by Kirsty Gunn
4 The Leumluath is a variation that is often included within the second movement or the Taorluath of a piobaireachd and carries the meaning ‘leap’ (of music) – traditionally the ‘Stag’s Leap’ – to denote the way the notes take a risk on the theme. One of the notebooks of JMS shows him writing about the ‘Stag’s Leap’ as a metaphor for creativity. In general, the Taorluath movement plays hazardously around and about the notes of the theme, barely touching it sometimes as it weaves its own pattern around its shape. So we are left with the strong impression of the theme even so, in the middle of the patterning of the music of this variation, even though we have not heard it play, as such. A risky and exciting movement that brings the piobaireachd on and develops its maturity and complexity. Appendix 11 describes the general structure of a piobaireachd, its various movements, etc.
5 Appendix 10a: ‘The Piobaireachd “Lament for Himself”’ gives details of John MacKay’s composition, including the original MS of the Urlar. Later, in the List of Additional Materials, we see how this was ‘completed’ by an anonymous composer to give readers of ‘The Big Music’ a sense of the full piobaireachd. In that ‘finished’ version we see how the Taorluath comprises embellishments that play around the various notes and their meanings that were established in the Urlar, e.g. John MacKay’s theme, the Lullaby, and, as we will see, the significance of the ‘F’ note as the note of Love, that also figures throughout ‘The Big Music’ as a note of return.
6 Refers to the ‘dithis’ variation on the Urlar on p. 46 of ‘The Big Music’.
7 All first-born sons in the Sutherland family were christened John, however John MacKay’s father was born Roderick and his name changed to John following the death of his elder brother – though he always went by the name Callum, also a strong Sutherland family name. Details of family history and genealogy appear in Appendix 6/ii; iv.
8 Appendices 1–3 contain all information on the North East region pertaining to ‘The Big Music’ and relevant maps etc. can be found at the back of the book and in Appendices 1 and 2.
9 In particular, Appendix 3/iv depicts a version of landholding in the region that differs from the usual post-Clearances narrative; see too family records etc. contained in Appendices 4–9.
10 Appendix 6/ii, iii and iv have details of the history of The Grey House and the Sutherland family who lived there.
11 Other examples of similar types of independent ownership can be found in various histories of the Highlands; also Appendix 5/i and iv direct the reader as to how life was lived at The Grey House over this period.
12 The sensibility of this early ‘school’ reached its apotheosis in the 1950s when John MacKay’s father, still known to this day as the great ‘Modernist’ piper of the twentieth century, established the famous ‘Winter Classes’ that were held as part of the Piping School formally set up by his father, John Callum MacKay, at The Grey House.
13 Appendix 2/ii carries details of local place names; and Appendices 1 and 2, also Endpapers, show relevant maps.
14 Appendix 6/i–iv give details of family names and genealogy; also Appendices 4/ii and iii give details of the construction of the House. The List of Additional Materials contains information relating to the domestic archive of The Grey House including recipes etc. Appendix 5/ii refers to the role of women, rooms of the House and their use, along with domestic notes, etc.
15 The Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ gives details of the MacCrimmon family and their role as musicians and composers of great piobaireachd from the 1500s onwards. There are details of the various generations of MacCrimmon pipers and their famous piping school of Skye, listing Iain MacCrimmon as the last member of that family, who died in 1822. It is believed that John Sutherland may, as a young man, have taken some instruction from him, around the turn of the nineteenth century; references in letters and journals of that time attest to ‘much learning and knowledge’ that was ‘passed on by the great M’; ‘M played the Lament for me on the chanter, and sang it to me as he went’; ‘Skye is a place wet and grey but full of music’; also the Bibliography lists certain books that include information on the MacCrimmons and their legend.
16 See Bibliography/Music: Piobaireachd/primary – MacKay, A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd.
17 The terrible history of the Clearances, a time that has been described as a version of ethnic cleansing when families throughout certain Highland areas were forcibly removed from their homes and repatriated, has been extensively recorded and researched. Details for further reading are available in the Bibliography; also see Appendix 2/i and ii in this book.
18 The Third Movement of ‘The Big Music’ has sections that describe how The Grey House of the Sutherland family developed, over time, into a great centre for piping. Appendix 5, relating to domestic life, also gives more details of its day-to-day activities as a place that was both a home and a school; and the List of Additional Materials shows various relevant documents.
19 The Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ contains more information about the MacCrimmon family of hereditary pipers; also Appendices 4, 12 and 13 give an introduction to and history of piobaireachd that relate to its earliest compositions and are relevant here.
20 Earlier pages of ‘The Big Music’ have described how John MacKay’s father was given the name John after his elder brother’s death, but always was known as Callum, the name of his grandson, whom he never met. The Crunluath movement also tells more about the musical history of John MacKay Sutherland, the subject of ‘Lament for Himself’, by way of giving information about his father’s teaching methods and famous ‘Winter Classes’ that he himself emulated by way of his summer parties and invitations to pipers to come to The Grey House and play and give instruction there.
21 Appendices 1–3 give the history of the North East Highland district and describes its rural economy and industries.
22 This refers to the generation of John Callum MacKay (1835–1911), who first encouraged the writing down of tunes as a way of teaching them, in addition to the traditional canntaireachd sung method; also Appendix 9/iii and the Crunluath and A Mach sections are relevant here, as are Appendix 5/iii and certain documents in the List of Additional Materials.
23 Appendix 13/i gives the history of piping music and in 12/x, with particular reference to the work of Archibald Campbell and the Piobaireachd Society.
24 Callum would have been nicknamed ‘Og’ perhaps as a way of differentiating him from his father, John Callum, who had also been a teacher and known for his music school. In this way it is also a friendly reference to one of the MacCrimmon sons who was similarly differentiated from his father by the addition of the suffix ‘Og’, meaning ‘younger’ in Gaelic. See Glossary and Bibliography for further details.
25 Appendix 9 describes The Grey House as a Piping School, its history; details.
26 There is information on the history of the teaching of the bagpipe and piobaireachd, of Skye and the MacCrimmons and later music schools, traditional and contemporary, throughout the narrative of ‘The Big Music’ – particularly in its Crunluath movement, and in certain of its Appendices, particularly Appendix 11 onwards.
27 All references to the Sutherland family home, in the Appendices and List of Additional Materials, and throughout ‘The Big Music’, refer to ‘The Grey House’, that name being a version of the building in its earliest form as a traditional eighteenth-century grey longhouse. NB: There is a piobaireachd ‘The End of the Road’ by JMS that may be in Callum’s mind at this point.
28 The Crunluath A Mach movement is the final completion of a piobaireachd and in ‘The Big Music’ (e.g. three/first paper, pp. 183, 184, 185 etc.) we see examples of John MacKay’s notes and thoughts about the composition of his piobaireachd, its beginnings laid down and intimations of how it may end. Appendix 10/ii may also be of interest here, giving further details of how ‘Lament for Himself’ is constructed.
29 For those who read music it may be possible to sing through the
lovely phrase of the second line – indeed, the whole piobaireachd can be sung or played using the manuscript that appears in the List of Additional Materials. One must bear in mind, however, when playing or singing from this manuscript, the slightly different tuning of a chanter that gives the bagpipe scale a subtle shifted octave to the one we are used to – one, experts say, that is more attuned to an ancient Greek pipe, the type that was played to classical audiences by way of preparing them for one of the great tragedies of Aeschylus or Sophocles.
30 Refers to this section of ‘The Big Music’ that is starting to take shape here. Also Appendices 10/i and 11 describe the movements of a piobaireachd and how the traditional structure relates to ‘Lament for Himself’.
31 The slight alteration to the notes in line two to create the phrase for line three contains the ‘leap’ that will bring about the change of orientation in the second movement of his piobaireachd – the different sound that allows for the story of his parents and his past in the tune of ‘The Big Music’ and, significantly, will describe, in the Taorluath movement, Callum’s arrival to the House.
32 The Leumluath, or ‘Stag’s Leap’, that moment of risk or change in the music, is contained within the Taorluath movement here.
33 ‘G’ is the note of Gathering on the chanter scale. The Last Appendix carries the full chart of the chanter’s scale.
34 See Urlar of ‘The Big Music’, p. 67; also Appendix 9/ii and the List of Additional Materials.
35 Appendix 12/iii gives details of the different styles of piobaireachd music; additional information about compositions of the Sutherland family can be found in the List of Additional Materials.
36 The List of Additional Materials includes details of letters kept, like those of the young John Callum and his mother after he was sent away to school. These are part of the domestic archive collated by Elizabeth Clare Nichol Sutherland and Margaret MacKay and are available as part of an ongoing project to raise awareness of the significance of domestic life as a subject for literature; see Appendix 5 and ‘The Big Music’, later movements.
37 We know that John Sutherland did return to The Grey House once during this period of his life, when he was still in his twenties, and shortly after he’d moved to London – to see his mother, who was unwell. Important details of this visit are present in the Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’, in particular pp. 219, 220, and later pp. 274, 364.
38 The story of John and Margaret starts the first summer Margaret spends at The Grey House and comes into the tune of the Crunluath movement, later in ‘The Big Music’; see also earlier sections of the Urlar and the ambiguity surrounding the title of the JMS piobaireachd ‘The Return’.
39 This song, of course, is his own ‘Lament’ – a song made of nothing, only of ‘Himself’ – that slowly allows other elements in. The Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ describes some of John’s thoughts and ideas for the content of the piobaireachd and his sense of it being part of an ongoing story of the Sutherland family; also see the earlier Urlar of this book and later movements.
40 As will become clear, this paper takes in fully the first-person voice we have heard from before in ‘The Big Music’, that will become an increasing presence in the pages of the story as it develops. It wasn’t difficult for me to see, when I was editing these papers, that this was intended – that the ‘I’ should come to have an increasing role, and it helped me greatly in the arrangement of the text.
41 The piobaireachd known by all as ‘The Return’ but that also goes by a second, secret name that has been referred to earlier in ‘The Big Music’; see pp. 120, 121. In his musical archive JMS left all compositions listed by number; the names were held separately. Appendix 6/v has details under ‘Family records of music kept, compositions’.
42 To remind the reader: the tune playing in the Music Room is called ‘The Return’ but, as noted on p. 132, also carries the secret title ‘Margaret’s Song’. This appears in full in manuscript at the back of ‘The Big Music’.
43 Details of the compositions of JMS and the Sutherland family appear in Appendices 6/v and 9/ii and iii, relating to the musical history of The Grey House, and in the List of Additional Materials. The full handwritten ms by JMS of ‘The Return’ or ‘Margaret’s Song’ can also be seen at the back of ‘The Big Music’.
44 This and the previous sentence describe the three to four movements that comprise a standard piobaireachd: the first laying out the ‘ground’ or principal musical idea, often also with a dithis, a singling and doubling on that theme; the second a movement away from the central theme into something more complex, that often carries within it a variation known as the ‘Stag’s Leap’ – a leap into the unknown, where great risk is taken with the central musical idea; the third as a grand embellishment of the first two movements, where a great deal of musical information about the original theme is given; and the final A Mach movement, a reflexive display of embellishments and variations wherein the music itself seems to describe its own making, the prowess of the musicianship and the musician, in a final show before the piobaireachd returns to play the notes of the ground or theme again.
45 The movements as above, according to their original Gaelic descriptions.
46 The secret place refers, of course, to the small building known as the Little Hut, built by John Callum in the years after his father’s death to be a retreat in the hills where he could be on his own to compose and think and write, and be free, perhaps, from his father’s still-living musical influence. Creative material and fragments from that place are on display in the Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ and details are also contained in the List of Additional Materials at the back of this book.
47 The room referred to here cannot literally be dated back to the early eighteenth century, when records show The Grey House as ‘Grey Longhouse’ or ‘Langhouse’ – a traditional three-roomed building attached to a byre. At that time there wouldn’t have been a single bedroom such as the one described here, but only a separate, larger room that would have accommodated many members of the family. However, that first house comprises the foundations of the present Grey House, and so the bedroom where John Sutherland lies now does date back to his great-great-grandfather’s day, when plans of the House show a separate bedroom next to what was the kitchen. Plans, some of which are quite idiosyncratic in parts, are included as additional material at the back of the book, and show the building and extension of The Grey House over the years, and indicate these original rooms and their use.
48 Earlier sections of ‘The Big Music’ describe the notes for this and other instances of intense emotion that cannot be fully expressed as a falling back, a withholding of the theme in the embellishments that are set around it, that will be released back into the tune in the display of technique and bravura that is the Crunluath A Mach.
49 This regular, even breathing is a feature of the opening bars of the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’, the notes patterning the resigned inhalation and exhalation of a single man, lying in the dark and awaiting, at the end of his life, his death.
50 There is no ‘space’ as such between phrases or groups of notes in bagpipe music, as the drone keeps up a steady tone beneath throughout the playing of the music. However, harmonics that occur in a perfectly tuned instrument create this effect – of ‘gaps’ in the music that sound like silence.
51 In contemporary times, the piper Donald MacPherson is considered to be one of the best piobaireachd players in the world due to the sound he gets from his instrument – the result of perfectly tuned and matched pipes.
52 The High ‘G’ is the note of Sorrow on the piper’s scale; the ‘F’, as we know, the note of Love.
53 Various sections of ‘The Big Music’ hint at the ambivalence that surrounds this note – for John Sutherland, in general, but also in the way the note figures in ‘Lament for Himself’. Yes, we have read already that ‘A’ is the base note, from which the pipes are tuned, the first f
ull note of the octave, therefore known as the Piper’s own note, following the Low ‘G’. But High ‘A’ is also the ‘reached for’ note and, as we will come to see, represents Margaret throughout the piobaireachd as well as John himself. In this way, some might say, John and Margaret can come together in ‘The Big Music’.
54 This describes the octave of the scale – the matching of the High and Low ‘A’ to the bass drone of the pipes. A detailed drawing of the bagpipes, showing its various pipes and drones etc., is found in Appendix 13/ii, along with related information.
55 ‘Lament for Himself’, as we know from the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’, opens with the repeating sequence ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’ / ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’ etc. that has about it the regular sound of inhalation, exhalation, as though breathing. Refer back to pp. 3, 4, 12 for a reminder of this.
56 The preceding Urlar indicates this.
57 Refers to the singling and doubling of the Urlar back on p. 46 of ‘The Big Music’, when John Sutherland thought he was meeting his son – and also his father – out on the hill; the three generations come together in his mind in the way they never did in life.