The Archive
Thirty thousand
original works.
The archive of David Duncan Mackay is the largest body of original Scottish fiddle composition in history, and it is still growing.
The composer
David Duncan Mackay
David Duncan Mackay was born in 1976 and has spent more than thirty-four years composing original music for the Scottish fiddle. The archive passed thirty thousand compositions in April 2026 and continues to grow. No other composer of Scottish traditional music has produced a body of work of comparable scale.
The compositions span every form of Scottish traditional music: reels, strathspeys, slow airs, jigs, marches, hornpipes, and laments. Each is an original work, not an arrangement; each was written at the instrument, by hand, in the long tradition of Scottish fiddle composition that runs from Niel Gow through William Marshall and James Scott Skinner to the present day.
Mackay performs and teaches as well as composes, and has played in many of the great houses and institutions of Scotland. His music has been recorded, taught, and performed across Scotland and internationally.
The archive.
The archive exists as a working manuscript catalogue: a living record of every composition Mackay has written. Each work is recorded with its date, its key, its form, and, where one has been given, its name. Tunes are named for people, for places, for occasions, and for sentiments. Of the more than thirty thousand works, approximately twenty-five thousand remain without a name.
A tune without a name is a tune without a home in the historical record. It exists in the archive, it can be played and taught and recorded, but it floats without an anchor. The naming of a tune gives it one. The name is entered into the manuscript, added to the working catalogue, and, on deposit, becomes part of the permanent record held by the National Library of Scotland.
National Library of Scotland
The permanent record.
The National Library of Scotland has agreed in principle to accept the complete works of David Duncan Mackay on his death. The archive will be catalogued alongside the named works of every other Scottish composer in the Library's collection: Gow, Marshall, Skinner, and those who came before and after them.
This is the significance of a naming right. A star named in a commercial register exists only within that register. A tune named in this archive will be encountered by musicians and scholars a hundred years from now, in one of Scotland's great national institutions, where the name will be as permanent as the music itself.
The tune outlives the patron. The name outlives the patron. That is what an inscription in a national archive means.
The forms of the music.
Scottish fiddle music has a grammar of its own. Each form carries a distinct character: the reel is swift and propulsive, suited to dancing; the strathspey is stately, with a distinctive snap that belongs to Scotland alone; the slow air is melodic and expansive, the form closest to song; the march is measured and ceremonial; the lament is restrained and elegiac.
When you, the patron, commission a naming right, you may indicate a preference for mood or form. A tune named for a wedding might be a reel or a slow air; a tune named in memory might be a lament or a slow air. The composer selects a composition that best suits the sentiment, and you are consulted before the name is entered.
Read the Prospectus.
The full terms of the naming right, what you receive as patron, and how the process works.
Read the Prospectus