When I wrote about Peg Kingman’s new novel “Not Yet Drown’d” earlier this month I created a new category, to include it and the Cynthia Thayer novel “A Certain Slant of Light”, since I could hardly believe that there would be more than one novel written about piobaireachd.

Turns out I should remove my tongue from my cheek. I have discovered another story about piobaireachd, this one from 1896. At this point I can only assume that what I thought would be a joke category is likely to be used some more in the future.

This story is called “The Lost Pibroch” by Neil Munro, and is the title story from a collection of short stories involving life in the Scottish Highlands. Munro grew up in the Highlands but, like so many others of his generation, left for the big city when he was barely 18. By the time he was 23 he was Chief Reporter at the Glasgow Evening News. His first successful attempt at writing fiction was the set of short stories that are the subject of this post, and after their success he scaled back his journalism and focussed on fiction for the rest of his life. He was under-appreciated in the years following his death in 1930, as his career coincided with a proliferation of over-romanticized Scottish fiction, but it has been suggested more recently that he was to some extent satirizing that same genre.

“The Lost Pibroch” seems to bear that out. More gothic than romantic, it turns about the playing of a tune that only a handful of pipers are ever able to (or should ever) play. I will not give away the plot, but the playing of the tune has unforseen consequences that appear to be in evidence in some of the later stories in the collection. If you live in North America you can download the whole volume and start reading, using Google Books. Apparently, this will not work for you outside North America (possibly because of copyright restrictions) so you will have to scour your local bookshops and libraries. Good luck!

Before the week is out, be sure to listen to BBC Scotland’s Pipeline show.

This week’s edition features an interview with two of the big hitters in contemporary piobaireachd interpretation, Barnaby Brown and Allan MacDonald, and performances from the new CD release on Barnaby’s Siubhal label, Dastirum.

I have written about this CD recently, but it’s worth pointing out again that the cutting edge of piobaireachd these days seems to be in revisiting its roots. I want to make it clear that I am not criticizing the competition style of playing piobaireachd that has evolved over the past 200 years. Whatever its detractors may say, I still think it produces beautiful performances, many of which I listen to on an almost daily basis! Conversely, I think I have a pretty good handle on the criticisms leveled at the Piobaireachd Society, and its historical control of the form. The late 19th and early 20th century saw a post-Victorian elite seize control of piobaireachd, and while this certainly resulted in a lot of standardization (and some corruption), I think we have the Piobaireachd Society to thank for preserving the music, albeit in a rather conservative manner.

The situation today is changing. The Piobaireachd Society is transforming itself into a very active tool for the study of the Big Music, as it continues to promote the publication and explanation of old manuscripts. Into this atmosphere of inquiry come Barnaby Brown and Allan MacDonald with their new/old approach to piobaireachd. Barnaby is a fountain of knowledge regarding bagpipes and piping traditions all over the world and Allan is a seasoned performer of piobaireachd in the conventional style. His frustrations with that style, and his research into other gaelic musics have brought him to a new, highly personalized approach informed by oral traditions and singing styles. The performances captured on the new CD Dastirum exemplify that approach, and are beautiful and lyrical.

In this week’s radio show Allan performs The End of the Little Bridge, an odd, chromatic-sounding piobaireachd (to me it sounds like The Fingerlock on speed) and I Am Proud To Play a Pipe. Gary West, the host, also interviews Barnaby and Allan about the music and plays a track from an earlier Siubhal release, Living Legend, which features the piping of Donald MacPherson. The track selected is Donald Gruamach’s March, a towering tune, sadly cut short on the radio show. I will have to find out if the whole performance is on the CD itself.

Well, that’s a lot of words! Now go listen!

A couple of nights ago I played an interesting gig. I was contacted by a man who wanted to surprise his wife with some piping on their 15th wedding anniversary. We made the arrangements and I showed up at the appointed hour, expecting to find a party in full swing and a crowd of people waiting hear me play.

I was surprised to discover that there was no party as such. My audience consisted of just the man, his wife and their two daughters. They appeared to have just finished dinner, and were sitting in their living room waiting for the performance to begin.

Now, I’m used to playing in front of big crowds, but this was the first time I’d ever played for such a small group. I quickly re-tooled the performance I was planning to give, and the gig became a musical lecture on bagpipes, piping, and Scottish history. The family listened attentively while I introduced tunes, played on the Great Highland Bagpipes and Scottish Smallpipes, and demonstrated how the instruments worked. They seemed really happy with the performance. I even played part of a piobaireachd, Scarce of Fishing, since I never pass up an opportunity to expose the public to ceol mor! They really enjoyed it and said they could hear how different it was from the other pipe music I played for them.

I left thinking what a nice gift the husband had given his wife and family. I could handle a few more gigs like that!

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve just come across another novel that features piobaireachd.

Dedicated readers of this site (you know who you are) will recall that back in July I wrote about the novel “A Certain Slant of Light”, by Cynthia Thayer. That story used pipe tunes (many of them piobaireachd) as chapter headings, and made the playing of ceol mor an integral part of the plot.

During one of my oddly intuitive searches of the Salt Lake City Library’s catalog, I came across a novel just published this September called “Not Yet Drown’d”, by Peg Kingman. In this book, the protagonist sets out on a search for her missing (supposed dead) brother. The search is in part provoked by the sister’s posthumous receipt of a collection of his possessions, including the manuscript for a piobaireachd enigmatically retitled “Not Yet Drown’d”, that the bagpipe-playing brother had been working on before his “death”.

So, I should say at this point that I have not yet read the book - I just picked it up from the library yesterday. [I did notice (in a little pre-read flip) that the novel contains a moment of some family relevance: the protagonist is a witness to the historic landing of King George IV at Leith in 1822. A direct ancestor of mine, John Macfie, was the senior Magistrate of Leith at the time, and the first to greet the King when he alighted that day.] The piobaireachd presence in the book centers on the tune already mentioned, and bundles it together with the long-lost manuscript of Joseph MacDonald.

The author, Peg Kingman is a piper herself (not surprisingly) who also happens to be an ex-tea merchant. Not a lot of those around, I suppose. You can hear an interview with her by Rick Kleffel on his podcast Agony Column. So I now have music for two piobaireachds specifically written to be part of novels in just the past few years. I’ve discovered a whole new genre, and the Piobaireachd Society is blissfully unaware. I should add it to my categories - will there be more?

Yesterday WUSPBA, the Western United States Pipe Band Association, made it official - my band, The Wasatch and District Pipe Band has been moved up to Grade 3.

This move is clearly the consequence of some very hard work on the part of those involved in the running of our band, and the band members themselves. The team of Andrew Morrill, Ross Morrill, Mike Postma and Justin Howland have created the conditions where this could happen.

Andrew, our Pipe Major, has pushed the band (in the friendliest possible way) all season, never letting up and being relentlessly positive.
Ross has tamed the beast that is tuning 20+ pipers, so that our unison playing sounds so sweet - you can hear the results of his pipe set-up in this video of the band playing at Pleasanton this past Fall.
Mike, our Drum Sergeant, set a bewildering list of new standards for the drum corps at the beginning of the season, all of which they exceeded. The consequence of this was that the drummers actually outperformed the pipers. I hope they’re still willing to play with us!
Justin provided the all-important guidance that shaped our playing of the tunes. It makes a big difference to have that particular set of critical ears constantly monitoring our playing - I never leave a rehearsal without some nugget of useful information that improves my playing.
I’m pretty sure also that the level of solo piping and drumming has helped the band as a whole. A significant number of the players compete, and do very well. The depth of the pipe corps is evidenced also by the number of pipers playing piobaireachd. We are not just Jig and Reel players - we want to get to the soul of the music!

All this adds up to a band that is improving very quickly. This progress does however present the band with some new challenges: We currently have between 20 and 30 pipers. That’s too many for one playing band, but maybe not quite enough for a Grade 3 and a Grade 4 band The problem here is that everybody may be too good - how do you decide the roster of the Grade 4 band? I’ll start that particular ball rolling and volunteer myself! Another new challenge will be how to find competition to play against locally. The Salt Lake Scots are a Grade 3 band, but that’s it for Utah. Travel has been a topic of conversation this past week or so, because of the attendant expense involved in taking so many players to out-of-state games.

In any case, I’m sure all this will be worked out, and for now Congratulations to all. This is a great band to be in, and I’m sure we will all prove worthy of our new standing!

Last night I hurried along to the second in the series of Piobaireachd workshops given by our band instructor, Justin Howland.

I have been practicing since last meeting (take note, Justin!), and I am beginning to get the hang of the edre movement. In an earlier post on piobaireachd technique, I referred to an article by Jim McGillivray in which pipers are exhorted to practice the edre “relentlessly”. The reason given is that, apart from being a very common movement in piobaireachd, the edre forms the back end of many other movements - including the crunluath fosgailte. Practice the edre, and you’re improving the others too.

So, last night I got a chance to see if my edre practice was paying off. I have to say that I was pretty happy with how I’m doing. Justin’s method of playing everything at a glacial speed from the outset forces you to focus on technique. We all sounded fairly solid at the slow speed we had been practicing since the last meeting, and so Justin increased the tempo. By the end of the workshop we were playing the 2nd variation doubling almost up to speed, and the crunluath doubling considerably faster than before. This is just the second workshop, and already I can see results.

Towards the end of the workshop, Justin dissected the urlar for us, using a notation I had not previously seen. He had us write numbers and symbols under the notes to show how to phrase the ground. It’s like math canntaireachd. More on this as I continue to work on it…