to the Borders. Basically it represents Scott’s life and work in architecture, a magnificent creation in a beautiful location by the river, full of turrets and quirky effects, adorned with wood panels, suits of armour, paintings, stained glass, heraldic portrayals and a wonderful library. The grounds and gardens are splendid, and Abbotsford is a fitting monument to a great man.
Abbotsford
In Edinburgh, after his death in 1832, a competition was held for the design of a new monument in Scott’s honour, and the winner was George Meikle Kemp, who presented his design under an assumed name, John Morvo. Morvo had been the mediaeval architect of Melrose Abbey, and I find it delightful that, as Scott had pretended to write his novels under a pseudonym, so Kemp, who was largely unknown to the world at large, entered his design in the same way.
The judges loved his crazily romantic monument with its gradually narrowing, rising spire with viewing galleries at various levels. As you reach the top, the spiral staircase becomes more cramped and tighter until you arrive at the top platform into a tiny, vertigo-inducing platform with a ridiculously low wall and no room to pass. I went up as a teenager, and was terrified, although the view is spectacular, past Jenner’s to the Firth of Forth and up to the castle and the old town. The giant statue of Scott at the foot of the monument, designed by John Steel and sculpted out of Carrara marble, depicts Scott resting from writing with quill pen in hand and his faithful dog, Maida by his side. The monument itself is festooned with sculptures of 64 characters from the novels, by various artists, and the whole effect is sublime. Built of Scottish sandstone, it would not have been so blackened as it is now, but nearly 200 hundred years of smoke and grime from trains and chimneys nearby have given it the look we see now. Apparently, every few years, someone suggests that it is cleaned, but up to now, it has been refused on the grounds that the stonework is so delicate that cleaning is impossible. I would hope, with modern techniques, that it might be possible to clean it in time for its 200th anniversary in 2046. It is one of the biggest monuments ever erected in memory of an author, and combined with the Edinburgh central railway station, named after Scott’s Waverley novels, it is quite some tribute to a man, once the most famous writer in the world, yet now largely ignored. Just behind Jenner’s, on Rose Street, you can find the delightful Abbotsford Bar, with its central island bar, another memory of Edinburgh’s renowned son.
The Scott Monument in Edinburgh
So, you ask, what of the novels and their relationship with music? One of the best is ‘Ivanhoe’, written by Scott in 1820, a departure from his Scottish historical novels in being set in England in the 12th century, and a bold representation of life at that time, as the old Saxon families were getting used to Norman rule after 1066, grudgingly, and also showing how Jewish families were integrated, or not, into mediaeval society. It’s a magnificent romp of a book, filled with great characters both historical and fictitious, and one can see how it would appeal to composers and librettists. Apart from the main protagonists, it features Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and Richard the Lionheart.
In 1826, a pastiche opera with music by Rossini, although not composed for this opera, ‘Ivanoé’, was performed at the Odeon Theatre in Paris, as a way of introducing Rossini’s music to the Paris public.
Three years later, in Leipzig, Heinrich Marschner’s opera ‘Der Templer und die Jüdin’ (The Templar and the Jewess’ – subtle eh?)) received its first performance. This is a full blown German Romantic opera, which was very successful at the time, but was then forgotten about until, in 1989 at the Wexford Festival in Ireland, it was revived in Francesca Zambello’s first production in Europe, with a strong cast, including yours truly as Oswald, Cedric’s steward (you can imagine from the title just how important a role it was!). It was an extraordinary experience in many ways. As a Scotsman, I was delighted to be involved in an opera inspired by Sir Walter Scott, and in a cast that was to feature several notable singers of the future. The young Paul Harrhy sang Maurice, William Stone sang the Baddie, Bois-Guilbert and Greer Grimsley sang the Black Knight (Richard the Lionheart in disguise). Greer went on to a big career in America, and I met him again when he sang Wotan in the Seattle Ring 20 years later. Anita Soldh, the Rebecca, had a fine career in Sweden, singing mainly Mozart. However, the most memorable thing from that show was the day the German bass singing Friar Tuck, who was on medication for a nervous complaint, threw a wobbly. He was enjoying himself so much in Wexford, and especially the Guinness, that he decided to stop taking his pills. In the middle of one rehearsal, he suddenly lost the plot and started running about the stage brandishing a knife, and yelling. We were all ushered to safety, and he was quickly overpowered by tough Irishmen, and taken away. He did not return to the show, but I see he is still performing in Germany, so the medication must have been reinstated efficiently. I did drink a lot of Guinness myself that evening, as did many in the cast, still shell-shocked from the event!
In 1840, ‘Il Templario’, an Italian language version of ‘Ivanhoe’ by the German composer Otto Nicolai received its first performance in the Teatro Regio, Turin, the same theatre where many of Puccini’s operas saw the light of day. Finally, in 1891, Sir Arthur Sullivan (he of G & S) wrote his ‘Ivanhoe’, which saw 155 consecutive performances with alternate casts, allowing it to play every night at the Royal English Opera House (now the Palace Theatre) on Cambridge Circus at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue in London (recent home for ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’!)
The most famous of all operas inspired by Sir Walter Scott is Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’. Salvadore Cammarano wrote an Italian libretto for Donizetti, loosely based on Scott’s novel about a feud between the Ashton family and the Ravenswoods in 17th century Scotland, specifically in the Lammermuir Hills south of Edinburgh, and it has proved to be an enormously successful opera since its premiere in 1835 in Naples. Readers of my blogs over the last year will know that the opera style known as Bel Canto, mostly represented by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, is not particularly to my taste, and that to a large extent my career has been free of such operas. While acknowledging that I represent a minority view, and further acknowledging that my dear sister-in-law, Dr Alison Leaf, is a fully fledged devotee of both Bel Canto in general and ‘Lucia’ in particular, and fails to understand my aversion, despite normally being my number 1 fan, I still struggle to cope with this opera. Nonetheless, there is a splendid role for bass, in Raimondo Bidebent (at least he is not Bidebento, which would sound like Scottish sushi), and I have occasionally sung his big aria in concert. There is no doubt that Donizetti, at the height of his powers, created a magnificent opera which has remained an audience favourite for nearly 200 years.
Joan Sutherland as Lucia
Donizetti also wrote ‘Il Castello di Kenilworth’, an adaptation of Scott’s novel, ‘Kenilworth’, and the French composer, Boieldieu, wrote an opera ‘La Dame Blanche’, which is an adaptation of five different Scott works. Finally, I must mention ‘La Jolie Fille de Perth’, a largely unsuccessful opera by Bizet, based on Scott’s 1828 novel, ‘The Fair Maid of Perth’, which nonetheless features some glorious music, including a great bass aria, “Quand la flamme de l’Amour”.
Having been charged by the Prince Regent to find the “lost” Crown Jewels of Scotland in Edinburgh Castle in 1817, Scott was granted a Baronetcy in 1820 and became Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet. On the assumption of the British throne by King George IV, Scott was invited to stage manage the new monarch’s visit to Scotland in 1822, and his lavish pageant, with the King and his courtiers bedecked in tartan, became famous in history as the beginnings of the re-assimilation of Scotland as a modern civilised society. No longer was it the dissolute, violent country of the past, with its bloodthirsty feuds and rebellions, full of wild, ferocious Highlanders solving disputes by mediaeval means, but a prosperous, beautiful land on the edge of Europe with friendly hospitable natives open for business and tourism, then a new and absolutely unknown form of travel. It is marvellously ironic that Scott, writing a body of work describing that old savage land in some detail, should be instrumental in bringing visitors to Scotland in ever increasing numbers, to wallow in nostalgia for that forgotten place.
The end of Scott’s career was tragic but somehow fitting. A UK banking crash in 1825 saw the writer buried under a mound of debt after the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business of which he was the only partner with a financial interest. He very publicly determined to write himself out of debt, placing his house and income in a trust belonging to his creditors, and wrote non-stop for years. His wife died in 1826, and there seems little doubt that his workload (good for us, bad for him) was responsible for his deteriorating health, and he died from a stroke in 1832 in Abbotsford, after a vain attempt, by travelling to Italy, to find a cure.
Thus passed one of Scotland’s greatest sons, at the age of 61. I hope I might have persuaded you to read some of his novels, and to seek out some of the wonderful music he inspired. I would recommend ‘Ivanhoe’ and, perhaps ‘Rob Roy’, as the starting point, but remember: don’t bother to read the dreary introductions, supposedly explaining the origin of the stories, but jump to Chapter One of the plot.
