William Shield - The "Auld Lang Syne" Controversy

The "Auld Lang Syne" Controversy

The most recent revival of the "Shield wrote Auld Lang Syne" story seems to date from 1998, when John Treherne, Gateshead’s Head of Schools' Music Service, uncovered an original edition of the opera Rosina in the Gateshead Public Library, while he was looking for new works for the town's youth orchestra. "I thought it was appropriate to look at the work of a Gateshead-born composer. I picked out Rosina by Shield," Mr Treherne said. "I started to copy out the score and hummed the tune as I was writing it down. I was coming to the end when I realized the tune floating through my head was Auld Lang Syne." However, despite Treherne's rediscovery, Shield's use of the 'Old Lang Syne' melody had already been thoroughly debated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The melody concerned (which exists as a brief quotation near the end of the Rosina overture) - has been claimed to be the source of the tune to Robert Burns' famous song, and Shield's own composition. Both claims seem to be highly unlikely, a very much more probable case being that both Shield and Burns independently borrowed the tune, or at least its general outline, from an old folk song.

Rather more likely, but just as liable to raise Scots hackles, is the possibility that the melody itself may be English (specifically Northumbrian) rather than Scots! However, the original provenance of many British folk melodies is doubtful - and after all Northumbria and Lowland Scotland are contiguous, and have strong cultural affinities. Claims that the tune must be Scots because even its quotation in the Rosina overture imitates the drones of a bagpipe ignore the existence of the Northumbrian smallpipes, which Shield very likely had in mind.

Incidentally, the theme from the Rosina overture is not identical to the melody to which Auld Lang Syne is sung - in fact it is closer, especially in tempo and rhythm, to Comin' Through the Rye.