To have been born in Glasgow in the early twentieth century is not seen as a recommendation for a budding musician. Paris would carry weight, or Dublin, in the midst of a great literary revival. But much of the literature of Scotland at the time is described uncharitably as of ‘the kailyard school’, the kale yard being where coarse greens were grown at the back of small, self-satisfied homes, where folk were ‘douce’ and ‘couthy’, humour was ‘pawky’; sentiment ruled over realism, and the parochial over the international. In this school, J. M. Barrie has been unfairly cast as the leading dominie, when, in reality, the bulk of the ‘kailyard’ publications were produced for the English, not the Scottish market. As for the radical significance of Conan Doyle, R. L. Stevenson, George Douglas, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, young MacDiarmid and others, it has yet to be fully understood outside Scottish literary circles.

As for Glasgow, it was an industrial city, wealthy and poor in equally extravagant measure; filthy with the smog and smuts of millions of coal fires; lurid with the flares of the Bessemer Converters at the mammoth steel works; and with its ears ringing with the sound of riveting in some of the greatest shipyards of the world.

These stereotypical views held sway even in Scotland well into the latter half of the twentieth century, since when appreciation of the artistic life in Glasgow in the early 1900s has largely centred round the visual arts. ‘The Glasgow Boys’ and the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh now command international respect. But of music we hear and read practically nothing, and what we do read is not encouraging:

Thus Hugh MacDiarmid, writing from a position of ignorance, apparently unaware of the work of J. B. McEwen or young Chisholm, but none the less imparting a home truth. It was not only the composers who were lacking. Scotland had no full-time professional orchestra, and professional opera and ballet came only with touring companies.