The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  How could a day start any lovelier? The sky out there through the window, the beginnings of the day cast down on the white sheets, the covers of the bed. The quiet and calm of the room about her. The baby in her arms. What more could there be in life than this, Helen could have been thinking, with the kind of complete wonder that the world is so simple that really, to give you everything, the world need only pass you a child.

  Then … She’d gone downstairs. When her baby was asleep in her basket.

  It was still very early. It was five o’clock, five thirty.

  She went though to the little sitting room, the Music Room, as she did every day, she crouched down at the grate and started sweeping there.

  And occasionally she looked up at the hills beyond the glass and her thoughts went there, drifting, straying …

  Not knowing how much time passed, in that little room, the sense of light moving across the wall, across the far hills …

  Then Margaret came in to tell her that breakfast was ready – and the next Margaret saw of her daughter, she knew by her face, by the piece of white cloth she held, that something was wrong. Katherine Anna had been taken.

  insert/John Callum MacKay

  So he puts down the notes for:

  The child, Katherine Anna.

  He has minutes left, seconds. Before the dark comes. Women’s notes are the softest embellishments.88 He might write that sentence down somewhere, the difference between soft and hard notes on the scale.89 And he must, so as to protect them, the special notes – and to keep the baby safe he’ll surround her with her own particular song, an eight-note sequence that will be set inside the large theme … She’s very beautiful. Even though nothing should be overdone, in music as complicated as this it should not be overdone or it takes away from the core of the theme … Even so. He needs to give this scrap of new life a shawl. So there it is, lovely: An ‘F’ to a ‘G’, An ‘E’ to an ‘A’ … And so on into the morning of his fine, high day.

  By now he wants to get all of his journey in, get it all in the notes. The waking alone very early, when it was just light … The sound of the scale holding, returning to the ‘A’, even as he walked higher and higher onto the hill … And is also there the feeling, in bits of the theme already started, that something’s wrong with him and that he knows it, too – even as he makes his way towards a familiar place, that there’s something not right here, what he’s doing is wrong, and taking a child away. Because he’s not the kind of man to fall into madness, even with seeing his father just now, the way he did, out there on the hill, and seeing his boy, his own son out there with the dogs all around him and happy, happy they all were … Yet he did see them.

  Though he doesn’t live in that kind of world, where ghosts are, and hopes and dreams of people that you wish could come back to you … Though he’s not that sort. Though he’s just a man coming to the end of his life, that’s all, and thinking: Has he done anything to be proud of? To take with him into the dark? Before he says goodbye to all this light, has he anything? And love? Has he love?

  For Margaret …

  That part, that last note yet to sound.

  The high, high reach of her.

  He has always kept that note back …

  Who she was to him. Who she is. Who, always, she will be.

  That high, high note that is also his own note, the Piper’s note.

  The High ‘A’.

  It has always been the ‘A’.

  And waiting, waiting all this time, all his life, to let himself hear it …

  Yet only now …

  In the last of the notes, stepped into place, in the dark room …

  Margaret.

  The light shifts across the glass window of the Little Hut, shifts across the flat and silvery blue surface of the loch.

  And she’s there.

  Crunluath/final fragment

  Late, late summer but so light still you’d never believe time was in it – that there could be a beginning, an end to the day. Only that the sky has always been this blue. With the notes turning and spiralling into the air to make of themselves a crown.

  1 Earlier sections of ‘The Big Music’, the Urlar and Taorluath, have already described this.

  2 Appendix 10a/ii show the original MS of ‘Lament for Himself’ and the Crunluath movement here will describe the development and extension of many of the theme’s original ideas.

  3 The following movement of ‘The Big Music’, the Crunluath A Mach, gives details of these papers. Canntaireachd is the singing of piobaireachd to denote the notes of the scale, as well as phrasing, rhythm etc. John Sutherland would have thus been able to sing through to himself exactly the tune he has composed. The Glossary includes relevant Gaelic musical terms.

  4 The Last Appendix describes the effect of a finished piobaireachd upon the listener.

  5 Appendix 12/ii gives details. Also note: the pentatonic scale of the bagpipe has a more ‘flattened’ sound owing to the slightly different scale of the chanter and the presence of an extra note in the octave – the Low ‘G’.

  6 This has an almost literal meaning here: the self is indeed the fragment of the ‘Lament’ that remains – showing clearly this sequence of notes in the opening bars – but it also relates to the self that is depicted here, and in the earlier Taorluath movement, that is a man who is at the end of his life, and more frail than ever following the incident on the hill yesterday, when he suffered another stroke and was after that confined solely to bed. Finally there is a more figurative meaning as, despite his thoughts and music, John Sutherland has been unable to make reparations for earlier decisions. The ‘self he is left with’, then, is the man he’s always been.

  7 This phrase – in longer and slightly different versions – appears on pp. 126 and 150 of the Taorluath. Its layering of meanings there is less on show in the episode here, where John speaks with derision to the young man who has driven up all the way from his university town to see him – and who his father has considered has arrived too late.

  8 This privacy, this absolute cutting off of himself from the world, is represented by the secret place for composition John Sutherland built for himself up in the hills. Appendix 10b shows the relationship between the isolation of this place and the creative work made within it – details of the Little Hut and John’s time there in writing his ‘Lament’ emerge fully in this movement of ‘The Big Music’.

  9 The following passage, although it differs from that version slightly, is from pp. 5–6 of the Urlar.

  10 Further details of the Piobaireachd Society are given in Appendix 12/x.

  11 This could be of particular significance to readers of ‘The Big Music’, as the ground of that composition is returned to in a number of different ways throughout the entire piece.

  12 See Bibliography/Music: Piobaireachd/secondary – MacDonald, Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Pipe.

  13 Readers interested in this idea should consult the Index of ‘The Big Music’, to see how this same system of generating further layers of meaning to an art form applies in that work – so particular notes and phrases have a literary as well as a musical application.

  14 Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings also published by Faber and Faber is set in a Highland area not so far away from the setting of ‘The Big Music’, and very near to where Margaret MacKay was born and brought up.

  15 See Urlar movement, sections marked ‘narrative’: pp. 28–34.

  16 As we know, these details were all played out in the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’.

  17 There are details in the Appendices and elsewhere in ‘The Big Music’ of the great family of hereditary pipers and composers that played for Dunvegan Castle on the island of Skye and established a piping school there as early as the fifteenth century.

  18 See Bibliography/Music: Piobaireachd/secondary – MacNeill, Piobaireachd: Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe.

  19 The Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ shows so
me of these.

  20 This is why the detail, in this same movement of ‘The Big Music’, of the John who ‘put gently back in place the coil of hair from where it had come undone from behind her ear’ on p. 203, and others like it, are significant. It is an instance of tenderness that is largely absent in the life of one who has conducted himself almost entirely according to the principles of business and society rather than the human heart.

  21 The phrase comes from p. 75 of the Taorluath and previous pages, describing John’s homecoming to The Grey House.

  22 This sentence appears in ‘two/first paper’ of the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ that refers to Callum Sutherland, John Callum MacKay’s son who is driving home to The Grey House to see his father. We don’t know whether or not Callum is to inherit the musical tradition of the six generations of Sutherlands before him that are contained within the book – but if he were to pick up the pipes and play he would be the seventh-generation piper to whom Neil Munro refers in his short story ‘The Lost Piobaireachd’.

  23 The writing of Neil Gunn is referred to throughout ‘The Big Music’.

  24 Earlier sections of ‘The Big Music’ show this, in particular pp. 107 and 113 of the Taorluath movement that describe John Sutherland’s feelings about his parents and background.

  25 This note – the High ‘A’ – though Helen thinks about it here – has nevertheless not yet sounded fully in ‘The Big Music’. It is a note still to enter fully into the tune.

  26 There is no formal conclusion, as such, to piobaireachd – the final movement may be demonstration of the overall structure, the ‘making’ of the piece, but the last bars of that movement mark a return to the Urlar that was played at the beginning of the whole piece. In this way the music has no ‘end’, the piper will simply determine at what point he is to conclude playing of the opening section, and will put down his pipes. Appendix 11: ‘General structure of the piobaireachd’ describes this in more detail.

  27 The significance of this kind of writing becomes clear in a later section of this movement of ‘The Big Music’. It is when the earlier remarks and footnotes regarding the provenance of some of the statements in the book are clarified in terms of how the story has been uncovered and revealed.

  28 See the previous footnote regarding the provenance of these pages.

  29 As noted in earlier movements of ‘The Big Music’ and in relevant Appendices and the List of Additional Materials, the Little Hut was built by John MacKay Sutherland shortly after the death of his father. It was here that he started planning and writing his own compositions, and where the bulk of his creative manuscripts and notes were kept. In his younger days, he would have been able to spend a few hours there before anyone noticed he’d even been gone – being no more than a couple of hours’ brisk walking from the House.

  30 All quotes taken from Donnington, The Instruments of Music (see Bibliography/Music: General).

  31 Seumus MacNeill’s book, Piobaireachd: Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe, first presented as a series for BBC Radio Scotland in 1968, is commonly referenced by pipers and nonpipers alike as providing a thoroughly sound basis for an introduction to piobaireachd music. Certainly it is included in the Bibliography of ‘The Big Music’ and is fully and variously quoted in the Appendices and footnotes for this book.

  32 The diatonic scale reads thus: doh ray me fah soh lah ti doh; the pentatonic as: doh ray me soh lah doh.

  33 Richardson writes a personal and stirring Introduction to Piobaireachd: Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe by Seumus MacNeill, already noted. All quotations for this passage here are from those opening pages.

  34 See earlier sections of this book, p. 18 of the Urlar and pp. 75–77 of the Taorluath movements, to retain chronological time here.

  35 This was in the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ and p. 76 gives details of the telephone call that echoes through that section into this.

  36 One cannot overestimate the significance of John Sutherland’s place of composition in ‘The Big Music’. A bothan, or bothy or shelter, which is how the Little Hut is introduced at the beginning of ‘The Big Music’ on p. 23, is defined as a small dwelling, a place of refuge, rough-built and unobtrusive, yet a place of great importance to one who has been out in all weathers and needs cover, or, as in this case, utter silence and solitude. More often than not there are no markings for these secret dwelling places on any map and they are very easily disguised against a Highland landscape – therefore near impossible to find. John Sutherland’s Little Hut, as it’s known in this book, would have been built from an earlier dwelling place that had been previously used by a shepherd or by one of his forebears who may have come here in the same way he does, so as to be quiet and alone. The original walls are stone-built, and he has replaced the window and refitted a corrugated iron roof, lining out the interior etc., carrying out all works himself, over time, and bringing his materials to it, piece by piece, and his papers and journals and books.

  37 The structure of the piobaireachd has been covered already in footnotes and previous movements of ‘The Big Music’, as well as in certain Appendices; to note here is John Sutherland’s awareness, at an earlier part of the narrative structure that has been established well in advance of the Urlar, of the overall shape of his composition. This does not include, however, key themes that have emerged and are still emerging in this same composition – his notes encompass planning, and a certain musical idea only, at this point of his writing.

  38 As has been noted, after the laying out of the ground, a piobaireachd may take a kind of risk – some have described this as a ‘leap’ as in a ‘Stag’s Leap’ – whereby the music takes off into a new direction that has not necessarily been formally prepared for in the earlier theme. This is one way the Taorluath movement can express itself as distinct from the preceding movement – a leap away from it. Invariably, the piobaireachd will come to show how this risk (‘the stag leaps/into vacancy’, to quote ‘The Big Music’) actually links to the overall themes and Urlar after all – but nevertheless provides depth and texture to the tune’s original ideas by taking such a development.

  39 The final part of the piobaireachd, the Crunluath A Mach, is, in many respects, reflexive – showing how the whole piece has been put together and made. The Last Appendix serves as a reminder of the way the overall composition is structured; also the Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ displays content of the whole in this way.

  40 pp. 80, 81 and 158 give various examples of the way John MacKay reverts to certain patterns of speech that are distinctly Highland in structure and sound. The use of the word ‘for’ throughout the pages of ‘The Big Music’ is an example of the way these same speech patterns may also permeate the overall text of the book.

  41 Appendix 5: ‘The Grey House’ gives details of domestic life and the List of Additional Materials indicates relevant information that is available in archive.

  42 Extraordinary letters survived in a great mass of papers that looked at first to be nothing more than household bills. These were written in a fine hand, and went on for some pages, passionately declaring love, a desire to be together, ‘to press my lips upon you’, and rendered in miniature handwriting, the most tightly fit script you could imagine. Every line is straight, every character perfectly formed and crowding frantically to the very edges of the vellum – no doubt the product of Callum Sutherland’s composition work: he was used to writing notes of music on hand-produced manuscript paper. Scores of these compositions are on view at the National Piping Museum, where the same miniature hand as in the writing of these letters mentioned here can be detected in the notation.

  43 Appendix 9/iii gives some information on the musical history of The Grey House and the various classes and recitals that took place there. The doubling section contained within this variation also contains similar details, as does a later section of the third paper of the Crunluath movement. In addition, seeTranscript 1, a BBC interview
, in the List of Additional Materials for an individual recollection of music at The Grey House; and certain issues of The New Piping Times, 1934–58, also contain relevant details.

  44 Appendix 4 and the List of Additional Materials give a history of the various periods of The Grey House in terms of its architectural development; plans and details of room use etc. are available in archive and are also described in the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’, pp. 87–96 and 165–7.

  45 The New Piping Times ran a cover feature that comprised an interview with and essay by John MacKay Sutherland on the subject of the musical archive that was kept at The Grey House and his realisation of its depth and wealth of material. Sutherland’s essay begins ‘No son realises early enough the debt he owes his father – and the son of a musician, who himself is someone who is trying to be a musician, knows this to his cost, too late in his life. So it was for me when I uncovered the manuscripts and writings of my late father, Callum Sutherland of Rogart – known to many as perhaps the greatest modern interpreter of the ancient piobaireachd we all love, and certainly one of its most intelligent and serious champions.’

  46 The List of Additional Materials shows a reproduction of the original Angus MacKay piobaireachd edition of 1838, ‘Lament for the Children’.

  47 It is significant that Callum MacKay owned an original edition of the above, as these are rare, and for the most part held in public collections and libraries such as the National Museum of Scotland, etc. The editions held by the Sutherland family were passed down from John ‘Elder’ Sutherland, who knew Iain MacCrimmon and, it is believed, also took instruction with Angus MacKay in the latter part of his life. The fact that the Sutherlands owned these editions at this time denotes their increasing prosperity.