The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  1934–40: Sent to Inverness Boys’ Academy, as a termly boarder

  1941–43: Attended University of Edinburgh to read Law; left before attaining a degree

  1943–45: Worked first as an assistant, then manager, at Baillie Ross Investments

  1945–47: Began Ross Holdings, a business involved in export/import investment, and took this over as MacKay Investments in 1946 in Edinburgh

  1948 onwards: Moved to London; established MacKay Investments as a City operation with offices in New York and the Far East; set up Sutherland Holdings, a private equity firm, as a satellite operation during this time (note especially the latter company name)

  1964: Married Sarah Lutyens of Barnes, London

  There follows, as we read in ‘The Big Music’, the birth of Callum John Sutherland, only child; the illness of his mother initiating a return to The Grey House after an absence of more than twenty years; the death of his father, after which he starts intermittent visits home to Sutherland, often in the summer months.

  Then the death of his mother, Elizabeth Clare Nichol.

  Moves back to The Grey House following an informal separation from his wife.

  And from then to the present: see all movements of ‘The Big Music’ for further information.

  His musical development can also be represented in similar fashion:

  1926–35: Taught chanter at home by his father, John Callum Sutherland; introduced to pipes and drones at about the age of ten

  1934–40: Played in the Inverness Boys’ Academy Pipe Band; performed at local concerts, events in the Inverness region

  1941–43: Joined the Piobaireachd Club at the University of Edinburgh; subsequently revoked membership

  1944 to the period recorded in ‘The Big Music’; ceased playing the bagpipes altogether

  After first visit back to The Grey House: began practising the chanter again, and then the pipes.59

  From then to present: Played seriously as a competitor, teacher, composer; awarded the following: Gold Medal at Inverness; the Clasp at Inverness; the Donald MacLeod Memorial Cuaich; International Pipe Music Award; the Piobaireachd Society Award; BBC Scotland Award for Composition and Play; the Isle of Skye MacCrimmon Memorial Cuaich.

  gracenotes/piobaireachd: the history of its teaching, the Sutherlands

  As noted in the Taorluath and in this Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’, the Sutherland Family of The Grey House District were renowned, since the early eighteenth century (and no doubt before then) as musicians who had established a form of teaching that was referred to, from early on, as the ‘Winter Classes’ and that took place, generally, from October through to February.

  John MacKay conducted classes that followed his forebears’ and particularly his father’s models of teaching – this, years after he’d begun returning to the House as a mature man and had uncovered the wealth of musical material his father had left behind there, by way of instruction. In this manner, the spirit and ethos of the classes remained the same, in the twentieth century, as they had been in the eighteenth, and before then, with some of the exercises that were played dating right back to those dark nights in the 1700s when Roderick Callum had first invited a group of pipers to come and spend the winter months learning to perfect their musicianship. The idea, from the very beginning, was to create a place of learning, to attain by practice and emulation the perfection of their art that pipers had known back in the days of Boreraig, back in those great days. During those winter months certain tunes were composed by the Sutherlands and created to develop technique and expertise, from the singing of canntaireachd through to chanter-playing, as well as instruction given pertaining to tuning of pipes to drones, and the modulation of the treble to the bass so as to give the most beautiful sound. These tunes and exercises are still played today.

  So John Sutherland returned to the world of piping that he’d left behind him when he rejected his father and all he stood for. In fact, in those intervening years, after his mother’s death and before the onset of his own age and ill health, the atmosphere at The Grey House quite often resembled that of his father’s parties and so-called ‘Big Nights’ that in themselves harked back to an earlier era – the time when the cold hills rang with music and a low house set in against the hill might provide, for a time against the weather, all the consolations of art and beauty.

  three/third paper (cont.)

  Finally, there are the following family records that detail those sons of the Sutherland family who inherited both the holdings and musical tradition of the House that had been established as early as the mid-eighteenth century as a place for music and education. As is clear from the chart that appeared earlier in this movement, a variation of which is reproduced below, eldest sons were traditionally named John, though in some cases, following a death, a younger son inherited. The details of other siblings are not included here, though a full family tree is available as part of the completed archive. In some instances, younger brothers who were also talented pipers may have stayed on at the House to teach, but in most cases, certainly by the turn of the twentieth century, The Grey House was home to one piper only, with a single tradition that dominated the teaching and playing of music in that place. Underlined names suggest name in use.

  John Roderick MacKay of ‘Grey Longhouse’ (‘First John’) 1736–1793: early scraps of tunes survive; see Appendix 5, List of Additional Materials, archive

  Roderick John (a tacksman) 1776–1823: extant tunes and writings: Notes on Canntaireachd; ‘The White Flower’, ‘A Tune for Mary Jean’; extended the holdings of the House; also known as Roderick Mor, a piping teacher

  John ‘Elder’ Roderick Callum (possibly knew Iain MacCrimmon, the last of that great family of hereditary pipers, who died in 1822) 1800–1871; famous tunes: ‘I Knew MacCrimmon’, ‘The White Flower, Again’, ‘The Long Night’. Bought the ‘corridor’ from Sutherland Estates; built The Grey House on existing foundations, incorporating a part of the original Grey Longhouse

  John Callum MacKay (‘Old John’) 1835–1911: all tunes as above, but formally printed and bound with his own notes; also ‘Lessons, Notes and Tunes for Lessons’; first formal lessons conducted in a ‘Study’ or ‘Music Room’ at The Grey House that had been extended and renovated; also known as John Mor, after his grandfather who had also been known for his teaching

  (Roderick) John Callum (‘Himself’) 1887–1968: always known as Callum; the great twentieth-century ‘Modernist’ piper; most known piobaireachd ‘Salute to the Hills’; also many tunes for the Sutherland Highlanders and Army School of Piping; responsible for establishing the ‘Winter Classes’ at The Grey House as a fixture on the international piping calendar; oversaw further renovations that the House could accommodate large parties

  John Callum MacKay of this book, 1923–present: see the Taorluath section of ‘The Big Music’ for a list of tunes composed, including ‘The Return’ and the unfinished ‘Lament for Himself’; secretly built what he called ‘the Little Hut’ in the hills in front of The Grey House for composition work and writing

  Callum Innes MacKay, his son, introduced in ‘The Big Music’: at time of writing it is unknown whether he will return to The Grey House and take up piping there.

  gracenotes/piobaireachd: style and manner

  The oral transmission of piobaireachd survives as a living tradition through diverse lineages of teachers and pupils, traceable back to the earliest accounts of the form. Distinctive approaches to performance technique and interpretation developed through different styles of playing and instruction, with two of the most influential coming to be known as the Cameron style, which is more rounded, and the MacPherson style, which is more clipped.

  The Sutherland style of playing was one that took its name from the great Highland piper Roderick John Callum Sutherland of Rogart, who, with his son Roderick John Callum and his son John, went on to perfect a series of piobaireachd musical themes that came to describe a certain manner of phrasing and tone
that relied less on traditional ornamentation and more on the hold and stay of the notes. Recordings of some of the later of these compositions survive but in the form of tapes only, which are currently being converted to CD.

  More recently, recordings by acclaimed practitioners such as Robert Reid, a leading proponent of the Cameron style, and Donald MacPherson offer exemplary documentation of these performance traditions. In all instances, the beauty and complexity of the music must rely in the end on a perfectly tuned instrument, where reed and bag, drone and pipe are in finest condition and in unified accordance, one element to another. It has been said that the best way to think about playing a tune – and therefore about the qualities of the instrument upon which the musician will be playing – is to imagine all at first as something that will be sung. To tune the voice, the mind to the music in hand – this was the way piobaireachd was taught in the beginning, when there were no written manuscripts, when the notes for the tunes had no representation upon the stave. Such is the power of music, of poetry, that it can be learned in this other, mysterious way – not so much read and understood as listened to and apprehended. It could well be that the traditional manner of learning piobaireachd by canntaireachd, by way of a range of sounds that were sung through, teacher to pupil, may contain instruction for our understanding of all of art’s mysteries. Certainly there need be no direct correlation between correct understanding and the power of effect for high art to make its charge upon us.

  Indeed, the writer Seumus MacNeill has observed, because of this very fact – of the primacy of the human voice as being our way in to piobaireachd – that it could well be ‘that the more incorrectly a piobaireachd is written, the better it is to be played – because the learner is forced to seek assistance from a piper who knows more than he does and who has been taught himself in the traditional manner’.

  Certainly, the idea of a music that sits behind the words, of entire lines and phrases that sound rather than represent … Is at the very heart of the project here in hand, from John Sutherland’s ‘Lament for Himself’ right through ‘The Big Music’ in its entirety.

  embellishment/3: domestic detail: Mary Katherine MacKay

  And what was left for Mary then? Helen wondered about her, gave stories to her, for what had occurred there, in that woman’s life, after she’d turned her own daughter away?

  Of course those actions of hers, coming from her strength and independence, had brought a consequence upon her she could not have forseen, otherwise surely would not have allowed? That was Helen’s realisation, years after her mother had first started telling her about her grandmother’s life. How she came to understand that a desire for freedom itself, and independence, can cause a straitening, a limitation that shows itself as narrowness and lack of feeling … Is what would happen in time to Mary.

  For, as Margaret said, the way her mother came to end her life was to be without both a daughter and a granddaughter – though surrounded still by her own perceived and wasted freedom. For to be a mother of a daughter without a daughter … What loneliness there, what cutting short. That by judging her daughter so hard for following the conditions of her heart she would lose her, that by punishing her because she would leave her to follow a man, so that Mary herself would never see her own daughter, meet her granddaughter … What possible freedom could there ever be to make up for that, ever? In casting Margaret from her the way she did, what effect? What result? Only sadness.60

  This sadness has been described already, of course, in an earlier embellishment,61 and other papers describe how the music of piobaireachd and the remote Highland landscape itself promote feelings of loss and loneliness. The line ‘People are lonely enough’ comes to mind here, along with countless other phrases that describe emptiness and longing – there is Callum’s return home to see his father, driving up the long road in the gathering dusk, there are the implacable hills, the empty skies. So Mary’s sense of loss here could be seen as one aspect of a larger landscape. Certainly she is not alone in her stubborn refusal to let tenderness guide her actions. But the significance here of her will is the way it played out upon her daughter’s life. How, because Mary herself had never allowed a man to direct her actions in the way that Margaret was so affected, she became narrow towards Margaret and unyielding – is what Helen came to learn from her story. That independence could lead to judgement then to loss. Indeed she has made notes about this: How sometimes everything you want, she has written, only draws you closer and closer inwards, takes you away from the open air and puts you inside.

  Poor Mary.

  By the time she died, it was as though she had never known Margaret, never given birth to a daughter, or held her. Had never known her at all.

  So the consequences played out in that woman’s life – a particular effect of a particular kind of love: That’s a story many women tell, writes Helen on a paper, though never Mary.

  Is why she writes it down and keeps it here instead. ‘In books’ she says, ‘in papers.’62

  The history of women in these places is always a quiet story, it’s quietly told.

  The story of her mother, her mother’s mother.

  All caught up in those domestic papers. Embellishments. Variations.

  The history of women in these places …

  Writing everything down that the children might learn from the history, as Helen herself might learn from her mother’s story: what strength is. And love. To be strong like a Mary, but with an understanding, too, of that which is tentative and can be frail. Therefore to treasure love and return to it, going back and back again to that invisible thing, even when it has no currency in the world, when some may say it has given you nothing, so you go back to it, says Margaret’s story in the end, return, to find the richness there.

  third variation/The Grey House: history of land ownership

  It’s not to give the impression that the land up in this part of Scotland, connected to this family and developed over the years away from the estate system of leasehold and rent, quite separate in its management from the rural systems established in the North East at the turn of the nineteenth century,63 not to imply that any of this put the Sutherland family in a position that could be regarded as elevated, in the district. This was not the case. That old John ‘Elder’ challenged in market for better prices for his animals was not to make him grand in any way, or standing one better than his neighbours. Rather, he was able to charge more for his livestock and so challenge the market because the animals were those he himself had raised and looked after – so better by far than any a shepherd might mind for the laird he was working for, and better, too, than leasehold beasts, for these sheep and cattle were his own. So, in all, this would put him in a better position than most with his enterprises – and gave others in the district a kind of template to follow: that you could raise more for your own stock by bringing in the kinds of innovations and care that were being adopted on the big estates down on the Black Isle and in Nairn,64 that it was all about paying attention, success, being responsible for the development of your own land and beasts and not just letting them lie, in the old ways, unchanged, just making do with getting by.

  So his sheep were cross-bred to create his own breed – hardy and fat, and with wool that could be clipped twice in the year; the effort worth it for the yield. So in the same way he slowly sold off the black cattle and brought in the slower, heavier red cows that could be driven for greater distance without losing body weight. And one should not give the impression either, in this paper, that any of those working for him resented the additional labour that these innovations brought – for the recompense was there, in money or in livestock. And not to suggest either that any resented the tithe he took, this John Sutherland, known also as Callum, following in his father’s habits, in taking a tithe instead of payment in exchange for the land sub-contracted – any more than any would have resented the tithe asked for the shelter provided by the House back in the old days, when it was a necessary sto
pping-off place for shepherds on the Lairg sheep or cattle run.65

  For just as the shepherds of that earlier time would rather be paying a man they viewed as a friend in tithe, so as to reflect a fairness, a reciprocity, in payment and in receipt, so those in later generations who were given work on the land regarded the extra clipping, the time taken with the lambs or the greening of the pasture by the river, as necessary and developmental to their own success – it came to be that way – as helping them in time with their own ventures. In this John or Callum was a sort of mentor, you might call him, someone they could go to for advice and help and who would give them a start, too, if they needed it, more often than not out of their own tithe. In all this, then, so you could say, he was the kind of man as they themselves were, is how they regarded him, straightforward, you might say, and with simple education, and though he had the House and with land and hills and a river going through it all … He had none of the glitter and empty cast, as they saw it, of the landed classes with their big ostentations hidden away in the hills and there only for the autumn shooting, or for the salmon, just. This man, by contrast, the great-great-great-grandfather of this book’s John Callum MacKay, lived here through the year, he stayed here: a man who had used his wit and cleverness, it was said, to take back some of the goodness of the land that in the course of time the Big Clearances may have lost.66

  And it’s written like that, ‘Big Clearances’ – though this is something to argue with, of course.67 Whether we are to think of what happened in this part of Sutherland as a straightforward ‘clearing’ – a sweeping away, and all that the word hints at and implies, the adjective containing within it, as it were, the force of necessity. For there are many68 will say that this was a natural thing, in its frank brutality, a force of nature that occurred by human agency – for the land was never going to continue to support the kinds of numbers were breeding and living like wild things in some of the conditions present up there in the back hills and valleys of the darkest Caithness and Sutherland Hills.