Scotland, schools in Dundee, c1880

Cabinet photographs taken c1880 showing  boys and  girls schools  in Dundee. The photographers are D & W  Prophet of 23 High Street, and 59 Wellgate, Dundee. Each class of 21 children is accompanied by their form teacher. The boys look uncomfortable in their little semi-tailored  tweed and velvet suits (some strangely in a 'cavalier' style!)  with the stiff or huge white collars, and the girls look shy wearing their Sunday dresses with the added pinnies. One wonders, where are they or their ancestors now?!

'Apples of Gold', Perth, Scotland, 1910.

Perth and area were one of Scotland's premier apple growing areas particularly between Perth and Dundee  dating back at least 800 years. Old Scots apples were grown with wonderful names like 'Lass o'Gowrie', 'The Tower of Glamis', and the 'Bloody Ploughman'!
Apple growing was a big industry in the 19th century when the estate at Grange, for instance, had more than 10,000 trees of which sadly now only one remains. With the introduction of the ubitquitous 'granny smith', and 'golden delicious', and the rise and rise of supermarkets where fruits have to be sized and of an exact standard these wonderful apple varieties have well nigh disappeared. This little book is a collection of thoughtful quotations collected from the people who lived in the main apple growing area of Scotland, 1910.

                     

                             

Scottish Recipe book, 1938

The 'Food for Health' recipe book was first published in 1938. It is full of 'healthy' recipes that include a lot of fruit, vegetables, wholemeal bread, soups, salads, and cheese and bean savouries etc. The book was written by Jessie and J. Eva Thomson who were both practioners of 'Natural Therapeutics'.
Jessie was the wife of  James C. Thomson who founded the Kingston Clinic c1938 in a large house with tower on the Southern outskirts of Edinburgh, (it was built in the Ruskian - Gothic style!)in the c1860s.
They were both well known for their writings on 'Straight Nature Cure' - 'Drug- less healing'.  The Clinic was residential and became well known for its courses on natural healthy living. It operates now from a lodge in the grounds, still promoting 'Nature Cure'. The original Kingston House has since been converted into flats.

Scottish jug c1860 - 1870

Samuel Barber/Menotti/Scotland, part two.

Samuel Barber's lifelong partner was the Italian/American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Born in Italy 1911, the two met at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music. After they both graduated they bought a house together in Mount Kisco New York which they named Capricorn, and which they shared for 40 years.
He collaborated with Samuel Barber on several operas including Barber's most famous opera Vanessa for which he wrote the libretto. His most successful works were composed in the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1958 Menotti founded the Spoleto Festival in Italy, and its companion festival in Charleston South Carolina in 1977. In 1986 he extended the Spoleto festival concept to Melbourne, and this has now become The Melbourne International Arts Festival. It was in the field of opera that he made his most notable contribution to American cultural life.
In 1974 Menotti adopted Francis Phelan, an American actor and figure skater, and in the same year purchased the fine Robert Adam mansion house in the village of Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland. Yester House is a 17th century grade A-listed house with c85 palatial rooms plus 500 acres, situated 30 minutes from Edinburgh. He bought it on a 10 year loan, and on the marriage of his adopted son Francis to Malinda in 1985 gave it to them as a wedding present.
Gian Carlo Menotti was a sincere and sensitive man, a great composer who wanted to popularise opera, his dream was to develop the disused stables of his grand house and open a music school there, and was disappointed that due to lack of funds he was not able to do this. He died aged 95 in Monte Carlo in 2007.

From Samuel Barber to Scotland...... part one.

Unfortunately Samuel Barber's lovely music is not as well known, and not played as much as it should be.
Samuel Barber was born 1910 to a distinguished and well to do Irish-American family in Pennsylvania. His father was a doctor and his mother a pianist. He began composing seriously in his late teens, and it was during this time at the Curtis Institute that he met Gian Carlo Menotti who became his partner in life as well as in their shared profession. At the Institute he was a triple prodigy, in voice, composition, and piano. Many of his early compositions were commissioned by famous artists such as Vladimir Horowitz, Francis Poulenc, and D. Fischer-Dieskau. Toscanini remarked of his Adagio for Strings in 1938 that it was "semplice e bella".
He won the Pulitzer prize twice, in 1938 for his opera Vanessa, (for which his life-long partner Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the libretto), and in 1963 for his Concerto for piano and orchestra. Amongst his finest works are his 4 concertos 1939 - 1962. He was badly affected by the adverse criticism of his 3rd opera Antony and Cleopatra which had been written and premiered for the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House 1966, and spent many years thereafter in isolation suffering from depression. He continued to write music until his death in New York 1981.