According to the album booklet that accompanies this CD, ‘A makar (pl. makaris) was the name given to the royal court troubadours of medieval Scotland. The term was resurrected centuries later to refer to the literary giants of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, and it is used today to describe a Scottish bard or poet’ (p. 2, italics in the original). On this album, members of the North American early-music ensemble Makaris explore repertoire from the Scottish folk revival at the turn of the nineteenth century. The album is part of the Olde Focus Recordings line – which specializes in new recordings of treasures from the early music repertoire – curated by Makaris cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman and produced by parent company New Focus Recordings.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Edinburgh music publisher George Thomson (1757–1851) commissioned a substantial collection of Scottish folk song arrangements from eminent continental European composers. Thomson's volumes became the chief publications of the broader Scottish folk revival that had begun in the early eighteenth century, and his collection is likewise the source of many of the arrangements featured on this album. The album includes one or more arrangements by every composer he commissioned, encompassing 15 of the 23 tracks.Footnote ¹ He began in the 1790s with commissions from Austrian-born Ignace Joseph Pleyel (1757–1831) in France,Footnote ² and Bohemian-born Leopold KozeluchFootnote ³ (1747–1818) in Vienna.Footnote ⁴ Though lesser-known today, Pleyel and Kozeluch were famous throughout Europe during their lives.

Austrian Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) received the next commission from Thomson. Per Cahn-Lipman's liner notes (p. 6), of the over 200 arrangements Haydn submitted to Thomson under his own name between 1800 and 1804, 36 have since been identified as the work of his Austrian student Sigismund Ritter von Neukomm (1778–1858). The album features one such arrangement by Neukomm, ‘Jenny Dang the Weaver’, which portrays young Jenny's efforts to rid herself of an overly loquacious partner at a country dance.Footnote ⁵ This narrative remains humorously relatable today, especially to those of us who enjoy social dancing.

Thomson's next engagement was a fraught, yet enduring, collaboration with German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) from 1803 to about 1820. Their cooperation was strained by Beethoven's demands for greater compensation, his insistence that Thomson provide him with English texts prior to arranging, and his inflexibility in revising parts to make them more suitable for amateur performers (Cahn-Lipman, liner notes, pp. 6–7). Of the six arrangements by Beethoven featured on the album, two are claimed to be premiere recordings.

Thomson disapproved of Beethoven's melodic decisions in his initial arrangement of ‘On the Massacre of Glencoe’ – particularly the disjunct right-hand portion of the piano part in the introduction – and requested that Beethoven rewrite it in a more cantabile style. After failing to receive a revision from Beethoven in a timely fashion, Thomson was forced to publish the earlier, now more familiar, version.Footnote ⁶ Beethoven's long-delayed revision, recorded for the first time on this album, expressively suits the text's depiction of a horrifying massacre that occurred in the early morning hours of 13 February 1692: Scottish Government forces – who had arrived in Glencoe in late January under the guise of peace – murdered approximately 30 members and friends of Clan MacDonald, allegedly for their failure to swear allegiance to new monarchs William and Mary. The lyrical string parts in Beethoven's revision provide an appropriately plaintive atmosphere, in sharp contrast with the disjunct, almost jovial, pizzicato strings of his original arrangement. This track is an especially significant and beautiful contribution to the body of Beethoven recordings.Footnote ⁷

Thomson likewise opposed the complexity of the violin part in Beethoven's initial arrangement of ‘Bonny Laddie, Highland Laddie’, and in the moderately simplified revision that Beethoven subsequently supplied, in which the violin frequently doubles the vocal melody. With the aim of appealing to amateur performers, Thomson published his own further simplified adaptation of the part, in which the violin mainly doubles the voice, but without the double stops found in Beethoven's revision.Footnote ⁸ In this premiere recording of Beethoven's original arrangement, the near-constant arpeggiation of its more challenging violin part, expertly performed by Edwin Huizinga, contributes significantly to the bouncy texture and spirited sense of forward momentum throughout.Footnote ⁹

Though it is not a modern premiere, Makaris's performance of another Beethoven arrangement, ‘Sunset’, also is worthy of mention here. This song's quintessentially gothic text vividly expresses a dreary nostalgia for rural landscapes and picturesque ruins. Soprano Fiona Gillespie's nuanced vocal performance complements the mystique of the lyrics. Throughout the album, she largely refrains from the use of vibrato, a decision that greatly enhances the intelligibility of the text and, though perhaps unusual today, does not contradict performance practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout ‘Sunset’, she judiciously engages subtle shimmers of vibrato to accentuate the musical tension inherent within the phrase structure (on the words ‘bore’, ‘tree’, and ‘chill’ in each of the three verses respectively). Furthermore, Gillespie's straight tone also imbues her ornamentation with refreshingly crisp quality, which she uses in a particularly poignant manner to adorn the word ‘dreary’ at the climax of this track.

Thomson's final vocal commissions were from German composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) – whose arrangements introduced the flute as an additional accompanying instrument alongside the piano trio – and Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) in the 1820s.Footnote ¹⁰ Although Hummel's other writing was often considered too difficult for most amateurs, his arrangements for Thomson were of appropriate difficulty and enjoyed higher sales than those by Beethoven. In fact, his arrangement of ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’, recorded on this album, was also published and sold across the Atlantic in the United States. Gillespie's high notes impart exceptional radiance on this track, but without the sparkling moments of vibrato that she employs on Beethoven's ‘Sunset’.

The album also features five vocal arrangements not published by Thomson, two of which were written by Haydn. Beginning prior to his work with Thomson, Haydn also contributed 150 arrangements to the Selection of Scots Songs for English publisher William Napier (c. 1740–1812) in the 1790s.Footnote ¹¹ Makaris's selections from Napier's collection make striking use of the instruments in the ensemble. The low strings excel in ‘My Boy Tammy’, where double bassist Doug Balliett takes the lead on the continuo.Footnote ¹² The fortepiano plays a minimal role in the instrumental passages between verses, punctuating the lyrical harmonies of the double bass, and in turn creating a thinner texture that gives prominence to cellist Cahn-Lipman's beautiful performance of a solo passage between the second and third verses. This satisfying interlude is repeated, and overlaid with flute, between the fourth and fifth verses. In Makaris's performance of ‘I do confess thou art sae fair’, the number of instruments gradually increases over the course of the track, producing a similarly pleasing effect.Footnote ¹³

In a nod to Austrian composer Franz Schubert's (1797–1828) noteworthy position within the present-day musical canon, the ensemble also opted to include his setting of Johann Gottfried Herder's (1744–1803) German translation of a traditional murder ballad, ‘Edward’ – which is sung in English for the first time on this album.Footnote ¹⁴ Despite his current fame, Schubert was mostly unknown outside Vienna during his lifetime, and thus he did not receive any commissions to write for Thomson – in contrast with Koželuch and Pleyel who have since lost much of the notoriety that drew Thomson to them during their lifetimes. Although each composer on the album writes in his own distinct style, Schubert's setting for voice and piano fits in remarkably well with those commissioned by Thomson and Napier, due probably to the fact that it was written in 1827, around the same time as Thomson's final vocal commissions. The lack of string or flute parts is the only audible hint that Schubert's setting was not published in Napier's or Thomson's collections.

The remaining two vocal arrangements stand out a great deal more, stylistically. The album's opening track, a traditional arrangement of ‘The Burning of Auchindoun’, sets the stage for Napier's and Thomson's commissions by recalling earlier Scottish music and history; this modal track begins with an expressive performance of a starkly monophonic flute solo followed by a haunting, homophonic vocal duet about Clan MacIntosh's 1592 sacking of Auchindoun Castle. In contrast, the penultimate track on the album was arranged during a much later period: in the spirit of Thomson's commissioning process, Makaris double bassist Doug Balliett (b. 1982) was tasked with writing a new arrangement of ‘The Bonnie House o’ Airlie’ on a tight deadline imposed by a performance, having been supplied with only the melody and the text.Footnote ¹⁵ Raised in central Massachusetts and currently based in New York City, Balliett hails from farther from Scotland than the continental European arrangers featured on this album. In terms of musical style, though, the geographical disparity between Balliett's arrangement and the others is overshadowed by chronological distance. This is particularly evident in the conspicuously modern harmonic language that Balliett employs (for example, his use of cluster chords in the pianoforte to punctuate the text ‘I wadna kiss thee fairly’ in the fifth verse). However, despite Balliett's stylistically evident chronological distance from the other arrangers on this album, there is an aspect of his arrangement that ties it to the time of Thomson: having already eschewed the notion of amateur performance on this album, particularly in the modern Beethoven premieres discussed above, this track adopts a blurring of the roles of composers/arrangers and performers that was much more common during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The text of Balliett's arrangement likewise connects it with the rest of the album. Similar in theme to ‘The Burning of Auchindoun’, the text in ‘The Bonnie House o’ Airlie’ concerns the 1640 destruction of Airlie Castle (which belonged to Clan Ogilvy, supporters of King Charles I) by Parliamentarian troops during the Second Bishops’ War. These two tracks thus serve as apt historico-stylistic bookends to the others – the themes of their texts weaving together nicely with that of ‘On the Massacre of Glencoe’, which appears midway through the album.

Castle and village raids tied to monarchical politics constitute just one of several textual threads running through the album. Amorous affairs abound above all, with eleven songs about true love,Footnote ¹⁶ courtship,Footnote ¹⁷ separation,Footnote ¹⁸ unrequited love,Footnote ¹⁹ love triangles,Footnote ²⁰ and the drinking away of lovesickness.Footnote ²¹ Drinking in more celebratory contexts is another theme that receives some emphasis, and Makaris have wisely concluded their album with a merry track in this vein.Footnote ²² In the final chorus of ‘Come fill, fill my good fellow’, the men in the ensemble lend their voices to the vocal harmonies that Beethoven arranged, thus drawing the album to a pleasantly surprising and boisterous close.

Three additional instrumental arrangements of Scottish folk songs appear on the album, peppering the programme with further variety and showcasing individual instruments. The first of these is an arrangement of ‘My love she's but a lassie yet’ by Haydn. Two years after publishing Haydn's vocal arrangement, Thomson published Haydn's instrumental version as part of his Six Admired Scotch Airs, Arranged as Rondos, for the Piano Forte with an Accompaniment for the Violin and Flute (1805).Footnote ²³ A natural fit for the album, this arrangement was published by Preston, the publisher responsible for the London printings of Thomson's vocal volumes, though the set contains instrumental versions of Haydn's vocal arrangements from both Thomson's and Napier's collections.

The album also features a solo piano arrangement of ‘Lochaber’ by Muzio Clementi (1752–1832), an Italian-born composer who spent most of his career in England.Footnote ²⁴ Originally published in the 1811 Appendix to the Fifth Edition of Clementi's Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte, this arrangement brings the instrument's broad range of timbres and nuanced affective capabilities to the fore. Fortepianist Elliot Figg's musicianship plays an important role in all tracks on the album, but this solo performance allows him to truly shine.

Makaris's final instrumental recording consists of excerpts from an 1829 set of variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ for flute and piano by Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau (1786–1832).Footnote ²⁵ This is one of the best-known songs on the album, having appeared in film and television on numerous occasions. Most recently, Anya Taylor-Joy sang it in her role as the titular character in Eleanor Catton's 2020 film adaptation of the novel Emma (1815) by Jane Austen (1775–1817). It is refreshing to hear the flute featured as the primary instrument on this tune so familiar to many of us. Flutist Emi Ferguson shows off her instrument brilliantly, and the theme and variations serves as an apt form for breaking up the verse-by-verse repetition of most of the vocal tracks.

Separated from these arrangements by a vast expanse of time and geography, North American ensemble Makaris brings the spirit of the Scottish folk revival and Thomson's commissions into the twenty-first century. They take appropriate artistic liberties, adding flute parts to a few of the arrangements (usually doubling, replacing, or alternating with the violin), while remaining predominantly rooted in the scores of the original arrangements. The album comes with a highly informative booklet, in which Cahn-Lipman's liner notes and Gillespie's annotations on the song texts are both substantive and easily digestible for readers of diverse musical backgrounds.

In folklore, a will o’ the wisp is an atmospheric ghost light observed in the night sky, and the front cover art for this album, Gustav Klimt's (1862–1918) painting Irrlichter (Will o’ the Wisp) from 1903, depicts the wisps as female humanoid figures. With this in mind, one might view the members of Makaris – especially the female singers – as the very wisps referred to in the album title, roaming the wooded dell depicted in the back cover art, Klimt's 1902 painting Birkenwald (Birch Forest). In the same way a parched viewer may perceive a desert mirage as a distant body of water, weary night-time travellers may be led astray by a will o’ the wisp, mistaking it for a flickering lantern.Footnote ²⁶ Through the course of this album, Makaris entice listeners down a mysterious, shimmering path through time, and across the sea, to various scenes from Scotland's history. Their high-calibre performance of this eclectic selection of Scottish folk repertoire holds inherent appeal for a broad audience, from Beethoven scholars to Jane Austen enthusiasts, and beyond.