Biography

Evelyn Stell is a music historian, composer and organist. Her MA degree in Music with Hispanic Studies (Glasgow, 1966) was followed by the degree of BMus (Glasgow, 1989), an Open University course in computing (1990) and her PhD (Glasgow, 1999), under the supervision of Kenneth Elliott.

In 2001 she was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. In 2007 she became a postdoctoral research fellow in Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh.

Organist at St Michael's RC Church, Linlithgow, she is also Music Adviser to the Liturgy Commission of the RC Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and specialises in the composition and arrangement of organ music suitable for trainee organists.

During her frequent visits to Orkney with her husband who is making a major study of the wartime defences of Scapa Flow, Dr Stell has, among other things, been called upon to provide live piano accompaniment to silent films of World War I vintage. In one case, she has created the score for a DVD film of Orkney life during the First World War. This music was later published by Fagus Music as 'An Orkney Suite'.

Evelyn Stell's doctoral thesis, 'Sources of Scottish Instrumental Music, 1603-1707' contains a database of 2000 seventeenth-century melodies, compiled and manipulated using original programming. It is this data and software which underlies the Early Scottish Melodies Online (ESMO) project.

In 2008 the ESMO website was created in collaboration with Anthony Stell of the National e-Science Centre at Glasgow University, and in 2011 the project was transferred as an online resource to the University of Edinburgh, where it is hosted by Celtic and Scottish Studies.

Publications

'Lady Jean Campbell's Seventeenth-Century Music Book', ROSC (Review of Scottish Culture), 8 (1993), 11-19

'"Fa adrie, didle, didle": Bawdiness in Music in Seventeenth Century Scotland', Notys Musicall: Essays on Music and Scottish Culture in Honour of Kenneth Elliott, Musica Scotica (2005), 193-210

'Early Music in the Making: the Lute-book of the Mures of Rowallan', History Scotland, March/April 2006, 24-31

Publications in preparation

Anthology of seventeenth-century violin music for the Musica Scotica series

Hard copy companion index to the ESMO website

(in collaboration with Alastair Hardie) Facsimile edition, James Oswald, The Caledonian Pocket Companion

Published compositions

Choral pieces: 'This day was made by the Lord', Royal School of Church Music, Anthems for Treble Voices (1982); All Sons of Adam (based on the sixteenth-century Scottish carol), Fagus Music (2002); The Lord is my Shepherd, Forth in Praise Music (2008);

Organ solo pieces, published by Fagus Music: Five Pieces based on Latin Hymns (2003); Two Pieces (2005); Eucharistic Reflections (2006); Summer Pieces (2007); An Orkney Suite (2009)

Organ arrangements, published by Forth in Praise Music: Famous Eucharistic Melodies (2005); Easy Wedding Voluntaries (2006), Popular Plainchant Settings (2007), Easy Funeral Voluntaries (2008).

Presentations

Dr Stell has given various seminars and presentations on Scottish instrumental music, including two at the Orkney Science Festival and two, in Spanish, at the University of Salamanca.