Soundyngs’ reviews are sometimes of recent works, and other times of books that have recently arrived on Soundyngs shelves and prompted pondering. This review is of the latter kind, and considers not just the book, but the work done by the Piobaireachd Society, and by Roderick Cannon in particular, to disseminate this kind of knowledge.
On Piobaireachd
If you want to know more about the piobaireachd (or “big music”, Gaelic ceòl mòr) repertoire, find music, and locate a teacher, and perhaps even aspire to compete for medals, then the Piobaireachd Society website is a good place to start. Additionally, have a look at the open-access historic digitised resources available from the Pibroch Network.
Traditional methods of instruction were primarily aural, using vocalisations known as cantaireacht (see Peter McCalister, further reading, who draws on the c1797 summary of this practice of rhythmic vocalisation compiled by Colin Campbell of Lorne, and points out this is only one of many variant systems). With the disruptions to Highland culture in the 18th and 19th centuries, many surviving earlier 17th and 18th century pieces survived thanks to the teaching and notated books of John Mackay of Raasay (1767-1848). Printing has undoubtedly helped the repertoire’s survival, but the value ot the book discussed in this post is that it reaches back into the period before printing was usual. Today, new music is still being composed, using the core techniques of theme (or ground, or in Gaelic, ùrlar) and variation. For higher level training, both the National Piping Centre and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland have research and education programs.
On MacDonald’s Book
Joseph MacDonald’s Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe was written c1760, in the aftermath of the Jacobite risings which was putting pressure on many aspects of traditional Highland culture.
MacDonald was from Durness, in the far north-west of Sutherland, home territory of the Mackay clan. Lord Reay, whose family had been supporters of the Hanoverians in the Jacobite rising of 1745-6. MacDonald’s father was a Presbyterian minister, which might have reflected local aversion to the Catholic Stuarts. Clearly, the family enjoyed a wide range of music as records show that Joseph could play flute, violin and oboe as well as the bagpipes (Cannon, Introduction p.1). Sent to Haddington to be educated in his early teens, MacDonald also learned from Edinburgh musicians and became competent in writing using classical European notation. He briefly served with the British East India Company (1760-63), dying in India of a tropical illness.
The Compleat Theory seems to have been compiled on the long sea journey to Calcutta. The manuscript was discovered some time after the author’s death, returned to England for the perusal of the Highland Society of London. When they failed to progress the publication, it was eventually published by Patrick, Joseph’s brother, in 1803, in an edition that introduced quite a few errors which this modern edition takes care to correct. The original print run was small but may have influenced other important early books e.g. Donald MacDonald’s Collections of Piobaireachd published in the 1820s. The printed 1803 book enjoyed a re-emergence in the 1920s thanks to Alexander MacDonald (no relation), and fed into Archibald Campbell’s Kilberry Book of Ceol Mor, which remains the standard tune book of the Piobaireachd Society.
Happily, Cannon’s modern edition, published by the Piobaireachd Society, goes back to the original manuscripts and his careful introduction, scholarly notes and appendices help the reader to understand how ideas about notation gradually developed from MacDonald’s early efforts, and also why MacDonald’s 1760 project represents a key link to the older, aural tradition. Useful introductory and appendix material help the novice to understand what the repertoire is, including notes on musical terms which explain how MacDonald’s 1760s expressions translate to standard modern terminology (e.g. for those who need to know, a “shake” is a trill (p.101) and a “cutting” is a rapid exchange of low and high notes, ranging from a couple to very many). Discussion of Gaelic terms, copious end-notes, an extensive bibliography, and a final section of photographed facsimile pages, complete the package.
MacDonald’s treatise does not provide us with much insight into the original contexts for playing (p.8) although Cannon’s explanations show there is good evidence from his material that the [slow theme]-and-[faster variation] form of the piobaireachd repertoire was well-established by the mid-18th century, with musical leadership acknowledged from the Hebrides even from a mainland author.
The most common pattern (although other structures are possible) is (p.8):
- Ground (theme)
Dithis
Doubling* of Dithis
Taorluath
Doubling* of Taorluath
Crunluath
Doubling* of Crunluath
and ending with a reprise of the Ground.
Additionally, an end-formula might conclude each variation in the form of final repeated ‘shake’ (notes known as hiharin in cantaireacht. Cannon finds that the cadence formulae are rather different from those used today (p.21).
*“Doubling” refers to a repeat of a variation played rather faster than the first time (p.102-3), although as Cannon explains in his appendix, this word, derived from the French language, was not used in 18th century Scots.
A challenge in notating piobaireachd is the ornaments, which (in Scots) comprise a variety of “cuttings”, “shakes” and “graces”. These do not fit easily into the systems of Italianate grace notes developed in the 18th century, but are critical to understanding the changes wrought in the variations, in which ornamentation becomes gradually more elaborate. Cannon’s unpacking of these help general readers to understand that ornamentation in this context is much more closely embedded in the actual pitches and fingering action relevant to these pitches, rather than a surface effect. The bagpipe has a relatively small compass of notes: only 9 (from bottom, G A B C(sounding C#), D E, F(sounds F#), G, A. Tunes do not change key or modulate in the same way that a classical instrument tune might; they stay in their places, and so, it appears, do the ornaments associated with particular pitches. What changes in the variations are rhythms and closely integrated with this, ornaments.
Furthermore, the bagpipe can’t make some notes louder than other for emphasis; everything is simply loud. Therefore, notes that are important to the underlying tune may need to be prolonged, which shapes what the novice ear hears as the rhythm of the piece.
Piobaireachd ornaments are therefore tightly integrated into our experience of both pitch and rhythm, and are much more deeply integrated with the music than the surface rhetoric of Italianate ornamentation.
This suggests (to my novice understanding) that the transmission of the repertoire might have been much less tolerant of performance-based alternation and invention, which might surprise those who assume that oral transmission embraces change; or at least, that creative elaboration only occurs within very well-understood conventions.
Another of Cannon’s conclusions (p,16-17) is that, although we can’t be sure of precise tempi, the basic pulse of this music assumed a fairly slow time which MacDonald tended to describe as ‘adagio’, possibly slower than today (p.20), which allowed space for subsequent ornamentation. This is important for the novice listener: just because there is more going on rhythmically within the beat does not mean that the piece is overall faster, despite MacDonald’s description of the variations as being ‘allegro’ in effect.
The manuscript also uses bar-lines. Although the experience of the music in practice might not have fitted quite so predictably within European metrically regular patterns, the discussion of their being often ‘marches’ suggests that a regular pulse was important.
MacDonald’s book has three sections: teaching instructions and terminology, information about the characteristics of the repertoire, and some final remarks about the chanter and breath control. Extracts from tunes said to have been originally taught by the great pipers of the Hebrides appear throughout, and there is cross-topic discussion that blurs these ostensible section descriptions.
A bagpipe player would get much more technical detail than me from a close reading of the content, but here are a few take-aways, from a non-bagpiper.
- Terms like ‘Siciliana’ and ‘Saraband’ (p.63) appear in MacDonald’s description of meters, showing his comparing Highland with continental European movement-based music, listening for similar patterns of movement.
- MacDonald’s description of ‘keys’ (p.67) explains that while modulation (or ‘transition’ as he calls this, p.78) is not part of this repertoire normally, distinctive modes (which he calls “tastes”) can be created by omitting certain notes – i.e. generating different varieties of gapped scale. For example, “the key for laments excludes C altogether because it is a sharp and dwells upon the lower notes” i.e. C (sounding C#) would provide a major third against a lower note of A, in a prominent position of the scale, implying a major-inflected mode in a context where a minor mode would be more appropriate. In contrast, a “major” sounding arpeggio of G-B-D features in his ‘key or taste’ for cheerful ‘rural’ i.e. pastoral pieces. Tunes therefore don’t so much change key as select from the 9 available notes which they want to use to create a particular affect.
- MacDonald uses the word “running” to describe a variation (p.74), which links nicely to the bagpipe’s continuously flowing supply of air.
- A sub-genre known as a “Gathering” tune (p.75) was used by Highland Chiefs, with melodies particular to their own names, “to assemble the Highlanders under their respective Chiefs upon any emergency”, which MacDonald finds to be “more martial effect than horns or trumpets” – not least on the basis of sheer loudness.
Cannon’s editorial introduction makes the point that MacDonald’s book was the product of both Highland culture and Lowland Scottish patterns of literary pedagogy and repertoire transmission, attempting to bridge that gap. It is very helpful that this modern edition continues to pay attention to that need.
On the Editor
Roderick D. Cannon (d.2015) was a leading expert in the history and repertoire of the piping traditions of the British isles, and also, rather surprisingly was a professor of Chemistry at the Unversity of East Anglia. His interest in piping was inspired by encountering Macdonald’s treatise in manuscript while a doctoral student (Brown, p29). He understood, as a scientist, why small details matter, which is critical in music where meticulous ornamentation lies at the heart of the art. Coming to this repertoire from the outside, he was also capable of translating a complex tradition in ways that newcomers might find comprehensible: his English-language books on Gaelic terms are useful gateways for someone without native Gaelic. His book The Highland Bagpipe and its Music (2008) is a very good introduction to this field.
Further Resources
- National Piping Centre: digital archive and research hub
- Piobaireachd Society: website – their shop sells material in digitised pdf format as well as printed
- Pibroch Network: website – which includes a map of important early printed material and open-access digital scans of many tunes with descriptions of these sources
- Barnaby Brown, ‘A Musical Tribute to Roderick D Cannon’ in Piping Today 77 (2015), pp.28-33.
- Roderick D Cannon, The Highland Bagpipe and its Music (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2008)
- Archibald Campbell, Kilberry Book of Ceòl Mòr (Piobaireachd Soceity,1948) – tunes, and an important essay introducing the repertoire, available from the Piobaireachd Society as a pdf.
- Peter McCalister, Canntaireachd – Singing the Music, from the Piobaireachd Society Webpage