Search results
After 86 years, the music of St Kilda has been discovered, recorded in a Scottish care home by Trevor Morrison, an elderly man who was taught piano by an inhabitant of St Kilda. Heard by the outside world for the first time these haunting melodies offer a last link to the so-called ‘island on the edge of the world’.
Trevor Morrison was the last person alive who knew the traditional music of the tiny Scottish Island of St Kilda, the inhabitants of which were forced to evacuate the island in 1930, leaving it uninhabited. Morrison recorded the music at a care home in 2006, music that otherwise would have been lost forever.
- Gramophone
- Where Is St Kilda?
- Historical Interlude
- The Death of St Kilda
- The Present Day
- Finding The Lost Songs of St Kilda
- Taking The Songs Back to St Kilda
- But Are The ‘Lost Songs’ Really from St Kilda?
St Kilda is the most isolated inhabited island group in the UK; it's 40 miles west of Scotland's Isle of Lewis, the outermost of the Outer Hebrides. Look how isolated it is: And here's one of the inhabitants (a fulmar):
St Kilda was inhabited for perhaps 4,000 years and, although it was ruled by the MacLeod clan of Skye, it developed its own culture in isolation from the mainland. The islanders' strange and primitive way of life - hunting seabirds and making tweed from the wool of a stone age breed of sheep - captured the imagination of Victorians and St Kilda bec...
But St Kilda is also a melancholy place. At times in its history, the island had supported a population of up to 200 people, but during the 19th century, emigration and staggeringly high infant mortality due to tetanus meant that by 1930, that number was down to 36. Encouraged by the British government, they decided it was time to evacuate the isla...
So what happened to St Kilda's folk music tradition? Given that folk songs are handed down from generation to generation, it was assumed that the culture of St Kilda died off as its tiny population became assimilated into mainland Scottish society. That was until Trevor Morrison, a Scot who spent his life travelling the world from Africa to Arabia ...
As a boy during the Second World War, Morrison was evacuated from his home in Glasgow to the Isle of Bute. There, he met a piano teacher from St Kilda. The teacher, determined to preserve the music of his lost home, sat the boy down and taught him the songs of St Kilda. Sixty years later, nearing the end of his life in the care home, Trevor would e...
So, how best to celebrate the rediscovery of the music of an abandoned island than to go back there and perform a gig? Classic FM was invited to attend, along with a St Kilda descendant, composer Sir James MacMillan - and a flat-pack piano. By the way, here's the boat we're going to cross 40-odd miles of Atlantic Ocean from Skye to St Kilda in: Bea...
Unfortunately Trevor Morrison died in 2012. Before he died, he wrote a letter to thank those who helped him record the songs, saying he was happy "that these few tunes from the long-forgotten isles can be preserved and given a future". As for the mysterious St Kildan piano teacher who taught him the songs on the Isle of Bute - who is presumably als...
People also ask
Who is Trevor Morrison?
Who taught Morrison the songs of St Kilda?
What happened to Trevor Morrison?
Dec 5, 2020 · Sheet music now available for “The Lost Songs of St. Kilda” and more. Good news for fans of the music on this wonderful CD based on traditional melodies from the ancestral homeland of Soay sheep. I have transcribed Trevor Morrison’s arrangements as well as a newly discovered ninth song.
Sep 16, 2016 · The album was recorded on a £3 microphone in an Edinburgh care home by pensioner Trevor Morrison. The tracks have been reworked by a number of leading composers.
Sep 8, 2016 · How composer Sir James MacMillan used Trevor Morrison's composition as inspiration. By David Allison. BBC Scotland News. Lost songs from the evacuated Hebridean archipelago of St...
