The Big Music

by Kirsty Gunn

  i

  The following excerpt, appearing as scattered notes and taken from one of the journals found up at the Little Hut, may be of interest:

  There must be a sense of ‘carpe diem’ about the whole – a snatching of life out of death’s grip – but how? That snatching away? A sudden drop of notes to do it? Plan for this …; Callum also must have a note, a small series perhaps, in the mid range, and quiet, so you might not notice the notes as a pattern at first … The quietest of doublings. The A Mach will be difficult – all pride, pride leading up to it … But somehow … Different. A different interpretation. As though the composition might be finished in another’s hand, as though – … A different set of notes but they are the same.

  And:

  Callum’s theme will only announce itself in the variations – I can’t hear it in the Urlar at all. But the theme will come in all the same. It will be there in the Taorluath, from the outset, and quite clear – a branching off from the Urlar that way, you could say, in a way that seems new – but no. For the notes have already been sounded. In the repetition. That’s the way to do it. So his theme might match the ambition of the repetition, yes. What I’ll call the ‘breathing’ notes, that sound as a sequence in the first four bars … That repeat might also contain … My father. And my son.

  More notes of this sort can be seen in the Crunluath A Mach movement, and are detailed in the List of Additional Materials section of ‘The Big Music’.

  Appendix 11: General structure of the piobaireachd

  The following information is sourced from Piobaireachd: Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe by Seumus MacNeill, acknowledged to be in the tradition of such writers about piobaireachd as Major General Thomason, the compiler of Ceol Mor in 1900, and, in the last century, the work of Mr Archibald Campbell of Kilberry. Mr Seumus MacNeill held the position of Joint Principal of the College of Piping between the years 1959 and 1974, and delivered a series of lectures in 1968 that are still talked about to this day and were most useful when gathering information for these Appendices. More details of this publication are available in the Bibliography, as are other related materials that may be of use for those wishing to further their understanding of this music’s structure and content.

  Like the concerto, with which it is compared, the form of the piobaireachd can be best described as a theme with variations. This is the one steady truth that can be set against it – while all other claims made about the music must be qualified and considered.

  It is made up of three or more ‘movements’ – the Urlar, or ground, which is the laying out of the basic musical idea that will dominate the piece; the Taorluath (often attached to the Leumluath in meaning), which is a great development of that theme, a sort of branching out or leap (Leumluath translates, from the Gaelic, as ‘Stag’s Leap’); the Crunluath, or ‘crown’, which is an extravagant play of variations and embellishments upon the theme; followed by the Crunluath A Mach, in which the piper himself is describing his own virtuosity in his play – an embellishment upon embellishment, if you like, of the intricacies of the Crunluath – a fully flexible and reflexive aspect of the music on display; closing finally with the opening lines of the Urlar played again as a mark of final humility and simplicity after all that has preceded.

  Within each of these movements are variations and embellishments – described in ‘The Big Music’ as separate but connected details of the story, and in musical detail in Appendix 12: ‘The form of a piobaireachd’.

  Composed especially for the music of the Highland bagpipe, it has been said of piobaireachd that the only other musical instrument that can come anywhere near its sound and quality is the human voice. This was most certainly a given in those years before 1803, before written notation was introduced, when all piobaireachd was passed down from the teacher to the pupil by singing the tune, note by note, in a method of transmission known as canntaireachd. This method today is still of much value, as singing can bring out the expression of the music in a way staff notation can only hint at.

  For this reason, perhaps, it has not been the historical practice to make any great effort to write piobaireachd correctly. After all, if it is generally believed that one can only learn to play the music from one who has been properly trained to play it, who knows by heart and by memory every note of every tune that he may sing it to himself and others as well as play it on his pipes … Why then would the printed manuscript come to have much value from the start? One would always, in the first instance, want to hear the tune – not read – but as it sounds. In addition, collections of piobaireachd music are only intended to be of interest to pipers, since the music cannot be played satisfactorily on any other instrument. As Archibald Campbell noted (see Bibliography/Music: Piobaireachd/primary: The Kilberry Book of Ceol Mor), writing of staff notation applied to piobaireachd: ‘It makes no pretense to be scientifically accurate, or even intelligible to the non-piper. Call it pipers’ jargon and the writer will not complain.’ Subsequent to his remarks, there have been perhaps a hundred tunes written without bar-lines, published as Binneas A Boreraig by Roderick Ross (see Bibliography), which shows how important it is that pipers are not restricted to the rigid bar-lines and time signatures of classical music when playing. It is, of course, a convenience in memorising a tune to have the phrases, or parts of the phrases, in bars, but when playing a tune, the best and most musical of pipers will bring out the phrasing and timing in their own ‘time’ – creating their own bar-breaks, so to speak, so as to best express the depths and mysteries of the music.

  By tradition, all piobaireachd is played from memory – thus involving a considerable mental feat akin to the soloist of any classical instrument – considering especially that a tune may last for fifteen minutes or more, and is played without the prompts of an orchestra or conductor for that length of time. In order to push phrases into a suitable bar pattern, it has often been found necessary to write some notes as gracenotes and mark pauses wherever seems relevant. Occasionally a pause mark will land on a gracenote, and, as a gracenote is not supposed to have any duration anyway (it takes its time from the note following), this causes considerable confusion even among pipers.

  It may well be, then, 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.

  The real reason, however, for not attempting to write piobaireachd accurately is that the effort to do so – when one gracenote alone can be worth entire bars of manuscript – would be tremendous, and even then the result would only be one man’s interpretation of how the piece should be played. In addition, no piper really believes that the great music can be learned without personal assistance from an expert.

  Appendix 12: The form of a piobaireachd

  Piobaireachd, Ceol Mor or pibroch, as it is known in its Anglicised form, is a form of high art, a musical genre associated primarily with the Scottish Highlands that is characterised by extended compositions with a melodic theme and elaborate formal variations. It can only be performed on the great Highland bagpipe, with its distinctive tenor and bass drones that sound at a particular interval so as to underlie strangely and exhilaratingly the tune being played.

  Traditionally, many pipers prefer the name Ceol Mor, which is Gaelic for the ‘Great’ or ‘Big’ music, to distinguish this complex extended art form from the more common kinds of popular Scottish music such as dances, reels, marches and strathspeys, which are called Ceol Beag or ‘Little Music’.

  Here follows a general introduction to this form of music about which still relatively little is known – from its enunciation to structure to history and known sources of its tunes.

  i

  Etymology

  The word piobaireachd is first found registered as written in Lowland Scots in 1719, derived from the Gaelic word ‘piobaireachd’, which literally means ‘piping’ or ‘act o
f piping’.

  There is some disagreement surrounding the terminology. The spelling variant used by most dictionaries is pibroch but most who are involved with the music, including the Piobaireachd Society, prefer the Scottish Gaelic spelling. Nonetheless, the pronunciation of piobaireachd is usually rendered identically to pibroch (that is, with a long i and a soft k sound for the ch, so: pee-broch) and in modern English-speaking contexts both piobaireachd and pibroch are equated with Ceol Mor.

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  Notation

  Piobaireachd is properly expressed by minute and often subtle variations in note duration and tempo. Traditionally, the music was taught using a system of unique chanted vocables referred to as canntaireachd, an effective method of denoting the various movements in piobaireachd music and assisting the learner in proper expression and memorisation of the tune. The predominant vocable system used today is the Nether Lorn canntaireachd sourced from the Campbell Canntaireachd manuscripts (1797 and 1814) and used in the subsequent Piobaireachd Society books. The Bibliography has further details of all these manuscripts and subsequent volumes.

  Multiple written manuscripts of piobaireachd in staff notation have been published, including Angus MacKay’s book A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd (1838), Archibald Campbell’s The Kilberry Book of Ceol Mor (1953), and the Piobaireachd Society Books, published in certain sequences from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day.

  The staff notation in Angus MacKay’s book and subsequent Piobaireachd Society-sanctioned publications is characterised by a simplification and standardisation of the ornamental and rhythmic complexities of many piobaireachd compositions when compared with earlier unpublished manuscript sources. A number of the earliest manuscripts, such as the Campbell Canntaireachd manuscripts that pre-date the standard edited published collections, have been made available by the Piobaireachd Society as a comparative resource.

  Piobaireachd is difficult to transcribe accurately using traditional musical notation, and early attempts suffered from conventions which do not accurately convey tune expression. More contemporary piobaireachd notation has attempted to address these issues, and has produced notation much closer to true expression of the tunes.

  Piobaireachd does not follow a strict metre but it does have a rhythmic flow or pulse; it does not follow a strict beat or tempo although it does have pacing. The written transcription of piobaireachd serves mainly as a rough guide for the piper. The expression of the rhythms and tempos of the piobaireachd tune are primarily acquired from an experienced teacher and applied through interpretive performance practice.

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  Titles and subjects

  The Gaelic titles of piobaireachd compositions have been categorised into four broad groupings. These are:

  Functional – salutes, laments, marches and gatherings

  Technical – referring to strictly musical characteristics of the pieces such as ‘port’ or ‘glas’, terms shared with wire-strung harpers

  Textual – quotations from song lyrics, usually the opening words

  Short names – diverse short names referring to places, people and events similar to those found in Scottish popular music of the period

  Piobaireachd in the functional category were most commonly written for or have come to be associated with specific events, personages or situations:

  Laments (cumha) are mourning tunes often written for a deceased person of note. Laments were commonly written as a result of families being displaced from their homeland, a practice that was very common after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

  Salutes (failte) are tunes that acknowledge a person, event or location. Salutes were often written upon the birth of children or after a visitation to a prominent figure such as a clan chief. Many salutes have been written to commemorate famous pipers.

  Gatherings (port tionail) are tunes written specifically for a clan. These tunes were used to call a clan together by their chief. The tune structure is usually simple so that it could be recognised easily by clan members.

  Rowing piobaireachd are more rhythmic tunes used to encourage rowers while crossing the sea.

  The different categories of piobaireachd do not have consistent distinctive musical patterns that are characteristic of the category. The role of the piobaireachd may inform the performers’ interpretative expression of rhythm and tempo.

  Many piobaireachd tunes have intriguing names such as ‘Too Long in This Condition’, ‘The Piper’s Warning to His Master’, ‘Scarce of Fishing’, ‘The Unjust Incarceration’ and ‘The Big Spree’, which suggest specific narrative events or possible lyric sources. There are accounts in ‘The Big Music’ of certain piobaireachd written by pipers of the Sutherland family that are of a personal nature or suggest a re-visiting of an idea or theme. One such example is, first, ‘A Small White Flower’, then ‘A Small White Flower, Again’.

  The oral transmission of the repertoire has led to diverse and divergent accounts of the names for tunes, and many tunes have a number of names. Mistranslation of Gaelic names with non-standard phonetic spelling adds to the confusion.

  In some cases the name and subject matter of piobaireachd tunes appears to have been reassigned by nineteenth-century editors such as Angus MacKay, whose book A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd or Highland Pipe Music (1838) included historically fanciful and romantic piobaireachd source stories by antiquarian James Logan. A number of piobaireachd collected by MacKay have very different titles than in earlier manuscript sources. Nevertheless, MacKay’s translated English titles became the commonly accepted ones, sanctioned by subsequent Piobaireachd Society editors.

  Roderick Cannon has compiled a dictionary of the Gaelic names of piobaireachd from early manuscripts and printed sources, detailing inconsistencies, difficulties in translation, variant names, accurate translations and verifiable historically documented attributions and dates in the few cases where this is possible.

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  History

  In the absence of concrete documentary evidence, the origins of piobaireachd have taken on something of a mythic status. The earliest commonly recognised figures in the history of the music are the MacCrimmon family of pipers, particularly Donald Mor MacCrimmon (c.1570–1640), who is reputed to have left a group of highly developed tunes, and Patrick Mor MacCrimmon (c.1595–1670), one of the hereditary pipers to the Chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye.

  There is some controversy over the attribution of authorship of key piobaireachd tunes to the MacCrimmons by Walter Scott, Angus MacKay and others who published on the topic in the nineteenth century. The Campbell Canntaireachd, written in 1797, is a two-volume manuscript with chanted vocable and phonetic transcriptions of piobaireachd music that pre-dates the nineteenth-century attributions. It contains no references to the MacCrimmons and has different names for numerous tunes that were subsequently associated with them.

  The piobaireachd ‘Cha till mi tuill’ in the Campbell Canntaireachd manuscript, which translates as ‘I shall return no more’, is related to a tune associated with victims of the Clearances emigrating to the New World. Walter Scott wrote new romantic verses to this tune in 1818 with the title ‘Lament – Cha till suin tuille’, which translates as ‘We shall return no more’, later republished as ‘Mackrimmon’s Lament. Air – Cha till mi tuille’.

  In Angus MacKay’s book A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd or Highland Pipe Music (1838), the piobaireachd ‘Cha till mi tuill’ is subsequently published with the title ‘MacCrummen will never return’.

  v

  Harp prehistory of piobaireachd

  Most piobaireachds are commonly assumed to have been written during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The entire repertoire comprises approximately 300 tunes. In many cases the composer is unknown, however piobaireachd continues to be composed up to the present day. Recent research suggests that the style of ornamentation in the music points to earlier origins in wire-strung Gaelic harp compositions, in particular th
e use of rapid descending arpeggios as gracenotes.

  A piobaireachd that is considered to be one of the oldest in the repertoire appears in the Campbell Canntaireachd with the title ‘Chumbh Craoibh Na Teidbh’, which translates as ‘Lament for the Tree of Strings’, a possible poetic reference to the wire-strung harp. Another, more well-known, piobaireachd published by Angus MacKay with the Gaelic title ‘Cumhadh Craobh nan teud’ is translated as ‘Lament for the Harp Tree.’ This piobaireachd appears in the Campbell Canntaireachd manuscripts as ‘MacLeod’s Lament.’

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  Fiddle piobaireachd

  Ceol Mor repertoire is likely to have transferred from the harp to the newly developed Italian violin in the late sixteenth century as fiddlers began to receive aristocratic patronage and supplement the role of the harpers.

  A distinctive body of Ceol Mor known as fiddle piobaireachd developed in this period with melodic themes and formal variations that are similar to, but not necessarily derived from or imitative of, concurrent bagpipe piobaireachd, as the name ‘fiddle piobaireachd’ might suggest. The two forms are likely to have developed in parallel from a common source in earlier harp music and Gaelic song.