Edinburgh: Morningside Parish Church of Scotland, North Nave

St. Cecilia and the gift of music

Window of one trefoil headed lancet light.

This window depicts at the centre a trumpet crossed with, probably, a tenor recorder. They are surrounded by foliage and flowers. Below is a fiddle/violin and bow surrounded by a ring of daffodils. At the peak is a crescent moon.

‘The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And music shall untune the sky.’ From John Dryden's Ode for St Cecilia's Day 1687

Inscription:
‘The dead shall live… and music shall untune the sky’.

Artist/Designer:
Crear McCartney: (1931- 2016) was born in Symington, South Lanarkshire. He served his National Service in the Royal Air Force and then studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1950-1955. His desire to learn the art of Stained Glass reintroduced the teaching of Stained Glass at GSA at the time. His tutor there, whom he admired greatly as an artist, teacher and human being, was Walter Pritchard, who later married Sadie McLellan. She also became an outstanding stained glass artist in her own right. From 1955 to 1959/60, McCartney managed the stained glass Studio in Pluscarden Abbey near Elgin, and after teacher training in Aberdeen taught art first in Elgin Academy (1961-64) and then in Lesmahagow as Head of Art until about 1987. From then on he became a full-time freelance stained glass artist based at Wiston and working from various studios in and around South Lanarkshire. He estimated that he had done 112 commissions (many with multiple lights) by the time of his last commission in 2008 at Black Mount Church, Dolphinton (which the Trust filmed as it was being made). His most acclaimed windows in this prolific career include the 750th Anniversary window in St Katherine Aisle at St Michael's Church, Linlithgow (six lancets with a rose window above), six windows in Dornoch Cathedral, and the 850th Anniversary West window in St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall.