The Big Music
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MacInnes, Iain I. ‘Piobaireachd Society titles in need of amendment’, in ‘The Highland Bagpipe: The Impact of the Highland Societies of London and Scotland, 1781–1844’, M.Litt. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1988. Available online at the Ross’s Music Page website
MacKay, Iain. A History of Piobaireachd. Piobaireachd Studies, 1976
MacNeill, Seumus. Piobaireachd: Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe. BBC Publications, 1969
MacNeill, Seumus. Preface in Angus MacKay’s A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd, 1838: Piobaireachd Society website
McCalister, Peter. ‘The Search for the Lost Volume of the Campbell Canntaireachd Manuscript’, Glasgow, 2008: Piobaireachd Society website
Sinclair, Archibald. Canntaireachd: Articulate Music. Edinburgh, 1880
Music: Highland
Anon. Lullabies, Songs, Airs. Scotts Press, 1989
Clare, Merran. ‘The metaphor of the changeling and missing child in Scottish Folklore and Songs’, in Caithness Research Institute of Modern Letters Journal, Volume vi, 2003
Collinson, Francis. The Traditional and National Music of Scotland. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
Dow, Daniel. Collection of Ancient Scots Music, Edinburgh, 1776: Piobaireach Society website
Fraser, Simon. Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, 1816: National Library of Scotland
Gillies, Anne Lorne. Songs of Gaelic Scotland. Birlinn, 1973
Johnson, David. Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century: A Music Collection and Historical Study. John Donald Publishers, 1984
Lowe, Susan. Metaphor in Folk Song. Clarendon Press, 1987
MacDonald, Allan. ‘Scholarship and Research’, in ‘The Relationship between Pibroch and Gaelic Song: Its Implications on the Performance Style of the Pibroch Urlar’, M.Litt. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1995
MacFarlane, Walter and Daniel Dow. Fiddle Piobaireachd. John Donald, 1984
O’Baoill, Colm. ‘Highland Harpers and their Patrons’, in James Porter (ed.), Defining Strains: The Musical Life of Scots in the Seventeenth Century. Peter Lang Publishing, 2006
Sanger, Keith and Alison Kinnaird. Tree of Strings: Crann Nan Teud: A History of the Harp in Scotland. Kinmor Music, 1992
Stephens, Joy. History of Highland Songs and Airs. Gray Press, 1979
Music: General
Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, Cambridge University Press, 2011
Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Grove, 1954
Donnington, Robert. The Instruments of Music. Methuen, 1949
Gilkes, John. Wagner and his Leitmotifs. Oxford Union Press, 1995
Graham, Katherine. The Literal Musical: Synesthesia; Mimesis; Mask; Notation. Featherstone, 2001
Seoras, A. D. Use of Recurring Musical Sequences in Nineteenth-Century Composition. Achavar Press, 1997
Wagner. Phaidon Classical Music Series. Phaidon, 1996
History: Highland and Scottish
Anderson, G. and P. Guide to the Highlands and Islands (1850). Google Books, 2009
Anderson, J. Essay on the Present State of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Constable, 1816
Barron, J. The Northern Highlands – Agricultural Intelligence. Ross-shire Quarterly Report (Farmer’s Magazine, 1820): National Library of Scotland
Bruse, Jenny. Shepherds in the Straths. Caithness Local Publications, 2012
Carter, Ian. Farm Life in Northeast Scotland … Poor Man’s Country. John Donald, 1979
Cunningham, Ian. The Nation Surveyed. Birlinn, 2009
Devine, T. M. Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland, 1700–1900. John Donald, 2006
Dressler, Camille. Eigg: The Story of an Island. Birlinn, 2000
Dwyer, John. Virtuous Discourse, Sensibility and Community in Late 18th-Century Scotland. John Donald, 1987
Eyre-Todd, George. The Highland Clans of Scotland: Their History and Traditions. Garnier & Company, 1969
Hewitt, Rachel. Map of a Nation. Granta, 2010
MacDonald, Iain S. Glencoe and Beyond. John Donald, 2005
Maudlin, Daniel. The Highland House Transformed: Architecture and Identity 1700–1850. Dundee University Press, 2009
Mitchell, J. Reminiscences of my life in the Highlands, Inverness: MacKenzie, 1894
Mowat, Ian. Easter Ross, 1750–1850: The Double Frontier. John Donald, 2003
Nicholson, Alexander and Alasdair MacLean. History of Skye: a record of the families, the social conditions and the literature of the island. MacLean Press, 1994
Richards, Eric and Monica Clough. Cromartie: Highland Life 1650–1914. Aberdeen University Press, 1989
Richards, Eric. Debating the Highland Clearances. Edinburgh University Press, 2007
Sinclair, Sir John. General Report of the agricultural state, and political circumstances of Scotland (5 vols), Edinburgh, 1814: National Library of Scotland
Sinclair, Sir John. General View of the Agriculture of the Northern Counties, Edinburgh, 1814: National Library of Scotland
Whatley, Christopher A. Scottish Society 1707–1830. Manchester University Press, 2000
Whatley, Christopher A. The Scots and the Union. Edinburgh University Press, 2007
Wightman, Andy. The Poor Had No Lawyers. Birlinn, 2010
Literary: Scottish History
Christmas, Henry. ‘Review of new books: Ancient Scottish Melodies, from a manuscript in the time of King James VI by William Dauney’, in The Literary Gazette: A weekly journal of literature, science and the fine arts, No. 1150, Volume 23. Colburn, 1839
Gunn, Robert. Neil M. Gunn and Dunbeath. Pentland Printers, 1986
Hart, Francis R. and J. B. Pick. Neil M. Gunn: A Highland Life. Polygon, 1985
Lockhart, J. G. Biography of Walter Scott. Edinburgh, 1897
MacDonald, Alexander. The poetical works of Alexander MacDonald, the celebrated Jacobite poet: now first collected, with a short account of the author, Glasgow: G. & J. Cameron, 1851
Scott, Sir Walter. ‘Mackrimmon’s Lament’, in The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author. University of Michigan Library, 2005
Literary: Piobaireachd
Gilonis, Harry. Piobaireachd. Morning Star Publications, 1996
McHardy, Stuart. The Silver Chanter and other Piper Tales. Birlinn, 2009
‘The Lost Pibroch’, in Brian Osborne (ed.), That Vital Spark: A Neil Munro Anthology. Birlinn, 2002
List of Additional Materials
Archive of John MacKay Sutherland
The following material is a sample list of papers that will be made available as a full collection kept in the Archive Department of the University of Dundee. The information was gathered together during publication of ‘The Big Music’ to provide background understanding of the files and inserts that had been used to form the content of that book, and they also appear in the final published version as Appendices and footnotes, contributing, too, towards the ordering of the Index and the overall arrangement of the four movements of the piobaireachd that is the story of John MacKay Sutherland and those who knew him.
Sample List 1: The Grey House – letters, notes
A range of papers and journals came from The Grey House and were filed as part of the records there, with separate folders for business and personal administration and another file box containing all musical notes and MSS that were to accompany the finished tunes that Callum was able to locate and play when he returned home to see his father for the last time.
correspondence:
1 x letter – to Piping Society
1 x letter – to Piobaireachd Society
1 x letter – to lawyer, confirming dissolution of certain London business interests
1 x letter – to wife, Sarah, re arrangements for their son
1 x letter – from his mother to him and he to his mother – from boyhood
diaries/records:
1 x page of week-to-view diary – showing London appointments
1 x page of journa
l entry – showing land management details
1 x page of The Grey House records – showing additions made
1 x page of The Grey House records – showing reorganisation of Schoolroom
musical entries:
1 x page of musical notes – showing details of an early composition (MS – see below)
1 x page of musical notes – showing details of a much later composition
1 x page of musical notes – showing early notes for ‘Lament for Himself’
1 x page of musical diary – remarks on certain well-known tunes
1 x page of musical diary – as above and including reminiscences from competitions
1 x page of musical archive – detailing recordings made of tunes, compositions
manuscripts:
1 x example of early composition ‘Lament for Sutherland’ – in part (MS)
1 x example of much later composition ‘Lament for Sutherland, return’ – in part (MS)
accounts:
Accounts of bagpipes – sent, received
Accounts, battels – for Winter Schools, private tuition
older material:
Eighteenth-century fragments from the Grey Longhouse (these match those referred to in Appendix 6/v)
List of all early compositions – including poetry; ballads
Canntaireachd chart
Sample List 2: The Little Hut – notes, MSS
That same night, while he was listening to a recording of one of his father’s piobaireachd, Callum remembered where he had seen the bulk of his father’s writing and manuscripts of new compositions and work in progress: that is, in the Little Hut up in the hills that no one knew about except himself, his father and Helen – and to which he and Helen went, repeatedly, when they were both young. The two of them were able to return there after Callum’s father’s death and retrieve the papers that had been kept hidden all those years. The Little Hut, it is clear, was a place of intense creativity – private and isolated. Everything we need for the story of ‘The Big Music’ came from this place – from the fragment of ‘Lament for Himself’ that was discovered on the table by the window to the notes John MacKay made there about Margaret, the woman he loved and who, in so many ways, is the beginning and end of this book.
notes; MSS:
Some notes from the hut – general
Notes on the three movements of what will become ‘Lament for Himself’
Preparatory MSS – for three tunes, including ‘Lament for Himself’
Preparatory MSS – for Lullaby theme in ‘Lament for Himself’
Preparatory MSS – for leitmotifs or variations for the above – including peat, tiny flowers, grass
letters:
Letter to Callum – incomplete and unposted
Letter to Piobaireachd Society
Letter to College of Piping
talks; essays:
Discussion of piobaireachd ‘The Return’ – for The New Piping Times
‘Introduction to Piobaireachd’ – a talk given to the Royal Highland Society St Andrew’s Night Gala Dinner
Notes on Late Style’ – for BBC Scotland
also available:
Full list of Sutherland compositions – these relate to those mentioned in relevant
Appendices, including those by JMS, his father and forefathers
Scanned material:
A sample range of documentation appears as follows. NB: Some manuscript excerpts are also provided in relevant Appendices.
fig./one: ‘Lament for Himself’ – the original manuscript
(overleaf
Of further interest:
As we know from ‘The Big Music’, the piobaireachd ‘Lament for Himself’ was never completed as a piece of music by John MacKay Sutherland but was finished nevertheless by way of the narrative that was gathered together by Helen MacKay of Sutherland as part of a project that furthered her interests in certain modernist texts – particularly those of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. That work undertaken by her, ‘The Big Music’, is the tune of this book, of course.
However, since the gathering together of the papers that comprise the book, with the help and expertise of an anonymous composer, it has been possible to create a full piece of Ceol Mor that may accompany the text and indicate to the general reader the full and extended music John MacKay Sutherland may have been carrying with him in his head as he walked into the hills that day.
A website is currently being created that will give further details about this project.
Further relevant MSS:
fig./two: ‘The Return’ – or ‘Margaret’s Song’
(opposite)
fig./three – Helen’s draft of the Lullaby
Transcripts of conversations and interviews:
Amongst the wealth of domestic material that is available to the general reader, and that provides a sort of backstory to the book ‘The Big Music’, there is included a sound archive that comprises original recordings and interviews as well as transcripts of those conversations, preserved as verbatim accounts. The main body of this archive comprises the many taped recordings and interviews that took place between Margaret MacKay and her daughter Helen – as we have seen appearing in various sections of ‘The Big Music’ – and are part of an ongoing project about domestic life and maternity. Additional letters, narrative extracts, stories and notes contribute further to this work in progress.
There are also transcripts of various programmes made – radio and television. A small sample follows:
Transcript 1: John ‘Bobby’ Bain remembers a Big Night with Callum Sutherland presiding at The Grey House, November 1968. The interviewer is David Graham, a young piping student of the time who was compiling a list of interviews with prominent bagpipers of that era, including Donald McFadyen and Donald MacLeod.
fig./four – typed transcripts:
DG: You say you can remember some of those Big Nights they had at The Grey House back then?
BB: Oh, aye, they were grand nights then. Plenty of good music, and of course old Callum, for he was getting on by then, would be in charge so you knew it would be good from the outset. I remember there was one chap, had come over from Canada and he was staying at the House … well. He’d never heard so many good pipers together in one place, in one room, I mean. He said to us all [puts on North American accent], ‘You guys sure do know how to have a party.’
DG: But this was educational as well, these evenings were part of the School.
BB Well, that’s true, too – but some of us would just come in for the evening, you see, as a sort of recital. We’d play a simple tune for the young ones, something like – ah, you know – ‘Flowers of the Forest’ – and then we’d discuss it with them, the progressions and so on. Then they’d play it after us and we’d look at how they could improve themselves. So there was that – went on in the evenings, also. As well as all the drams!
DG: And there was one night in particular?
BB: Oh, in November … And the snow, well … None of us would be getting home in that weather. So Callum decided, well, he’ll make it a bit of a session, you see. So we had a grand dinner in the evening – this was all arranged by Elizabeth, his wife, you know she was just marvellous at these things, just a marvellous hostess and generous … And so we had this very grand dinner, and then … The music starting after it. Callum played first, I remember that – for it set a tone. He played ‘Lament for Donald MacKay’. And just … perfect. I remember it so well. How he played that tune, and we all know it, of course, it’s such a familiar tune, but it was just as though it had been written for that room, for the moment of it being played there, you see, as though the tune had been made to be played right then, by him, on this particular occasion – oh, it was something. And the atmosphere in the room … There would have been about eight of us gathered … Well, you could barely speak afterwards. Is what it was like. As though a kind of a spell had been cast. And then, that was played, and the next one go
t up, and the next – and we all got up – like that – one after the other – but with barely a word spoken between us and we played … you know, various tunes, the big tunes ‘Lament for the Children’ and so on, all the big tunes … We just played them through, all of us, like in a row, and no words between us … And do you know? Not a single wrong note? Misplaced note? Just the fingering, everything … Perfect. Perfect. And then the last one of us finished and it was like … Well, it was like a dam breaking then. All of us talking, roaring! After the silence and the music, suddenly, there we were – back to earth again – and, oh, the party started then! The whisky came out. That was a night. We finished when light broke … And of course, well, by the end, the whisky had taken over from the music by the end, there – but before, the night before … Well, nothing could take it away … the magic, you see, of that first tune, and the eight tunes that came after it, one after the other, coming out of the silence. It was something. All of us gathered together and quiet like that, I tell you … It was something, all right. I’ll never forget it. That particular night.
Transcript 2: Postman Roddy George recollects various aspects of local life for a BBC Scotland radio programme In the Day that was broadcast out of Glasgow between the years 1972 and 1974. The following is excerpted from a broadcast made in September 1973: