Five Scottish songs

This delightful set of five Scottish songs, arranged by Canadian composer Alasdair MacLean, draws mostly from the output of the prolific poet and song-collector Robert Burns and gives us a choral interpretation of 18th century (and early 19th century) sensibility. Two of the songs were published in The Scots Musical Museum, a compendium of six hundred Scottish songs compiled between 1787 and 1803 by James Johnson – with much assistance from Robert Burns who, in his own words, “collected, begg’d, borrow’d and stole… all the songs I could meet with.” ‘How green the groves’ and ‘I’ll never leave you’ appear in the later collection Songs of Scotland (1848), though the tunes themselves date from at least as early as the 18th, and possibly as early as the 17th, century.

The treatments are varied and the accompaniments characterful, at times evoking harp or pipe, and always supporting the mood and motion of the songs. Use all five songs as a centrepiece of your programme or purchase individual titles.