The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  NB: additional thoughts: taken from journals, letters:9

  He couldn’t say exactly when, but it was early into his marriage that he knew he should have had his mind turned to his wife, to his baby son, but he couldn’t so turn for he’d realised, soon after the wedding, that he’d done the wrong thing. Being south. Being married, being a father. All of it wrong. It started then, I think, that habit of cutting himself off from things, from people. Then he’d come home for his mother, remember? When they all thought she was going to die and he came home then after so much time away? He’d finally got in, from the long journey, overnight first to Edinburgh then the connecting train north and getting in to the station, late, late afternoon, opening the carriage door … And Margaret was there.

  [from – a tape recording/words spoken, then sounding a note, a sequence of notes]10

  Margaret.

  Margaret.

  Margaret.

  Thinking of her now, and full, in these last warm days before the real cold sets in.

  [from – letter to self, typewritten]

  They might phone you, your wife and son, asking after you, they might – but you’ve stopped taking the tablets now or you’d never get this piece written. It would never be done. There’s the first movement down in manuscript, but something missing from it even so.

  But don’t say a word to anyone about it.

  What you’re doing up here.

  Because it’s what you wanted, isn’t it?

  To be up here, in this private place, with all the past set down on the pages?

  What you wanted, Johnnie?

  To be completely alone?11

  [from – tape recording/interrupted chanter playing of first movement, spoken words and handwritten notes (indicated here in italics) inserted in the chanter case]12

  Is there anyone else?

  This music needs something else.

  Is there another theme here, that could come in?

  Something to suggest lightness, possibility.

  Here’s a phrase that keeps coming back to me: new life out of old.

  iii

  As he got older, his visits back to the House increased; he stayed longer and longer until he moved back permanently. By then it had been a long time since he and Margaret had been together in the room they had shared at the top of the House. After his last stroke, Margaret and Iain moved John to the little bedroom off the hall down by the room they used to call the Music Room.13 That was from the days when his father taught in there, and the various musicians played and made their presentations there. It was thought the pipers would have marched up and down the hall right outside that little bedroom – and John would have that to think about, maybe, as he lay there in his bed.

  It must have seemed to him by then that everything about his life had gone into the past. The manuscript shows the ‘Lament’ following more and more a minor trajectory that, in the opening section especially, seems barely able to lift itself above the drone of the ‘A’.

  As though there’s nothing to give him pleasure any more.

  The single High ‘A’, that relief … It’s as if he’s saving that for later.

  [from – tape recording/interrupted chanter playing spoken words and handwritten notes (in italics) inserted in the chanter case]

  For what use a tune when the wind turns cold or the rain might start? It’s more a blanket I need than a baby’s cloth, though I have seen the baby and she is fair. Still it’s more a covering for a bed I need, for a grave.

  She’s Margaret’s daughter’s child.

  The idea of having her with me, in the tune.

  If at all possible, to get away up here, and finish it. Find the little theme that’s missing here. Like a blanket, like a baby’s cloth.14

  [from – journal/undated entries]

  Another day – working on the second and third movements; written notes but nothing laid down yet. Overcast but warm.

  An easy walk this morning, and they don’t know I’m here.

  Raining.

  Clear today, some cloud later.

  iv

  NB: idea for insert – John Callum:15

  To break the silence following the second movement: The young man thinks it, says ‘I’ll not go!’ … But he did go back, sure enough, for the funeral.

  And his father was there, inside the box.

  John had stood over him, before the men came up behind with the shovels and the earth.

  ‘Ready then?’ they’d asked him. The day was cold.

  ‘Aye, ready …’

  [from – journal, notes written in third person]

  For weeks now. Months even. Hearing it but having to be silent. For the work of the damn pills, and Sarah calling from London every minute to check up, ask the others, How’s he doing? Are you keeping an eye on things there?

  But the tune. It’s coming.

  And where, you might ask, is Callum in all of this?16 Asking Sarah but getting no answer there, down the line. For there’s no note in the music for him, for Callum, though he should be there.

  Callum.

  But how to get him in? When he’s his son and he belongs there?

  How make a tune for someone, put him in, when you don’t know him at all?

  v

  [from – paper/handwritten]

  Only …

  That note.

  Yet to come in.

  The High, High – ‘A’ – of her.

  Again …

  And …

  Again.

  vi

  [from – journal/undated entries]

  The quiet room at the top of the House where we used to go.

  It was the room that was the Schoolroom, once. Of course I remember it, why even write it like that, as a sentence when a theme for it will be in the tune, on three notes?17

  I have that down already – an idea for the later movements.

  It was where my mother taught me, as well, when I was a boy, the Schoolroom.

  Reading. Writing. Arithmetic.

  And when we were done she would take me up in her arms.

  vii

  [from – paper/found stuck between the pages of an old appointment diary]

  I should not be here.

  endnote:18

  That scrap of paper is on my own desk now, a little wisp of handwriting, pencil. It’s like a beginning.

  For what does the line mean, for this one man?

  If I’d written such a thing you might say it’s because I’ve travelled and I’ve been unsettled, that I’ve lived abroad and in other places where I’ve gone unremarked in towns and villages and parts of the countryside, and unknown, because I have not belonged there.

  But John Sutherland of this House?

  A Sutherland from Sutherland?

  Perhaps it really is where the whole book begins.

  The following is on a separate sheet of paper, handwritten in pencil – many sections scribbled out:

  That by setting down the details of this one man’s birth and life I might uncover something, a meaning of that phrase, I should not be here, that sits like a shadow behind those words … A ‘Lament for Himself’ after all. And so by getting the papers back from the Little Hut, finding his mother’s birth certificate, his father’s papers, legal documents that show the history of the House … All this was to find the shape of a life, its sound, its modulations. Here are the details of his company in London if I want them, of his wife’s house’s mortgage, notes for Callum’s school fees though nothing for him later. A family’s business and affairs stuffed into drawers in the desk and some files, too, that he had – that I myself was responsible for clearing out. My mother was not able to do it.

  And so it began. In time, from my quiet room at the top of the House, from these broad facts, documents, from the manuscript itself … Lines start to open up, ideas. One paragraph builds to a page, the pages are collected:

  One paper … And another …

  A marriage document, a regis
try office in London, forms to sign for a new car, for a hand-made suit.

  A note from a journal dated three weeks before he died – that was there in the Little Hut, on a desk by a window that overlooks the water:

  The hills will be the ground, but not giving anything back to the tune as it develops. The colour of them – yes, and to give size and scale to the piece … But I need something else, I can’t be alone up there on the tops with being so near the end. So something then, to … Keep me … In my arms. And safe … Something to carry …

  That can also hold.

  Keep me safe, now … And always safe.

  Like a new theme, to come out of …

  Where I was, once,

  where I –

  Crunluath A Mach/final fragment

  The hills only come back the same: I don’t mind, and all the flat moorland and the sky … As though the whole lovely space is calling back at him in the silence that is around him, to this man out here in the midst of it, in the midst of all these hills and all the air. That his presence means nothing, that he could walk for miles into these same hills, in bad weather or in fine, could fall down and not get up again, could go crying into the peat with music for his thoughts maybe, and ideas for a tune, but none of it according him a place here … Amongst the grasses and the water and the sky … Still it would come back to him the same, in the same silence, in the fineness of the air … I don’t mind, I don’t mind, I don’t mind.

  1 For more information on the progress of this project refer to pp. 453–5 at the back of this book. The Foreword at the beginning of ‘The Big Music’ and the section ‘How to use the Appendices in this book’ may also be useful to the reader interested in building up a wider picture of the world of The Grey House and the kind of landscape it occupies. These pages indicate how one may use the additional material that has been compiled – notes, scanned documents etc. – and fashion it into a kind of installation, bringing all these elements together, as it were, into one room. Indeed, this is how ‘The Big Music’, as a whole, presents itself to us as a space we might enter as we might enter a gallery or a concert or an exhibition. It is somewhere we may stay for a while, or perhaps leave and return to, experiencing it in different ways at different times, before we finally close the covers of the book, walk out the door.

  2 The line ‘I’ll not be back!’ resounds through the pages of ‘The Big Music’, in all three movements – though comes to be more and more complex in its meaning as the theme of the inevitability of return set against the more short-term force of will comes to express itself in the life of John Callum MacKay. See in particular pp. 107; 115–19; 123; 134–6; 160–2; 207–8.

  3 The history of The Grey House as a centre for music has been fully established in the Crunluath movement, in particular, see pp. 256; 263–4; 267–9; 273; 275–8. The role of Callum Sutherland as a teacher in this school is also detailed throughout that movement, and in relevant Appendices 5, 6 and 9 we gain a thorough sense of the domestic space functioning also in a social and educational context. As we know, from certain remarks made by Iain Cowie, Callum Sutherland’s so-called ‘Winter Classes’ had a particular charm that even someone like Iain, who himself had no knowledge or experience of piobaireachd playing, could appreciate – and they were able to carry on, these classes, right up until only two years before the time of the old man’s death. ‘Because of you’ old Callum Sutherland had said to Iain. ‘This place is in your hands.’ This is not to say that there was not a downside to a boy’s home being given over to a father’s activities – and it is clear from ‘The Big Music’ that John Sutherland’s sense of isolation was due not only to his own nature, and that of the lonely aspect of the district of Sutherland itself, but to the ambivalent role society played in his life. While he was in the midst of the life that he governed and seemed to enjoy, his father was also isolated and unable to extend himself to his family. In the same way, in the midst of all the music that was played in the House was a remote and fearful quiet – pp. 135; 178; 296 of the Crunluath describe this.

  4 Refers to pp. 114–5; 118; 120; 123 of the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’, describing the funeral for Roderick John Callum, with particular reference to his military connections and role as a musician and composer for the Army: ‘So they gave his father a proper funeral in the end.’

  5 In the same way that Johnnie doesn’t associate Sutherland with these activities of his father, neither is the story of ‘The Big Music’ concerned with this aspect of Callum’s life – concentrating instead, as it does, on his role as musician and teacher. However, it has been noted in various inserts, variations and additional material that the Sutherland family in general were always entrepreneurial in their business as well as musical activities, and John Sutherland’s father was no exception. Throughout the history of The Grey House we see a programme of continual expansion and development in operation, from the increase of holdings of land and stock and development of related interests to the various extensions made to the House itself. The List of Additional Materials found at the back of this book may be of interest here, as will Appendices 4–9, which give details of the history of the House.

  6 This is the period of ‘The Return’, that piobaireachd written by John Sutherland following his re-orientation with his birthplace, after his father’s death. Yet it could also be said that this is a return that had actually begun many years earlier when he was called to the House upon hearing of his mother’s sudden and apparently grave illness. That is when he first returned home, after many years away, and that is when he met Margaret MacKay. Indeed, she was the one who first called him home. It is significant that the secret name for this piece of music, found amongst John’s personal papers after his death, was ‘Margaret’s Song’. The manuscript for this can be found in the List of Additional Materials at the back of the book.

  7 The Urlar movement gives the first indication of the House and its position as Callum drives up the lonely road towards it and reflects upon its name in Gaelic, meaning ‘End of the Road’, when he turns the corner and sees it there in front of him, standing out against the dusk. It is not known when this older name for the House was fully in use, as throughout ‘The Big Music’ it is generally simply referred to as The Grey House or the House, but it is possible that it goes back to the period of the late 1700s when the House was a well-used stopping-off place for shepherds and cattle drovers. The road then, as now, would have finished at the House and from there on travellers would have made their way down the open strath towards the west where there are no paths or set ways, though certain tracks were established over the years. The End of the Road at that time would have represented a welcome respite from days of hard travelling, a place of rest, shelter and music.

  8 There is some debate throughout ‘The Big Music’ as to the note that Margaret comes to ‘own’ in the sense that all notes of the bagpipe scale have certain attributions and meanings. ‘F’, as we know from relevant papers and Appendices, is the note of Love, so could seem to be the note taken up by Margaret in the piobaireachd – chiming with clear and lovely regularity through the second line of the Urlar in particular – see the manuscript in the relevant section of the Appendices. Yet this line of the ‘Lament’ is also the Lullaby theme – so the note also chimes with Katherine Anna, the infant John holds in his arms up on the hill and tries to comfort. Of course, that she – unbeknownst to the composer – is related to him, as surely as grandmother and granddaughter are related, adds texture to the note being used in this ‘double’ fashion. In addition, however, we see in the Crunluath movement that when Margaret’s note finally sounds in the mind of John Sutherland it is his own note he hears – the High ‘A’ – known as the reached-for note, the Piper’s own note – suggesting that the ‘double’ here refers to the great love story that is John and Margaret’s relationship – a story that is somehow invisible to the world, the note of the beloved hidden, as it were, behind the protagonist. Either way, Margaret�
��s note is finally revealed to be John’s own – and there is a hint in the above score that the composer was aware of this, on some level, while creating his great ‘Lament for Himself’, even with the ‘F’ note claiming a prominent position in the theme.

  9 This line appears in Helen MacKay’s handwriting, on separate paper, yet is included within these pages. Evidence of her beginning to organise some kind of narrative, perhaps? The tone of her comments suggests this.

  10 We have seen the use of tape recordings and transcripts earlier in ‘The Big Music’ – in particular in the section ‘The people at the House and what they thought of him’ in the Crunluath movement. There are many recordings and notes generally held in The Grey House archive – mostly on CD or digital recording devices, including Helen’s mobile phone – and these are in the process of being transferred to one central ‘file’ and transcript. The recording referred to here, however, was found on an old cassette recorder, featuring voice and chanter music. It is significant that the ‘F’ note is played here, as we hear the name ‘Margaret’ sounding over and over again.