"Murdo stopped at the end of his pacing and broke into the crunluath. His toe tapped rapidly on the ground. His fingers bounded off the notes so nimbly that they seemed to describe short ripples along the chanter. The virile, slotted notes flew about, throwing a mesh of sound over the hearers, a contracting net that caught and drew the throats and breasts. And left them strangely numb and vibrant when, at last, the music ceased."
The Albannach. Fionn Mac Colla.
I wonder what he meant by "slotted notes." This is the scene in which Murdo single-handedly resinstates the piping tradition among the men in the village, and thus revitalises the community. The strange thing is that this piobaireachd playing comes out of nowhere. Murdo isn't spoken of as a piper, apart from the playing of the feadan with the priest. It's as if the playing is innate, a core and hitherto undiscovered part of his Scottishness.
The mood of the passage I've quoted is immediately broken by Kenny's comment on Murdo's playing: "O, he'll learn!" Surely this is suposed to be taken as irony: a learner piper would hardly ensnare throats and breasts with his crunluath. Or perhaps it's sour grapes, for when the men first hear "the clear, lusty notes dropping out richly, forming a slow pattern against the wall of drones" someone suggests that the piper must be Kenny:
"'Thats's not Kenny,' says Murdo the Flea. 'Kenny never had that amount of skill in the fingers at him.'"
Ramblings of an easily distracted learner piper
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Friday, 14 October 2016
Saturday, 8 October 2016
Iain Mor
"Iain Mor had died at the beginning of winter. Once his had been a great place and namely for the singing and the dancing and the piping and the telling of tales. Great had been the coming and the going about that place at one time and many the notable gatherings on winter evenings, and the fame of some of the men that would be piping there on evenings of the summer was no small thing. But that was in Iain Mor's day."
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
A silver-mounted chanter
"One day the priest lifted a solemn finger before his nose and began fumbling in an inside pocket of his coat. With a face of portentous gravity he drew out a silver-mounted chanter, adjusted the reed and fitted it together. Then he began playing, while Murdo tapped time with his toes, inside his boot. When he had finished the little reel he played he handed the chanter over to Murdo, who played another, the priest taping on his knee with plump fingers and clearly delighted. They were there at the piping, laments, reels and marches and snatches of piobaireachd, sitting forward in their chairs as eager as schoolboys and the feadan passing between them until in the middle of a tune the priest happened to look at the clock, and he was up on his feet, clapped his hat on his head and skipped out of the room with the feadan still in his hand almost before Murdo realised the music had stopped."
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla.
Blogger advises me that this is my 600th post. Think how much piping I could have done in the time it took me to write them all!
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla.
Blogger advises me that this is my 600th post. Think how much piping I could have done in the time it took me to write them all!
Tuesday, 4 October 2016
Gile na gile
I found a translation of the poem. I also realised that much of the novel takes place earlier than 1932, but certainly not as early as 1892, the year in which women were admitted to Glasgow University.
In the end The Albannach is about Murdo, the protagonist, finding his true self, his identity as a Highland Scot, a Gaelic speaker and a piper. Oddly enough, considering the misogyny, it turns out that the great Murdo, the man who leads his village from the horrors of Calvinism into the sunny uplands of Alba, seems to have been taught to play the pipes by his mother.
"'God about us!' exclaimed Duncan Lachlan Iain, as if in the greatest consternation. 'A woman piper! I won't believe it. The day I see a man bear a child that day I'll see a woman tune the pipes, and that day I'll know I am dead. Man, man, they have not the wind nor the trick of the fingers nor the musician's ear not the poet's heart.'"
The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla.
This evening I certainly felt unfit to play. Following the fan's suggestion that I work on more reels and jigs I've been working on Troy, Miss Girdle and Crossing the Minch. I've been thwarted by an utter inability to hold pipes and bellows in a way that doesn't involve a numb arm, cricked neck and sore thumb. Maybe it's the drop in temperature - I've had to resort to playing in fingerless mitts. In the midst of all the physical discomfort I got the buzz: there really is no rhyme or reason to it.
In the end The Albannach is about Murdo, the protagonist, finding his true self, his identity as a Highland Scot, a Gaelic speaker and a piper. Oddly enough, considering the misogyny, it turns out that the great Murdo, the man who leads his village from the horrors of Calvinism into the sunny uplands of Alba, seems to have been taught to play the pipes by his mother.
"'God about us!' exclaimed Duncan Lachlan Iain, as if in the greatest consternation. 'A woman piper! I won't believe it. The day I see a man bear a child that day I'll see a woman tune the pipes, and that day I'll know I am dead. Man, man, they have not the wind nor the trick of the fingers nor the musician's ear not the poet's heart.'"
The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla.
This evening I certainly felt unfit to play. Following the fan's suggestion that I work on more reels and jigs I've been working on Troy, Miss Girdle and Crossing the Minch. I've been thwarted by an utter inability to hold pipes and bellows in a way that doesn't involve a numb arm, cricked neck and sore thumb. Maybe it's the drop in temperature - I've had to resort to playing in fingerless mitts. In the midst of all the physical discomfort I got the buzz: there really is no rhyme or reason to it.
Saturday, 1 October 2016
Iain Beag
"Iain Beag would always be out when it was a question of piping. He was one of the best of pipers himself and would stand there leaning his weight on his artificial leg and tapping time with his one own foot while he went through all the changing parts of a piobaireachd, and he plainly in his glory...He had left a leg in France."
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla
I like the understated manner in which the artifical leg is explained - the lack of sentimentality, the slight humour.
This is an interesting novel. There are familiar themes: the oppressive religious upbringing, the bright boy who goes away to be educated, a brush with vice and debauchery, the failure to break free. There is a little piping, a little of domestic life in a croft, a fair amount of evocative description of the land.
There is a good chunk of Gaelic in it, some explained, some not. Murdo is a sent a poem, which has quite an impact on him, so it's a shame to have no hint at all of what it means. Google translate is no help at all, telling me firmly that 'Gile na gile do chonnarc' is Indonesian and that, translated into English, it reads 'na gile gile do chonnarc'.
But, the misogyny! Other than motherly Mrs O'Callaghan, who provides bed and board and asks no questions, every last women is fat, ugly, stupid to the point of being little better than an animal, gives herself airs, or moans and complains. They make sexual advances to him. One - a prostitute in Glasgow - passes on a STD. At least, that's how I read it. It's part of the novel that is written in almost a dream state, Murdo being drunk throughout (it's all rather Bloom in Dublin at this point), and I supose there will always be a certain amount of reticence in a novel of that time (1932) on such matters. There are apparently no women students at Glasgow. Women revolt and oppress him. To be fair he's not overly complimentary about the men, either, but at least they have faces and personalities; the women are all breasts, backsides and blather. They seem to have little in the way of opportunities - they bear 14 children, are shouted at and ignored by drunken, or adulterous and righteous, husbands, nurse each other in illness and their only relief seems to be sixpenny novelettes. I wonder to what extent that reflected the real lives of women in rural Scotland in the first part of the last century.
The Albannach, Fionn Mac Colla
I like the understated manner in which the artifical leg is explained - the lack of sentimentality, the slight humour.
This is an interesting novel. There are familiar themes: the oppressive religious upbringing, the bright boy who goes away to be educated, a brush with vice and debauchery, the failure to break free. There is a little piping, a little of domestic life in a croft, a fair amount of evocative description of the land.
There is a good chunk of Gaelic in it, some explained, some not. Murdo is a sent a poem, which has quite an impact on him, so it's a shame to have no hint at all of what it means. Google translate is no help at all, telling me firmly that 'Gile na gile do chonnarc' is Indonesian and that, translated into English, it reads 'na gile gile do chonnarc'.
But, the misogyny! Other than motherly Mrs O'Callaghan, who provides bed and board and asks no questions, every last women is fat, ugly, stupid to the point of being little better than an animal, gives herself airs, or moans and complains. They make sexual advances to him. One - a prostitute in Glasgow - passes on a STD. At least, that's how I read it. It's part of the novel that is written in almost a dream state, Murdo being drunk throughout (it's all rather Bloom in Dublin at this point), and I supose there will always be a certain amount of reticence in a novel of that time (1932) on such matters. There are apparently no women students at Glasgow. Women revolt and oppress him. To be fair he's not overly complimentary about the men, either, but at least they have faces and personalities; the women are all breasts, backsides and blather. They seem to have little in the way of opportunities - they bear 14 children, are shouted at and ignored by drunken, or adulterous and righteous, husbands, nurse each other in illness and their only relief seems to be sixpenny novelettes. I wonder to what extent that reflected the real lives of women in rural Scotland in the first part of the last century.
Thursday, 29 September 2016
The black Skyeman
"He used to be a singer in his younger days, and a notable piper, too, but his voice was old and cracked now and the rheumatics had put an end to his piping for good a matter of seven years before. Only once had he put finger to reed since then and that was five years back when he had the argument with the black Skyeman about a tune."
"Sometimes, too, the argument would get hot enough in a friendly kind of way, and if it was about piping it would end by someone taking down the pipes and striding out to the patch of grass at the side of the shop with the whole company trooping at his heels, all except old Iain Mor himself who sat in his chair and bent an attentive ear. Every now and then someone would come in to tell the stage of the argument and demand his opinion, which he would then carry out to the men at the gable, who would pause in their arguing to listen and then be at it again. At times a whole evening would be passed in this way, the men arguing at the end of the house and only pausing now and again when someone took the pipes and stepped aside to play over a part of the tune to illustrate some technical matter, and he as like as not continuing the discussion for a bit with the bag hanging limp and the chanter held ready between his teeth."
The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla, 1932
Yes - it really does say that the chanter is between his teeth!
"Sometimes, too, the argument would get hot enough in a friendly kind of way, and if it was about piping it would end by someone taking down the pipes and striding out to the patch of grass at the side of the shop with the whole company trooping at his heels, all except old Iain Mor himself who sat in his chair and bent an attentive ear. Every now and then someone would come in to tell the stage of the argument and demand his opinion, which he would then carry out to the men at the gable, who would pause in their arguing to listen and then be at it again. At times a whole evening would be passed in this way, the men arguing at the end of the house and only pausing now and again when someone took the pipes and stepped aside to play over a part of the tune to illustrate some technical matter, and he as like as not continuing the discussion for a bit with the bag hanging limp and the chanter held ready between his teeth."
The Albannach, Finn Mac Colla, 1932
Yes - it really does say that the chanter is between his teeth!
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
Old times
"The folks were a lusty race in those old times, with a song never far from the lips and feet ever itching to be at the dancing. And the fine piping there must have been! But then the dark days came, with a new kind of religion that changed the old ways, stopped the song on the lip, and let the wind out of the pipes with a squealing of drones. Then the folks began going abroad till none were left but the old people and bairns."
The Albannacb, Fionn Mac Colla, 1932
The Albannacb, Fionn Mac Colla, 1932
Monday, 26 September 2016
The first cause
"The First Cause or Unmoved First Mover - we must forget the infinitely subjective and question-begging term 'God', and for a thousand years! - the Ground of all Being or Creative Absolute - as some moderns are calling it, the Ultimate Reference - is in piobaireachd, as it never was in Calvinist theory..."
Fionn Mac Colla (aka Thomas MacDonald), introduction to The Albannach.
Fionn Mac Colla (aka Thomas MacDonald), introduction to The Albannach.
Wednesday, 13 April 2016
Five novels about musicians
Novels don't tend to cover the world of work much. Somehow the 9 to 5 grind lacks literary possibilities. In children's fiction it is normally the school holidays, and parents are conveniently abroad or dead, allowing children to get on with fun and adventure.
In adult fiction characters are perhaps off work sick, have inherited a lot of money, or do something vaguely creative in a freelance way. Even in police procedurals, where you might expect a dose of realism, the cops rarely sit at a desk answering emails or filling forms for any length of time. Similarly, apart from Sherlock Holmes pottering about with a bit of chemistry, you don't often come across characters in novels with much in the way of hobbies.
Not many novels have musicians as the protagonists, which is odd, as they don't lead the 9 to 5 office life. Perhaps novelists aren't generally musical, or don't know many musicians. Perhaps it's the difficulty of writing meaningfully about music that no one can hear, although I can think of novels about artists that include detailed descriptions of non-existent paintings...
Here are five novels that do involve musicans, two (or possibly three), include folk music, two focus on pianists, two have composers, and there is a fair smattering of fiddlers and violinists. This isn't an exhaustive list. There are no pipers (but there could be if I included a book I meant to reread and meant to write about here: Kirsty Gunn's The Big Music).
The Fountain Overflows - Rebecca West. We get to hear a lot about the super talented Richard Quin, who can't quite be bothered, amd the terribly untalented Cordeila with her "greasy tone". Of the talented twins we are only told that they practice a lot and will be concert pianists one day, but somehow we never really know what it is to love music, to enjoy playing it.
The Song Collector - Natasha Solomons
The protaginist here, Harry Fox-Talbot, is a collector of folk song, musician, and composer. Solomons talks of him losing music when his wife dies, of getting tunes stuck in his head, of the joy and frustrations of music. It makes me feel as though she is either a musician herself or knows musicans well.
Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
The tale of the choir (or quire) of Mellstock village and how their voices, violoncello, treble and tenor fiddles and are ousted from the church by flighty Fancy Day and her harmonium. There is much about the importance of music for dance and community gatherings and about folk song.
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell. Despite the series to which this novel belongs being known as A Dance to the Music of Time there are lots of pictorial references in it and not much of music. However, a key character is the composer Hugh Moreland, who drifts in and out of several of the books in this series. He doesn't seem to do much composing and the focus is on his drinking and difficult relationships with women. Moreland was based on Constant Lambert.
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle. We like our fictional detectives to have some sort of quirk, aside from the usually abysmal home life. Some paint, some grow orchids and some listen to music but there is only one I can think of who plays music - the great Sherlock Holmes. Although, apparently, he doesn't play very well (although what he does play may be folk music).
In adult fiction characters are perhaps off work sick, have inherited a lot of money, or do something vaguely creative in a freelance way. Even in police procedurals, where you might expect a dose of realism, the cops rarely sit at a desk answering emails or filling forms for any length of time. Similarly, apart from Sherlock Holmes pottering about with a bit of chemistry, you don't often come across characters in novels with much in the way of hobbies.
Not many novels have musicians as the protagonists, which is odd, as they don't lead the 9 to 5 office life. Perhaps novelists aren't generally musical, or don't know many musicians. Perhaps it's the difficulty of writing meaningfully about music that no one can hear, although I can think of novels about artists that include detailed descriptions of non-existent paintings...
Here are five novels that do involve musicans, two (or possibly three), include folk music, two focus on pianists, two have composers, and there is a fair smattering of fiddlers and violinists. This isn't an exhaustive list. There are no pipers (but there could be if I included a book I meant to reread and meant to write about here: Kirsty Gunn's The Big Music).
The Fountain Overflows - Rebecca West. We get to hear a lot about the super talented Richard Quin, who can't quite be bothered, amd the terribly untalented Cordeila with her "greasy tone". Of the talented twins we are only told that they practice a lot and will be concert pianists one day, but somehow we never really know what it is to love music, to enjoy playing it.
The Song Collector - Natasha Solomons
The protaginist here, Harry Fox-Talbot, is a collector of folk song, musician, and composer. Solomons talks of him losing music when his wife dies, of getting tunes stuck in his head, of the joy and frustrations of music. It makes me feel as though she is either a musician herself or knows musicans well.
Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy
The tale of the choir (or quire) of Mellstock village and how their voices, violoncello, treble and tenor fiddles and are ousted from the church by flighty Fancy Day and her harmonium. There is much about the importance of music for dance and community gatherings and about folk song.
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell. Despite the series to which this novel belongs being known as A Dance to the Music of Time there are lots of pictorial references in it and not much of music. However, a key character is the composer Hugh Moreland, who drifts in and out of several of the books in this series. He doesn't seem to do much composing and the focus is on his drinking and difficult relationships with women. Moreland was based on Constant Lambert.
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle. We like our fictional detectives to have some sort of quirk, aside from the usually abysmal home life. Some paint, some grow orchids and some listen to music but there is only one I can think of who plays music - the great Sherlock Holmes. Although, apparently, he doesn't play very well (although what he does play may be folk music).
Saturday, 19 March 2016
Gimme, gimme, gimme
I've had a tune in my head on and off these last few days and this afternoon I worked out that it is Saw Ye Never A Bonnie Lass from Reclaimed. The CD has the piper, Martyn Bennett, introduce the tune. I can't remember his exact words, but the general gist is that the tune is what the fan would call a bit of a pig, which is a tad offputting. Still, I would like to play it, and the dots are out there in The Master Piper. It's on my list of books I'd like.
I haven't (yet) rushed out to buy it, partly because I'm aware that I've yet to touch the book of quicksteps purchased recently. I've also got my eye on Freeland Barbour's The Music and the Land. And John Maclellan's collected works. Oh, and John MacColl's tunes. And Roddy MacDonald's. (Last Tango in Harris! Good Drying!)
And that's just the tune books. I've got a gap in my Deaf Shepherd collection. Anna and Mairearad have got a new CD out. I don't have the latest Battlefield Band offering, I'm missing a Kevin MacLeod CD, and I would love to track down something that had a very good review in The Living Tradition. I missed Blazin' Fiddles when they were in this neck of the woods and am tempted to indulge in a CD from them to compensate.
It's a while since I mentioned it, but I'm short of hours in the day. I did find time to play today though, and once I found a couple of parts of Vittoria and Perth that had gone awol everything went well.
I haven't (yet) rushed out to buy it, partly because I'm aware that I've yet to touch the book of quicksteps purchased recently. I've also got my eye on Freeland Barbour's The Music and the Land. And John Maclellan's collected works. Oh, and John MacColl's tunes. And Roddy MacDonald's. (Last Tango in Harris! Good Drying!)
And that's just the tune books. I've got a gap in my Deaf Shepherd collection. Anna and Mairearad have got a new CD out. I don't have the latest Battlefield Band offering, I'm missing a Kevin MacLeod CD, and I would love to track down something that had a very good review in The Living Tradition. I missed Blazin' Fiddles when they were in this neck of the woods and am tempted to indulge in a CD from them to compensate.
It's a while since I mentioned it, but I'm short of hours in the day. I did find time to play today though, and once I found a couple of parts of Vittoria and Perth that had gone awol everything went well.
Friday, 18 March 2016
Shock of the new
I‘ve been pondering this week about how we approach new things, how there are some things we take to immediately while others take a while to grow on us. There are also some things we love for ever and others that we later look on with incredulity: how could I possibly have worn that dress/bought that sofa/loved that band?
I suppose some of it comes down to an individual’s ability to cope with change: some of us do seem to be more open than others to change, or cope better with change more in some areas of life than others. I can think of people who loathe anything at all to change at work, but are happy to travel to new and exotic places. I think it’s possible, too, to have a sort of change fatigue. As I get older I note a tiredness with change at work from my coevals. It’s not that we don’t like change, it’s just that this week’s latest thing we’ve seen before, probably more than once, and have suffered the consequences. In some ways it’s not change that we’re quibbling about at all: it’s more of the same old that is irritating us.
Some change in likes is probably that we never really liked the thing in the first place. We got caught up in a fad, a passing phase, the rest of the world all shouting about whatever is the new black, and we’ve got swept up with that tide and later we’ve looked at the photos and wondered what on earth we were thinking.
Some change in likes is a change in us. I discovered the Bronte sisters at university over 20 years ago. I can still cry buckets over Jane Eyre, but I can’t read Wuthering Heights any more. Barely out of my teens I thought it tragically romantic, Cathy and Heathcliff’s passionate, death-defying love. Now I find them self-centred, silly, childish, and very irritating.
Which brings me to the new that takes a while to get used to and the new we embrace at once. I bought Fhuair Mi Pog while back. I’d already heard and enjoyed Allan Macdonald’s playing and the CD had smallpipes. Of course I was going to love it. However, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. There are some pipes, but there, as ever, it seems, some whistles, and although there are pipes with song there are also songs without pipes. I was probably expecting a lot more pipes than there are: just six of the 15 tracks.
Then the tunes weren’t quite what I was expecting either. They weren’t really jigs or reels or marches or strathspeys, and I found them odd. And Margaret’s voice I found…interesting. It made me think of the glory days of technicolour musicals and the soprano voices there: a little harsh, a little tight, a little overly-refined, lacking (to my mind) the expansive passion, the warmth, the colour of an operatic soprano. I listened to it dutifully a few times, stuck it in the cupboard that houses rarely played CDs and forgot all about it.
Looking for some musical variety I dug it out recently to play in the car…and I am really enjoying it. Why has it grown on me? I suspect because one way or another it’s no longer new. I’ve been listening to Julie Fowlis quite a bit. Her voice has grown on me, and perhaps made Margaret’s seem more familiar, or at least, less unfamiliar. Julie’s voice has given me has certainly given me a different benchmark to put Margaret’s voice against, and now I know her voice better I am surprised by my original response to it. The style of song is more familiar to me, the particular rhythms of Gaelic. And of course this time I knew what to expect.
Which has probably all paved the way for me to pick up the LBPS excellent new CD Reclaimed and love it at first hearing. In many ways the presentation of the tunes is very new, very different, but in its separate elements it’s all things I know. Pipes and voice, pipes and strings, lowland tunes, the whole chamber music feel – the layers and harmonies of a small number of instruments – these are all familiar to me. And my favourite track with voice, well, my father is always one for reciting chunks of poetry learned by rote at school and Helen of Kirconnell Lea is one of those.
Monday, 14 March 2016
My dog could do better than that
It’s the standard complaint about “modern” art: to the uninitiated it doesn’t look very competent. It looks like the work of someone who has no clue what they are doing. Generally, however, everyone from Picasso to Pollock has a training in art that would have covered life drawing, perspective, and so on. They know the rules, they know the accepted methods, and they have chosen to bend, subvert, reinterpret or break them. That is what makes them great artists.
But what of artists who weren’t “trained”, who didn’t know the rules but broke them anyway, and who have still been accepted by the art world? Grandma Moses, perhaps, or Alfred Wallis. Do we “allow” rules to be bent in some places and not others? Are there, I wonder, any self-taught concert pianists? Did Andrea Bocelli study music?
I started off using online video lessons from a pipe major, and later had real life chanter lessons from Lt Col Willie Allen. Thereafter I was on my own. In terms of GHB I am sure I break many rules, not because I choose to so much as because I don’t know them. I can’t flout a law that I am in ignorance of. Does that make me a creative smallpiper or a failed GHB piper? I think I am aware, when it comes to the rules I do know, when I am breaking them accidentally and when I am subverting them. I know the difference between unintended crossing noises (currently getting these in The Hills of Perth and trying to eliminate them) and gracing that isn’t quite within the rules but which sounds good and so I am going with it.
Bridget Mackenzie, in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles describes how one set of rules, one way of doing things, grew and spread, through one or two people teaching a lot of pupils, through the conformism of military pipe bands, or through competitions, so that what was once *a* way became *the* way, with all other ways now considered to be the *wrong* way and so falling out of use and becoming lost. Pipe music must surely be the poorer for that. Bridget doesn’t really talk about the impact of written notation, but that which is written can have a wider audience than that which is transmitted orally/aurally and somehow holds greater weight.
And it’s not just the gracing or the timings, or the arrangements or the names given to tunes that have become homogenised. Something that is a matter of individual choice becomes set about with rules, to the extent that Lewisach pipers felt obliged to shift their pipes from the right shoulder to the left.
I think this is one of the messages of Reclaimed. Cauld wind piping isn’t a poor substitute for GHB, pipes played by failed pipers or also rans (although many/most smallpipers are fine GHB players) it’s a thing in itself, with new ways of doing things, new rules to be made, and broken.
Friday, 11 March 2016
Reclaimed
Reclaimed is a compilation CD, which isn’t always a good thing. Too often compilations are mixed bags, a bit of a curate’s egg. This has is a common thread, apart from the pipes, which is the music of William Dixon. This is certainly one for my (long) tune book wish list. Several of the tracks use voice or strings (violin, viola, or cello). There are no banjos or bodhrans, no snare drums, no MSR sets. In short it’s neither folk nor GHB stuff, it is cauld wind pipes (not just Scottish) finding their own level.
Reclaimed also gives me some additions to the list of things that go well with pipes. This CD gives us pipes and voice, which I already know from Seudan and Fhuair Mi Pog and hadn’t really thought about when I was compiling that five. This isn’t just singing with the pipes, though. Mairi Campbell on Now Westlin Winds, gives us voice used almost like drones, which works really well. And I’ve already said how good pipes sound with more pipes, mostly thinking SSP or GHB with Uilleann pipes, but I think this is the first time I have heard smallpipes played with more smallpipes, (Jack Latin) which is just perfect, actually. It’s a long time since I’ve played with another smallpiper. There aren’t many of us about.
While I'm mentally updating Five Things this CD gives us an extra place to hear Mr MacInnes. He’s on two tracks here, one unaccompanied set of three tunes (The Night Visitor's Song, Willie Stays Lang at the Fair and Well Bobbit Blanch of Middlebie) and with strings and voice on Helen of Kirconnel Lea.
Eslewhere Mike Katz plays pipes by the Monkey's maker, there is an intriguing narrative piece on border pipes, a track featuring Martyn Bennett, and a rare chance to hear pastoral pipes. The icing on the cake of this CD is the informative sleeve notes.
Sunday, 28 February 2016
Piping traditions
I've just finished reading Bridget Mackenzie's Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland. This is a really informative book, covering the history of piping, but also touching on the way of life in the islands over the years, migration, island folklore and some military history.
There are some stories of Lewis pipers sitting drones over their right shoulders, or playing with their right hands on the top of the chanter. There are anecdotes aplenty on the various uses and abuses of alcohol in relation to pipes (I don't think I'll be pouring any wee drams into my pipe bag, thanks all the same!) There is also quite a lot of information about the different piping styles and how the full range has dwindled over the years in favour of a more regimented approach where there is considered to be a right and a wrong way to play a tune. Some of that seems to be related to the reach and influence a single teacher can have, although it seems some teachers actively encouraged pipers to interpret the music in their own way. It's one to dip in and out of, peppered with anecdotes, never dry or dull.
Unfortunately her reluctance to even name currently competing pipers means that it really stops in the back end of the last century. I suppose that stated reluctance should also have alerted me to the fact that when she says "piping" she means GHB, competition piping, pipe bands and the army. There is no mention of the cauld wind revival, piping for dancing is only mentioned in passing, and pipers in folk bands not at all.
There is also no discussion about why girls were not taught to play while their brothers were, although only one judge is noted as actively saying he disliked women playing pipes. One or two clearly did learn alongside brothers but abandoned playing, perhaps as family duties overtook them. She doesn't say when pipe bands started to accept women pipers, whether there was ever an absolute prohibition on them joining or whether it was just custom and practice. Perhaps there are women players whom she has overlooked simply because they are not competition pipers.
Still, these are minor quibbles about an interesting book and a good read.
There are some stories of Lewis pipers sitting drones over their right shoulders, or playing with their right hands on the top of the chanter. There are anecdotes aplenty on the various uses and abuses of alcohol in relation to pipes (I don't think I'll be pouring any wee drams into my pipe bag, thanks all the same!) There is also quite a lot of information about the different piping styles and how the full range has dwindled over the years in favour of a more regimented approach where there is considered to be a right and a wrong way to play a tune. Some of that seems to be related to the reach and influence a single teacher can have, although it seems some teachers actively encouraged pipers to interpret the music in their own way. It's one to dip in and out of, peppered with anecdotes, never dry or dull.
Unfortunately her reluctance to even name currently competing pipers means that it really stops in the back end of the last century. I suppose that stated reluctance should also have alerted me to the fact that when she says "piping" she means GHB, competition piping, pipe bands and the army. There is no mention of the cauld wind revival, piping for dancing is only mentioned in passing, and pipers in folk bands not at all.
There is also no discussion about why girls were not taught to play while their brothers were, although only one judge is noted as actively saying he disliked women playing pipes. One or two clearly did learn alongside brothers but abandoned playing, perhaps as family duties overtook them. She doesn't say when pipe bands started to accept women pipers, whether there was ever an absolute prohibition on them joining or whether it was just custom and practice. Perhaps there are women players whom she has overlooked simply because they are not competition pipers.
Still, these are minor quibbles about an interesting book and a good read.
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Speak to me
"Donald asked RSM Maclean 'Well, John, and how is the pipe going?' John replied, 'She's going so well she's speaking to me'."
Archie Maclean, as quoted in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland, Bridget Mackenzie, Birlinn, 2013.
Is this speaking the same as, or related to, the buzz, I wonder? Note that the pipe is referred to in the singular, and that, like cars, motorbikes, ships and countries, it takes the feminine. I have always given names and genders to objects of importance. The Monkey is male.
And while we are on the subject of the naming of things I note that the Shores of Loch Bea/Bee aka The Sands of Loch Bea/Bee is formally known as The Glasgow Police March Past.
Also on terminology, tunes, and poems or songs, are not written or composed in this book, but are 'made'.
I'm intrigued by the number of pipers who went on to be schoolteachers (not necessarily of music) or in to the police (where the pipe bands might have been a draw, I supose). I don't know if this was just the case in the Outer Isles.
Here's a tune. Braemar, again, and still tightening up in the same places, still not relaxed with it, still struggling not to mix the 1st and 3rd parts.
Check this out on Chirbit
Archie Maclean, as quoted in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland, Bridget Mackenzie, Birlinn, 2013.
Is this speaking the same as, or related to, the buzz, I wonder? Note that the pipe is referred to in the singular, and that, like cars, motorbikes, ships and countries, it takes the feminine. I have always given names and genders to objects of importance. The Monkey is male.
And while we are on the subject of the naming of things I note that the Shores of Loch Bea/Bee aka The Sands of Loch Bea/Bee is formally known as The Glasgow Police March Past.
Also on terminology, tunes, and poems or songs, are not written or composed in this book, but are 'made'.
I'm intrigued by the number of pipers who went on to be schoolteachers (not necessarily of music) or in to the police (where the pipe bands might have been a draw, I supose). I don't know if this was just the case in the Outer Isles.
Here's a tune. Braemar, again, and still tightening up in the same places, still not relaxed with it, still struggling not to mix the 1st and 3rd parts.
Check this out on Chirbit
Friday, 19 February 2016
This and that
I've had a tune in my head all day. It felt like a B part. Once the A part turned up sometime after lunch I was able to identify it as Heroes of St Valery. As it was so clear in my head I was sure I could play it, although I know when I had the dots before I abandoned in disgust as it seemed all but unplayable. The dots took some tracking down, but once I had them I discovered that it's a nice straightforward tune, that it was the 3rd and 4th parts in my head, that I need to sort the gracing on it. And if I add it to my repertoire will it go with Vittoria (as per Mr McLeod) or Home Town (pace Mr Gillies), or something else?
While we were lunching a wedding party arrived. I must have caught a flash of button on jacket because I wasn't all all surprised when I saw that the groom and, presumably his father, were in kilts. I refrained from asking where the piper was....
No wedding in the outer isles is complete without a piper, it seems, as I read Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland. It's full of snippets of random facts of island and piping life that I know that the fan *really* enjoys when I read them out in bed, over breakfast... It's a little like the book of Matthew, with various pipers begetting other pipers, marrying each other's sisters and teaching each other's sons. I have been glad to read about tunes I play, pipers I've heard or whose tunes I have played, but sorry that there are glaring gaps (no James Duncan MacKenzie of Back), apparently to prevent swaying piping judges!
I'm playing around with Return from India (needs to be faster) and The Rejected Suitor: feels like a set. Also fiddling about with The Hag at the Churn and The Pipe on the Hob. Yesterday I played with the fan who suggested that Miss Girdle and Troy could both be slower. They need to be tidier, too.
That was a bit of a first: normally he asks for more speed. Another first was me being able to fling myself into a tune he had already started on (Braemar). I had less luck the second time as he insisted he was playing a tune we'd already done, I knew we hadn't and thought it was Magersfontein. Turned out to be Battle of the Somme, which I don't play, which explains my inability to join in that one.
Apparently I am still playing every day...
And here is St Valery, with intermittent gracing and some errors.
Check this out on Chirbit
While we were lunching a wedding party arrived. I must have caught a flash of button on jacket because I wasn't all all surprised when I saw that the groom and, presumably his father, were in kilts. I refrained from asking where the piper was....
No wedding in the outer isles is complete without a piper, it seems, as I read Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland. It's full of snippets of random facts of island and piping life that I know that the fan *really* enjoys when I read them out in bed, over breakfast... It's a little like the book of Matthew, with various pipers begetting other pipers, marrying each other's sisters and teaching each other's sons. I have been glad to read about tunes I play, pipers I've heard or whose tunes I have played, but sorry that there are glaring gaps (no James Duncan MacKenzie of Back), apparently to prevent swaying piping judges!
I'm playing around with Return from India (needs to be faster) and The Rejected Suitor: feels like a set. Also fiddling about with The Hag at the Churn and The Pipe on the Hob. Yesterday I played with the fan who suggested that Miss Girdle and Troy could both be slower. They need to be tidier, too.
That was a bit of a first: normally he asks for more speed. Another first was me being able to fling myself into a tune he had already started on (Braemar). I had less luck the second time as he insisted he was playing a tune we'd already done, I knew we hadn't and thought it was Magersfontein. Turned out to be Battle of the Somme, which I don't play, which explains my inability to join in that one.
Apparently I am still playing every day...
And here is St Valery, with intermittent gracing and some errors.
Check this out on Chirbit
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Fancy that!
From time to time I glance over some of the discussions on The Session. My eye was recently caught by one on musical memory, especially as the opening poster was looking for tips on remembering. As ever the comments varied from the flippant to the serious, but the general gist was that memory works in mysterious ways.
One poster mentioned Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, so I trundled out to borrow it from the library. It is an interesting book, not too technical, and well written. Dr Sacks was (he died in 2015) clearly a well-read and cultured man and as well as citing standard journals such as JAMA he mentions Darwin, Henry James, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, Nietzsche amd Proust, among others. He was also a musician from a musical family.
I suppose the clue is in the word "tales" in the title, because in the end it is not much more than a collection of fascinating anecdotes and case stories about the strangeness of the human brain in relation to music. The most concrete finding seems to be that music is independent of other types of memory, so that a man who cannot remember the day of the week or his wife's name will still be able to play from memory hundreds of pieces of music. Learning music may also be different from other types of learning, allowing someone who has never learned to tie their shoe laces, count muffins or draw an elephant to be able to accurately play and sing. Music is also linked in to emotion differently from other things, so where emotion is deadened by dementia, Parkinsons, psychopathy, autism or brain injury, music may bring emotion out.
So all very fascinating, and full of human interest, stories sad and happy, but very short on anything on how musical memory works, and therefore how one should best go about learning.
I suppose it's not surprising. Even my own experience is mixed. Some tunes fall into my head after one or two times having them as background sound in the car. Others will not stick despite repeated listening, on a loop, while doing nothing else at all. Sometimes I can throw dots away almost at once, for other tunes I need weeks or months with dots. Some tunes I can only play once they start to play themselves in my head, other tunes I learn very well but never spontaneously hum. Some tunes I can get if I "look" at the picture of the dots in my head, for others I struggle to "see" the dots, can't "see" enough to help, or just don't need those phantom dots. Songs I find easier to remember, I suppose because I can memorise words more easily than notes, follow the internal logic of the song (most trad songs tell linear stories), and then use the words and fragments of melody to piece together a likely whole.
I think this will all boil down in the end to more practice...
One poster mentioned Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, so I trundled out to borrow it from the library. It is an interesting book, not too technical, and well written. Dr Sacks was (he died in 2015) clearly a well-read and cultured man and as well as citing standard journals such as JAMA he mentions Darwin, Henry James, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, Nietzsche amd Proust, among others. He was also a musician from a musical family.
I suppose the clue is in the word "tales" in the title, because in the end it is not much more than a collection of fascinating anecdotes and case stories about the strangeness of the human brain in relation to music. The most concrete finding seems to be that music is independent of other types of memory, so that a man who cannot remember the day of the week or his wife's name will still be able to play from memory hundreds of pieces of music. Learning music may also be different from other types of learning, allowing someone who has never learned to tie their shoe laces, count muffins or draw an elephant to be able to accurately play and sing. Music is also linked in to emotion differently from other things, so where emotion is deadened by dementia, Parkinsons, psychopathy, autism or brain injury, music may bring emotion out.
So all very fascinating, and full of human interest, stories sad and happy, but very short on anything on how musical memory works, and therefore how one should best go about learning.
I suppose it's not surprising. Even my own experience is mixed. Some tunes fall into my head after one or two times having them as background sound in the car. Others will not stick despite repeated listening, on a loop, while doing nothing else at all. Sometimes I can throw dots away almost at once, for other tunes I need weeks or months with dots. Some tunes I can only play once they start to play themselves in my head, other tunes I learn very well but never spontaneously hum. Some tunes I can get if I "look" at the picture of the dots in my head, for others I struggle to "see" the dots, can't "see" enough to help, or just don't need those phantom dots. Songs I find easier to remember, I suppose because I can memorise words more easily than notes, follow the internal logic of the song (most trad songs tell linear stories), and then use the words and fragments of melody to piece together a likely whole.
I think this will all boil down in the end to more practice...
Monday, 15 February 2016
One fifth
I've got a few days off. I've been baking , knitting, reading, piping, listening to CDs. I've been thinking that The Yellow-haired Tinker has striking similarities to Miss Girdle, that I'd be interested in a CD of Hugh MacDiarmid's Haircut, and wondering why it is that the tune I like least is the one most likely to be going round my head at given moment (Last Waltz...).
I also had an excited moment, on noticing the tune called Fleshmarket Close, thinking that I could post a "five things" that would be five tunes that share a name with a Rebus novel, or even with a Rebus character (Big Ger surely deserves a march), or Rebus places (The Ox, of course), but sadly it looks like this would be a list of one. ...
I also had an excited moment, on noticing the tune called Fleshmarket Close, thinking that I could post a "five things" that would be five tunes that share a name with a Rebus novel, or even with a Rebus character (Big Ger surely deserves a march), or Rebus places (The Ox, of course), but sadly it looks like this would be a list of one. ...
Wednesday, 3 February 2016
Bring me sunshine
I recently acquired Finlay MacDonald's eponymous album. On the face of it this is a straightforward piper's album: piper plays pipe tunes, old and new. The new tunes include many by Finlay, but also Allan MacDonald (the fabulous Plagiarist and The Road to Loch Nam Bearnish). The old includes the wonderfully named The Night We Had the Goats, and, one of the fan's favourites, I Would Have Preferred Thee at First, But Not Now Sir. A lot of it is fast and furious.
As with many pipe albums there is the odd track with whistles, a song (which I am afraid I listened to once and skipped thereafter). There is a track or two with border pipes. There are also some other instrumentalists, including Chris Stout on fiddle. Sadly, Simon Thourmire restricts himself to producing and arranging, rather than playing.
But there is a bit twist. The other instrumentalists are on drums (that's a full kit, not a snare), piano, soprano sax. I think if it had been a full on jazz/lounge sound with pipes running through it that would have been truly experimental, quite possibly not to my taste, but something to admire.
As it is the piping is reasonably standard and the drums and sax just trundle through bits of some of the tracks. It works for me inasmuch as it's enough to make the sound different without creating something I'd prefer not to listen to, and in the end I can just about block it out, which I am sure wasn't what Finlay had in mind, but it feels a bit half-hearted, accidental.
What it brings to mind to me is two images. The first is A A Milne's introduction to Now We Are Six where he says 'Pooh wants to say that he thought it was a different book; and he hopes you won't mind, but he walked through it one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.'
The other is Morcambe and Wise. I imagine Ernie in something suitably louche - a red smoking jacket perhaps - doing some gentle boom-sh-sh with brushes on drums and cymbals, when Eric walks across the back of the stage, with bagpipes.
"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"With those bagpipes. What are you doing?"
"These are my bagpipes. I was just going to..."
"Yes, but can't you see. We were sharing a moment of hip coolness. For real jazz cats. Not bagpipes."
"Oh, yes. Sorry. Sorry..."
And off Eric shuffles, but you know there will be a sudden cacophony, which might be pipes or someone falling over pipes or the cue for a joke about a haggis. And the worst of it is that I'm not sure if this way round or whether Eric and his sax is interrupting Ernie's mini lecture on the history of the noble pipe in battle...
Still, underneath, it's a decent album. I don't expect it to make its way on to my most-played list any time soon although I will be tempted, when the current crop of new tunes is settled, to consider I Would Have Preferred Thee and The Plagiarist, if I can get it.
As with many pipe albums there is the odd track with whistles, a song (which I am afraid I listened to once and skipped thereafter). There is a track or two with border pipes. There are also some other instrumentalists, including Chris Stout on fiddle. Sadly, Simon Thourmire restricts himself to producing and arranging, rather than playing.
But there is a bit twist. The other instrumentalists are on drums (that's a full kit, not a snare), piano, soprano sax. I think if it had been a full on jazz/lounge sound with pipes running through it that would have been truly experimental, quite possibly not to my taste, but something to admire.
As it is the piping is reasonably standard and the drums and sax just trundle through bits of some of the tracks. It works for me inasmuch as it's enough to make the sound different without creating something I'd prefer not to listen to, and in the end I can just about block it out, which I am sure wasn't what Finlay had in mind, but it feels a bit half-hearted, accidental.
What it brings to mind to me is two images. The first is A A Milne's introduction to Now We Are Six where he says 'Pooh wants to say that he thought it was a different book; and he hopes you won't mind, but he walked through it one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake.'
The other is Morcambe and Wise. I imagine Ernie in something suitably louche - a red smoking jacket perhaps - doing some gentle boom-sh-sh with brushes on drums and cymbals, when Eric walks across the back of the stage, with bagpipes.
"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"With those bagpipes. What are you doing?"
"These are my bagpipes. I was just going to..."
"Yes, but can't you see. We were sharing a moment of hip coolness. For real jazz cats. Not bagpipes."
"Oh, yes. Sorry. Sorry..."
And off Eric shuffles, but you know there will be a sudden cacophony, which might be pipes or someone falling over pipes or the cue for a joke about a haggis. And the worst of it is that I'm not sure if this way round or whether Eric and his sax is interrupting Ernie's mini lecture on the history of the noble pipe in battle...
Still, underneath, it's a decent album. I don't expect it to make its way on to my most-played list any time soon although I will be tempted, when the current crop of new tunes is settled, to consider I Would Have Preferred Thee and The Plagiarist, if I can get it.
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Deoch an doris
"This is the last record for tonight," Harry said, searching for the bagpipe music he favoured whenever he wanted to blast everyone out of his house.
Late Nights on Air
Elizabeth Hay
Late Nights on Air
Elizabeth Hay
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