Studies in Musical Theatre Volume 3 Number 1 © 2009 Intellect Ltd

Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/smt.3.1.91/1

Brigadoon:Lerner and Loewe's Scotland'

Jennifer Oates Queens College, City University of New York

Abstract Keywords
Since the 1950s, Brigadoon has been accepted as a representationof Scotland. Lerner
Brigadoon's Scotland consists of a highland landscape with lochs, mists, castles Loewe
populated by fair maidens, warlike yet sensitive kilted men, and bagpipers. Much Brigadoon
of this comes from the invented traditionsof Scotland, such as kilts and clan tar- American musical
tans; late nineteenth - and early twentieth-century Scottish literature; Scottish Scotland
propagandafor tourism following World War II; and Scottish popular culture. In Scotland in music
spite of Lerner's well-written book, Loewe's charming music, and Agnes De Mille's
exciting choreography, the Scottishness of the work received, and still receives,
the most attention. Brigadoon's inauthentic or dubious depiction of Scotland
points to the complex relationshipbetween popular culture, history, and art. But
is Brigadoon Scottish? I will argue that Brigadoon reflects an example of 'dis-
cursive unconsciousness',drawing on Scottish literary traditions,what Scotland's
own popular culture producedas 'Scottish' and devices that are viewed as Scottish
by the western world.

Upon arriving at a Scots baronial castle for a wedding, Simon Callow's 1. This article is dedi-
character in Four Weddings and a Funeral exclaims 'Christ! It's bloody cated to the memory
Brigadoon!', pointing to the ubiquitous and camp nature of Brigadoon's of Richard Wall.
Scottishness (McArthur 2003: 2-3).2 Brigadoon's (1947) Scotland con- 2. Henry-Russell
sists of a highland landscape with lochs, mists, castles with fair maidens, Hitchcock notes that
Scottish Baronial
warlike yet sensitive kilted men, and bagpipers. The Scottishness of architecture was
Brigadoon, aside from the visual elements, comes from Scottish sounding associated with
names and words, Scottish dances and music, and Scottish traditions. Sir Walter Scott's
characters, kilts,
Much of this comes from the invented traditions of Scotland, such as kilts clan tartans, and
and clan tartans; Scottish literature, including MacPherson's Ossian, other elements
Sir Walter Scott and the Kailyard movement; Scottish propaganda for of McArthur's
'Scottish Discursive
tourism; and Scottish popular culture, like the music hall caricature of a Unconscious'. Sir
drunken, kilted Scot popularized by Harry Lauder (McArthur 2003: Walter Scott's home,
14-18, 47-49; Maloney 2003: 2, 14). The Scots played a role in creating Abbotsford, is a
primary example of
these as a way to recover or assert a national identity after merging with Scottish Baronial
England in the Union of 1707. Colin McArthur calls these the embodi- architecture, second
ment of the 'Scottish Discursive Unconscious', or what the world outside only to Balmoral
(Hitchcock 1954:
of Scotland views as Scottish and how this impacts on how Scotland is 245-48).
perceived (McArthur 2003: 6, 62). More recent examples also rely on the
Scottish Discursive Unconscious. Mel Gibson romanticizes the life of
William Wallace in Braveheart (1995), and Saturday Night Live's 'All things
Scottish', from the 1990s, features a Scottish store keeper (played by
Mike Myers) who regularly shouts 'If it's not Scottish it's crap!', parodying

SMT 3 (1) pp. 91-99 © Intellect Ltd 2009 91

3. The critic George the Scots' work ethic that helped build the British Empire (Finlay 1997;
J. Nathan claimed
that Brigadoon was
Fry 2001; MacKenzie 1998).
based on an ancient While Brigadoon is not alone in depicting Scotland through these ele-
German folk tale ments, it helped solidify the Scottish Discursive Unconscious. Why Lerner
'Germelshausen',
which Lerner denied
and Loewe chose to set the show in Scotland is not known. Lerner claimed
(Lerner 1978: 26-27, that he was inspired by the works of Kailyard author James M. Barrie and
Jablonski 1996: 27). that the idea came from Loewe's casual comment that 'faith can move
New York Times critic
John Lardner had
mountains' (Citron 1995: 157; Jablonski 1996: 26).1 While Barrie may
already pointed out have provided the link to Scotland, it is equally likely that Lerner and
the similarities con- Loewe were drawn to the appeal of Scotland as a remote, idealistic locale.
cluding that it was
mere coincidence.
They may also have counted on Scottish immigrants being drawn to a
musical set in their homeland. Many post-World War II musicals sought
4. All musical examples to escape the political turmoil that followed the war with settings in exotic
come from Lerner &
Loewe 1967. locales. Brigadoon is a unique example of this transporting the audience to
the nostalgic past of a charming, pre-modern culture of an exotic place.
Scotland, with its rich and well-known traditions, provided Lerner and
Loewe with the perfect location.

Brigadoon and Scottishness

Brigadoon tells of two New Yorkers who stumble upon an enchanted
village while hunting in the Scottish Highlands. It is 1746 in Brigadoon.
The town appears for one day every one hundred years. In the eight-
eenth century, the village minister sacrificed himself to save the town
from a plague of witches and other social and political ills. As long as
none of the original inhabitants leave Brigadoon, the village remains
safe. The Americans join the town for a wedding and an unexpected
funeral. Back in New York, one of the Americans realizes he is in love
with one of the villagers. Upon returning to Scotland, they look around
the Highland forest as the village schoolmaster appears welcoming them:
'I told ye when ye love someone deeply anythin' is possible. Even mira-
cles' (Lerner 1973: 1: 211).
Before the curtain rises, the overture establishes the Scottish setting
and introduces the majority of the Scottish musical elements. The open-
ing notes elicit sounds of a bagpipe skirl, including open-fifth drones
with raised fourth-scale degree grace notes (see Figure la).4 Above the
drones, a pentatonic scale using the rhythms of a Scottish jig - a fast
dance in duple meter with flowing eighth notes - appears (see Figure 1b)
(McArthur 2003: 20; Kislan 1995: 222; Collinson 1980: 668). To
highlight the Scottish setting, a number of songs and choruses make
use of the Scottish musical devices of the overture or incorporate other
Scottish dance rhythms, including: 'Vendors' calls', 'Down on MacConnachy
Square', 'I'll go home with Bonnie jean', 'Come to me, bend to me', 'My
mother's wedding day', and 'The heather on the hill'. While only some
songs use Scottish musical elements, several, including Fiona's 'Waitin'
for my dearie', use some Scots words, or Scots-like words, but no Scottish
musical traits. Lerner and Loewe gave the musical the name of a bridge
('brig') over the river Doon in south-west Scotland near where Robert
Burns lived. Similarly, the character names and place names are
Scottish, or at least Scottish sounding, including MacConnachy Square,
Angus MacGuffie, and jean MacLaren. This English yet Scots-sounding

92 Jennifer Oates
 F-Y , 64 [I f I 1 I F 1, II I I I , E I I I

V V V

Figure Ia,

t4,0

Figure lb.

dialect featuring well-placed words associated with Scotland, like

'dearie', 'kirk', and 'heather', helped create the Scottish atmosphere and
may show the influence of 'the vaudeville persona of Harry Lauder'
(McArthur 2003: 51). Broadway audiences, however, expected English-
language productions and would not have been able to understand the
Scots language.
The most obvious uses of Scottish traditions and music occur during
the wedding and the funeral scenes, both of which offer opportunities for
spectacles with music related to the drama that does not drive the plot.
While discussing 'Other' musics in opera, Ralph Locke notes that 'the sty-
listically most "different" moments tend to be located at the beginning of
scenes or acts and tend to involve the orchestra alone, or the chorus, or
dancers (but little or no solo singing)' (Locke 1998: 125). The best-known
operas based on Scottish texts, such as Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
and Verdi's Macbeth, ignore the Scottish setting. In Brigadoon, the instru-
mental numbers are the moments when the drama comes closest to depict-
ing Scottish customs.
At the wedding, the entire town is dressed in clan tartans and some
carry swords and dirks, or daggers. Three traditional Scottish dances, a
jig, a sword dance, and a Scottish reel, are performed after the wedding.
The 1947 production paid particular attention to the dances using James
Jamieson, a specialist in Scottish dance (McArthur 2003: 60). Loewe's jig
features dotted rhythms with wide melodic leaps found in traditional
Scottish jigs. In the sword dance, motifs from the overture, including the
grace-note and drone figures, return, as the dancers are instructed to
move ever more rapidly among the crossed swords on the ground without
touching the blades with their feet (see Figure 2). The unrestrained energy
of the sword dance, particularly with Harry (who is in love with the bride)

Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe's Scotland 93

 A A

Figure 2.

starting the dance and being the most frenzied dancer, brings the dramatic
tension to a head. Immediately after the sword dance, the reel begins and
features a musical quotation of the overture now in reel rhythms with
slurred strong beats and staccato weak beats typical of traditional Scottish
fiddling and reels (see Figure 3).
After the wedding, Harry tries to leave, threatening the village's uto-
pian enchantment. A chase ensues. Harry is tripped, falls on a rock, and
dies. In the funeral scene, the book and score indicate bagpipes should
appear, though not necessarily be played, on stage. The scene is labeled a
traditional piobaireachd,a form of traditional Scottish bagpipe music. This
genre consists of highly ornamented variations, including laments that
were often played at Scottish funerals (Collinson 1966: 176; Haddow
1982: 24). Loewe's piobaireachdis slow, ornamented, and accompanied by
open-fifth drones in the bass line that once again mimic bagpipe drones
(see Figure 4). While there are repetitive figures, it is not a set of variations
and the repeated phrases are not ornamented.
Brigadoon was written as an integrated musical, which had certain struc-
tural and musical expectations, particularly in the songs. The instrumental
numbers and dances offered the safest opportunities to exploit the Scottish
setting musically without deviating from the accepted form. Locke shows that

Vivace

Figure3.

94 Jennifer Oates
 PIOBROCHEAD

, Andante
A i mesto -
I-- Aý .01 __

12 Iff, L --
99i

.
I... r,- .
1em0y U nl. tebd.

/I,•
" Y' ," " "F, " r d ,r"-'d. F,I

I
FUNERAL DANCE (Maggie dances the Piobrochead, a ritual of mourning, to the
Andante con moto sound of the Pipes and Scottish Drums.)
15 /.-.,
-~L

f sempre -

'
" !Zk-
. ... ....
1-9
I "" - IF,', r ,', •-
L I , •, I , ' ,,

Figure4.

the foreign music, which seems perfunctory, adds to the work in ways often
overlooked by critics. Numbers using local colour are popular with audiences
and can play a major role in establishing the social and gender context of the
plot; they can also frame the rest of the musical (Locke 1998: 127-28). The
Scottish musical numbers establish Brigadoon's social and cultural context.
Abridged recordings often omit these Scottish numbers, except for the over-
ture and the incidental Scottish elements in the songs, leaving little trace of

Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe's Scotland 95

Scottish music or the true context of the musical. Without the Scottish music
(and the Scottish costumes, scenery, and dancing), where is Brigadoon?

Roots of Lerner and Loewe's Scottishness

Much of the Scottish Discursive Unconscious comes from invented tradi-
tions, which illustrate a longing for a simpler past. Kilts and clan tartans,
well-known symbols of Scottishness, were creations of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. An Englishman invented kilts after the Union of
1707. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Highlanders wore 'Irish' long
shirts, tunics, or trews (a combination of breeches and stockings). Clan tar-
tans were established for the festivities to honour George IV's 1822 visit to
Edinburgh, which Walter Scott helped plan (Trevor-Roper 1983: 19).
Many writers have appropriated these Highland symbols to represent the
entire Scottish nation. George IV's visit, as Hugh Trevor-Roper describes it,
'marked the last stage in the creation of the Highland myth: the recon-
struction and extension, in ghostly and sartorial form, of that clan system
whose reality had been destroyed after 1745' (Trevor-Roper 1983: 31).
McArthur points to problems between Brigadoon and Scottish history.
Tommy and Jeff arrive in Brigadoon on 24 May 1746, six weeks after one of
the bloodiest events in Scotland, the Battle of Culloden, in which the Jacobite
rebellion was finally quashed. In the following weeks, English forces roamed
the Highlands slaughtering remaining Jacobite supporters. Tartans and bag-
pipes, viewed as symbols ofJacobites, were outlawed for forty years (McArthur
2003: 56; Trevor-Roper 1983: 24). While it is hard to explain why an entire
tartan-clad village with pipers would have survived the bloody aftermath of
the Battle of Culloden, it was an ideal time to escape from the world surround-
ing Brigadoon. Most likely, Lerner was unaware of the significance of the date
and picked it because it was two hundred years before he started the libretto.
Scottish literature adopted these invented symbols and often glamor-
ized its history and rural society. The writings of the ancient Celtic Bard
Ossian, later proved to be written by James MacPherson, brought Scotland
to western Europe's attention in the eighteenth century. Walter Scott's
works thrust Scotland into the spotlight of western literature and imagi-
nation while promoting Scottish tourism. In the process, Scott perpetuated
the invented histories of Scotland, glorified Scottish culture, and empha-
sized the fact that Scotland was no longer a threat to England or any
nation (Raleigh 1996: 4 7-69). Scott's works often show the modem world
triumphing over old Scotland. In the nineteenth century, authors in the
Kailyard movement continued Scott's romantic view of Scotland by depict-
ing Scottish rural society as quaint and charming. The movement began
as a reaction against literature whose Scottish tales included the ugly real-
ities of daily life and history. Scottish intellectuals criticized Kailyard litera-
ture for its sentimentality and refusal to connect with the modern,
industrialized world (McArthur 2003: 14). While this limited view of
Scotland bears a striking resemblance to Brigadoon, it ignores Scotland's
history by omitting clashes between Highland and Lowland cultures as
well as Scotland and England. It does, however, preserve Scotland's repu-
tation as a pastoral yet exotic and romantic locale.
Carl Dahlhaus noted that 'a style becomes a national style not so much
on its own merits as by popular decree' (Dahlhaus 1989: 68). While he was

96 Jennifer Oates
 b;Aw . W4,~.4 w w, ,.4

Figure 5: A 'Scottish'advertisementfor Scotch from a late 1930s American

magazine (from McArthur 2003: 23).

referring to national music accepted by natives, the same applies to the

musical depiction of one country by an outsider. Scottish literature, includ-
ing that of Scott and the Kailyard literary movement, was popular in the
United States. Following World War II, Americans had been bombarded
with romanticized postcards of Scotland, and advertisements for Scottish
goods and tourism adopted images of McArthur's Scottish Discursive
Unconscious (McArthur 2003: 20, 22). As seen in Figure 5, a magazine
advertisement for Old Angus Scotch features a Scotsman in tartan and a kilt
in a pastoral setting with lambs, reflecting the catch phrase, 'A Noble Scotch:
Gentle as a Lamb'. Similarly, the stereotypical musical sounds of Scotland
used by Lerner and Loewe permeated popular culture's portrayal of Scotland.
The American public would have viewed the works of Scott and the Kailyard
movement, Scottish advertisements, and the musical sounds of the Scottish
Discursive Unconscious as accurate depictions of Scotland, and would have
expected such images and sounds in any production set in Scotland.

Why Scotland?
Why is Brigadoon set in Scotland? Brigadoon opened in 1947 after two
world wars, a twelve-year depression, the communist take-over in Eastern
Europe, and following the 'Red Scare' in the United States. John Bush

Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe's Scotland 97

5. Jones has shown that Jones notes, 'Is it any wonder that the thought of a Brigadoon-like retreat
this utopia is not
all it seems. Rather
brought comfort and solace to many Americans in 1947?' (Jones 2003:
than being a utopia, 166). The foreign, mystical atmosphere served as an escape from the
Brigadoon's isola- harsh realities endured after World War II through the 195 Os. Brigadoon,
tionist ways require
conformity. Harry
a quaint eighteenth-century Scottish village, provided a peaceful utopia
longs to escape, but contrasting with the complicated modem life of America.' Broadway
he cannot and is musicals of the time tended to promote a world tour of exoticism as seen in
forced to comply with South Pacific (1949) and The King and 1 (1951). Scotland provided a simi-
Brigadoon's way of
life. When he fails lar, though not so geographically distant, exoticism.
to do so, he is killed, Ultimately, Brigadoon's depiction of Scotland points to the complex
though accidentally relationship between popular culture, history, and art. Scots created and
(Jones 2003: 167).
maintained the Scottish Discursive Unconscious to keep Scotland from
disappearing. Scotland lost its autonomy and, in a sense, identity with
the Union of 1707. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish litera-
ture portrayed an idealized, rural country clinging to a romanticized past.
It is as if Scotland's history ended with England's final defeat of Scottish
nationalists in 1746. The choice of Scotland for this seemingly idyllic vil-
lage continues the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fascination with
Scotland, particularly the rugged Highlands, as a wild, exotic, and roman-
tic place largely untouched by the modem world. Following World War
II, few countries could be used for Brigadoon's enchanting tale. In addi-
tion, Scotland was recovering from the near destruction of their ship-
building industry, which had been the main source of their economy and
stronghold within the British Empire, and launched a tourism campaign
reiterating this romantic view of Scotland. All of this allowed Lemer and
Loewe to create a work that provided peaceful escapism on the surface
with social commentary for those willing to dig a little deeper.
Even though Brigadoon is just over sixty years old, such a portrayal of
Scotland is no longer possible. In 1999 Scotland regained its Parliament and
a political voice. Further, Scottish artists, while still embracing their nation's
rich history, are writing works that show the gritty side of modem Scotland,
such as Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting (1993) and its 1996 film adapta-
tion directed by Danny Boyle, or more realistically portray Scottish history
rather than painting Scotland as a picturesque, rural escape, as in Thea
Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots (1975-7). Perhaps Scots have now relegated
the romanticized Scotland to the past. Yet, was the Brigadoon of the mid-
twentieth century Scottish? The musical offers an example of the 'discursive
consciousness': drawing on Scottish literary traditions; what Scotland's own
popular culture produced as 'Scottish'; and devices that are viewed as Scottish
by the western world. Brigadoon captures the spirit of a post-World War II
America seeking to find comfort in the distant past of a far-away yet familiar
place. The Scots and their plentiful traditions gave Brigadoon just that.

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Suggested citation
Oates, J. (2009), 'Brigadoon: Lerner and Loewe's Scotland', Studies in Musical Theatre
3: 1, pp. 91-99, doi: 10.1386/smt.3.1.91/1

Contributor details
Jennifer Oates is Associate Professor at Queens College and the Graduate
Center - CUNY and is Head of the Music Library at Queens College. Her research
focuses on nineteenth - and twentieth - century British music and women and
music. She is writing The Musical Life of Hamish MacCunn (1868-1916), a biogra-
phy of the Scottish composer, for Ashgate and has a critical edition of MacCunn's
concert overtures forthcoming in Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Centuries. She received the 2004 Ralph Vaughan Williams
Fellowship and the Music Library Association's 2003 Walter Gerboth for research.

Brigadoon:Lerner and Loewe's Scotland 99

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