Monthly Archives: May 2015

Compositions, Learning Interpretations, Performances

Pibroch on the Harp

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Bill Taylor recently sent me a recording to review of McLeod’s Lament played on wire-strung harp, closely following Colin Campbell’s 1797 notation. This is the earliest setting of Lament for the Harp Tree (PS 135). I am excited because we are nearing the end of a 12-month collaboration developing a CD and recital programme which, together with this website, form counterparts to my PhD thesis.

Building on experimental work initiated by Ann Heymann in the 1970s, Bill and I are exploring how to synthesise three strands of evidence:

  1. Oral transmission of pibroch, focusing on the performance craft of my mentor, Donald MacPherson (1922-2012).
  2. Early notations of pibroch, 1760-1841, focusing on the ‘cloud of witnesses’ for this tune.
  3. Early notations of Irish and Welsh harp music, focusing on the technical gestures presented in this PDF and this web resource.

We are grateful to the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council for supporting this creative collaboration through the research project Bass culture in Scottish musical traditions.

Bill and I began our experimental rehearsals on McLeod’s Lament twelve months ago and this is a preliminary result. We share an interest in what the craft of Gaelic harpers sounded like at the time when they were the pipers’ closest colleagues. Between around 1500 and 1746, when a decline in patronage for ‘classical’ Gaelic music was accelerated by civil war, pipers and harpers heard each other’s music from cradle to grave. They performed in the same halls for the same audiences. Working on the premise that something rubbed off in both directions, Bill and I have found this collaboration an illuminating one - artistically, technically and intellectually - pulling us both out of our comfort zones.

Bill made the following recording in Strathpeffer on 23 May 2015 - one take, no editing; not an end product but work in progress. He sent it to me for critical feedback and I am grateful to him for permission to publish it here, with my comments, as documentation of our journey from skeletal Campbell notation to fully-fleshed, living, breathing harp solo. A great deal of intuition and artistic judgement has been involved in this process! Almost everything could be done another way without contradicting the evidence. As Donald MacPherson often told me, “No-one has a monopoly on taste”.

That said, we have endeavoured to raise the bar by tuning in more sensitively to evidence that is culturally unfamiliar. We hope this post encourages others to investigate pibroch in a diversity of ways, treating it as evidence of a musical culture which has a depth and breadth we are barely beginning to understand.

Urlar (cycles I, IV & VII)

1:54 (bar 12). I love your unintended damp, creating a staccato note at the start of this bar. I think this could be put to good service, not here but in the counter phrase to this “rough” bar, the one we labelled “smooth”. A staccato first note would give it more individual character without reducing the contrast. So, please make the first note of bars 7 and 11 staccato every time: not choked abruptly but fully sounded before the damp. What about trying a double choke? The point is to introduce the staccato effect taken up in cycle II. It would be better if this staccato idea didn’t arrive out of nowhere but emerged organically.

2:10. I’d value a more emotional pause before the 7th arrives, introducing the new pitch with a sense of ceremony and bated breath. It is not a mere upbeat - it is the point we’ve been waiting for. Unveil it with dramatic timing.

8:31. Please add a ‘Beat’ (the last Welsh ornament in your booklet) to the last F# in the Urlar. Why call it a beat, introducing potential ambiguity? Its fingering is midway between a short plait and a 4-finger plait, and the extent to which you use it, unbidden, suggests to me that it might be the basic ‘plait’ of medieval Welsh harp technique. It is a lovely sound, well worth adding another ‘plait’ here to increase the sense of culmination.

13:40 (bar 9) & 13:57 (bar 11). In your 3rd Urlar, I felt that these two bars could do with more space beforehand. Relish the dissonance of the C before moving on, especially in the last Urlar. I’d be happy if the three Urlars were more different.

7:10 (bar 5). I love your sruth mòr speed here. At 14:20, however, it could be slower: both broaden out the run and add a dramatic pause before it. The speed of the sruth mòr calls out for expressive nuance, the last one being the slowest, broadening out towards the end of the piece like a river delta.

8:14. Generally, your shaping is glorious, but could you phrase off here?

8:28. Lovely rubato - Yes!

8:35. The subtle difference of timing between these two successive little streams is heart-rendingly wonderful.

The last Urlar is outstanding. YES!!! Very beautiful indeed. Your first Urlar felt like it could flow a little faster - keep it moving. Not having them all at exactly the same tempo could be advantageous.

To help make them different, I suggest you develop the way you introduce bar 10, rising one scale-step higher in each Urlar (1:42, 7:48 and 13:50). This little touch would have a big impact on the overall shape. 1st time, start on E (a 3-note stream); 2nd time, start on F# (a 4-note stream, as you played in this recording); last time, start on A (a 4-note stream A-F#-E-D). They could all be emotionally charged, leaning on the first note like a cadence appuyée. I suspect that this loosening up brings us closer to the musical behaviour of a culture that persistently rejected musical notation.

Cycle II

Allow the staccato notes to blossom before you choke them, a full bell-like sound. What about a sprinkling of double chokes, possibly at the start of some or all phrases? There could be more than two staccato notes in the Urlar to help knit the cycles together. I’d like to hear the defining feature of cycle II growing out of cycle I naturally - something that was an attractive detail in the Urlar is now taken up as the main motif.

3:39. Expand the time, don’t cram everything in - this merits space. Story-teller timing, not dance musician - we’re in a completely different register and craft here, that of epic storytelling.

4:04. Again, I think a less measured feel would help at this point in the piece. Save such urgency for the Doubling - I feel you reach a ‘Doubling’ level of excitement and clarity of measure too soon. Keep that card up your sleeve. There is great craftsmanship in using timing to shape the large-scale architecture! Set the tension level in your rubato here midway between cycle I (very relaxed) and cycle III (quite taught) - we want equal steps, or a smooth climb. The goal is to captivate listeners with the gripping anticipation of an almighty crescendo.

4:25 (and 8:18). I would enjoy a slightly slower sruth mòr here - and a more open bee’s plait: less crushed, full-bodied, all internal notes palpable for sonic beauty. The sruth mòr at 11:58 is glorious: just right for that point in the piece.

Cycle III

Beautiful tempo, gorgeous timing, just right!!!

Ends of phrases could have even more time: in terms of the rubato tension level, keep a card up your sleeve for later. The crescendo (of rhythmic intensity) does not reach its culmination here, on the first journey, but on the final one, your Barrludh Fosgailte Doubling.

Before the Urlar returns, add more time. Take a deep breath, both here and (an even deeper one) after the Barrludh Fosgailte Doubling.

5:53 (bar 62). Could you delay the bass note to the same off-beat, keeping the pattern going? Instead of coinciding with the melodic C, strike the bass after it, coinciding with the run of the sruth mòr. See this revised score (page 3 only). Bar numbers have disappeared, sorry! Sibelius 7 has a bug and I have not found a work-around. Cycle III begins at bar 40.

In this revised score, I have added your bass notes and proposed three small changes to the ornamentation:

  1. You are currently doing a forked choke on both F# and E, which produces A and G grace notes respectively. As G is not in this melody, could you do a thumb choke on E, producing an F# grace instead of a G? This is in bars 45, 50, 53, 63.
  2. How about introducing the casluth (from Bunting) in bars 51, 58 and 65? This would develop the staccato characterisation of the previous cycle. I’d really like the two bars opening the 3rd and 4th Quarters to be recognisable as a contrasting pair, returning but in reverse order. To achieve that, they need to stand out both from each other and from the rest of the cycle. Lively sound bites, grabbing our attention! To help achieve that, I have suggested a 2-note sruth immediately after the casluth in bars 51 and 58. Would that work?
  3. I have added another bee’s plait at the start of bar 65, weighing down that bar with ornamentation to increase the sense of culmination and disrupt the pattern irretrievably.

Barrludh Fosgailte Singling & Doubling (cycles V-VI)

In the revised score, I have notated a rhythm in 5 that would, I think, help to lift the internal timing of each beat by avoiding the squareness of two equal subdivisions. In the recording, the ‘ghost’ note at the end of the barrludh fosgailte divides the beat equally in half and the triplet doesn’t have a solid place in the rhythmic framework - instead it is a floating prefix, the result of which is that it sometimes gets crushed.

To avoid these two issues - the squareness and the crushing - I’d recommend raising the status of the triplet, giving it independent metrical value as follows: subdivide each beat into five (1-2-3-4-5), start the triplet on 3 and place the ghost on 4. Perhaps use the 5 fingers of your bass hand as a metronome, tapping the soundbox, to practise fitting the barrludh fosgailte into this rhythmic framework, playing on 3 and damping on 4. The melody notes will come on 1 and 5.

Would you be able to slow down the little streams, opening them out and relaxing into the phrase endings? In the Singling, we want that ‘Urlar’ feeling to stay with us, intermittently. As well as playing the streams slower, you could lean on the first note if that took your fancy.

10:35. You could make more of this augmented 4th, adding time.

11:58. Glorious sruth mòr!

I love your timing from note to note in the Doubling. This is nuanced and expressive - playing of the highest order. Donald MacPherson would be delighted! He had no time for wooden, mechanical playing. Just listen to his Doublings on A Living Legend - even his Crunnludh a Mach bursts with musicality as well as being technically flawless. Every grace note is palpable, with artistic intelligence in the internal timing of his finger movements, opening out or closing up.

This is an awe-inspiring result, Bill - the most satisfying outcome of my research to date. Thank you!

A few questions

Bar 49. Should I resolve the final melody note with a short plait (C-D)? It seems so bare without something! It’s what we do in cycle II, bar 24. This is also a question for the same point in the Urlar, bar 5.

If you change it in the Urlar, then you should change it every time (bars 2, 5, 7, 11, and twice in bar 13). The same principle applies in cycles II and III - the ending of bar 19 is carried through cycle II, and the ending of bar 43 is carried through cycle III. We have signalled the end of the first half of each cycle with a heavier sruth on the penultimate note of the 2nd time bar. In the Urlar, we have a double sruth beag instead of a single sruth beag; in cycle III, a sruth beag instead of a forked choke. We could do something similar in cycle II - perhaps a rapid stream in bar 19 and a heavy stream (leaning on the first note) in bar 23 - but that’s the only change I’d make.

Fixing such small expressive details in notation is perhaps taking us away from what we’re after. Each rendition could be different and I’m sure would have been across the lifetime of a player like Ruaidhri Dall Mac Mhuirich (c. 1656 - 1714).

Bar 63, lower hand. Instead of playing A and then A, how about A then G, as we do in bar 14 of the Urlar? I know G isn’t in the melody, but this is a very expressive moment.

Hmm. That would weaken it’s impact in the Urlar. We already hear the G four times as we also have it in cycle II (at 4:31). Repeating it in cycle 3 would mean hearing it five times (at 2:18, 4:31, 5:57, 8:23 and 14:26). I’d prefer to anticipate its removal in the Barrludh Fosgailte cycles and, in fact, I recommend we go in the opposite direction. Make it unique to the Urlar: remove the G from cycle 2 (bar 37) so we hear it three times only (at 2:18, 8:23 and 14:26). I believe that that would produce a more powerful experience, particularly on repeat listening. We are culturally habituated to a fast fix and many pitches; here, reward lies in restraint.

Bar 69, little stream to melody D. How about AFED rather than GFED? This would be better for damping, just stopping the E and allowing A, F and D to continue ringing. Should we be consistent with this? It happens quite a bit, as in the last bar of cycle II, bar 47, etc.

Yes, please change them all - the fewer Gs the better. The frisson of its appearance at the end of the Urlar is heightened by its absence elsewhere.

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Modern Traditional Piper

Future of Pibroch - Performance

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The important thing is not what you sound like. It’s what you want to sound like.

—Arnold Jacobs
Principal Tuba, Chicago Symphony

As musicians, we need a clear concept of what it is we are going to play. Without it, technique is meaningless - it is exercise for no purpose at all. Practicing itself becomes a directionless enterprise, time spent going musically nowhere.

We can certainly use recordings of old masters to provide us with examples to follow. But unless you make the music something personal to you, you are not contributing to the art.

Remember: you are a creative artist. You are someone who has tasked themselves with the responsibility of sharing music, of communicating something to others.

You can do it in completely predictable ways: in which case, audiences will get bored. The brain, when listening to music, spends an awful amount of time and energy trying to anticipate what is going to come next. If you fulfill its predictions, if you play predictably, the mind gets bored.

But if you bring something new, something unique, something unexpected, the brain is firing up, hoping to understand what is happening, anticipating, re-anticipating, engaging, and the audience is alive with anticipation.

So, how can you personalize your performance? There are many techniques. Here are a few inspired by Dr. Kageyama’s work on peak musical performance:

  • As we have been told over and over, sing the music. Canntaireachd is part of our historical legacy. It was the sole means by which the musical tradition was handed down. Embrace the practice of singing your tune: you do not need to memorize the canntaireachd of Gesto or Campbell. Make up your vocables. The point isn’t consistency - it is immersing yourself into the music, internalizing it, literally embodying it. (Check out this site, with Glenn Gould and practicing.)
  • Conceive of performing the music as you would telling a story: while you can actually think of a tune and its motions in terms of narration you want to communicate, that’s not necessarily what I’m suggesting. When you tell someone a story, what happens? Do you concern yourself with each sentence, pick over every word, worry about grammar and structure and syntax? Or do you just go for it? Do you fret about enunciation, or do you simply bring the audience along for the ride, a beginning > middle > end, knowing full well where you are about to take them?
  • Tell the story. Actually play your music with a purpose, with a direction. Analyze every piece. Decide what each section is meant to express. Bring the pieces together into a coherent Gestalt, full of intent and purpose.
  • Bring surprise and delight to the audience: pibroch, in particular, is susceptible to formulaicism - everyone knows how the motions are going to proceed. But the primary sources reveal interesting alternatives: urlar returns, for example, create a whole new experience of the music. New settings may bring new and unexpected insights. Pulsing and expression can be pushed and pulled to bring out new dimensions to the music. Exploring the implications of genres and their impact on tempo would certainly give audiences something new to consider (or even simply respecting the “Adagio” or “Lively” tempos written in the primary sources).
  • Experiment and explore when you practice: take advantage of the opportunity to do new and different things. Record yourself and see what works. Much of what you do may sound ridiculous or way outside of the modern idiom’s expectations. But the time you have spent playing with options is time you are using to really learn the music and bring it into a whole, into something that you make comfortable and familiar and special to you.

Learn how to tell the story of your music . (Every time he says “classical”, think “pibroch”…)

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Interviews

Interview with Alan Forbes (Part 1)

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Alan Forbes is Secretary of the Music Committee of the Piobaireachd Society, Convener of the Northern Meeting piping competitions and a director of the National Piping Center. He has played the pipes since he was seven, and has been an adjudicator for over 35 years.

JDH — What do you love about pibroch?

AF — I think there’s lots of things to love about pibroch.

I love piping, in general. I took to immediately. The first time I heard bagpipes as a small boy, I immediately wanted to become a piper. I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

I knew nothing about pibroch until I was 17 or 18 years old. At that point I went for some lessons to an old piper who lived in a small town I was brought up in and he was a very old man at that time. He was in the First World War. I don’t really know who he learned pibroch from, because he died not long after. But he infected me with enthusiasm for it.

I couldn’t believe I could ever play a crunluath. They look so complicated! But they sounded so good. And this old man took me through Books 5 and 7 of the Piobarieachd Society’s collection (that’s all I could afford at the time) and infected me with enthusiasm with what are basically, I think, quite simple melodies. Simple, but very beautiful melodies, developed through this succession of variations which get more and more complicated.

So, I like the lovely simplicity of the melodies, the impressiveness of the technique as well, and I just became an enthusiast.

JDH — Do you hear echoes of an earlier era? These tunes are remnants of another time and place.

AF — I think they are. I think that’s almost been proven in that, despite people’s attempts to compose pibroch, they can’t really replicate the feel of the ancient tunes.

There are some wonderful new tunes. I have to say: the evolution of pibroch is interesting and well and continues to the present day.

But none of these composers can really evoke the same sort of feeling you get from the ancient tunes.

There’s a big change of state, or something which just cannot be replicated, but which we are very lucky to have.

JDH — The thing that appeals to me about pibroch, having come from a classical music background, is that the theme and variation structure is universal. It connects all musical forms across geography and history.

AF — Yes it does.

JDH — That, and the easy format and expression that gave the performer a chance to bring his own interpretive style. That came across in the first album I ever bought, one by Donald MacPherson. It reminded me of an almost jazz-like improvisational quality, a freedom and musicality that was very appealing.

AF _ I think that’s a good way to express it. And I think Donald MacPherson was an absolute master at bringing his own expression into the tunes, as well. Very difficult to replicate actually.

JDH — You are deeply involved in pibroch. What excites you and keeps you involved? What hooks you in and doesn’t let you go?

AF — Basically, the love of the music in the first place. No doubt about that at all.

And…you learn more about it all the time. There’s a huge amount to learn and understand about it that just goes on and on.

I’m very friendly with Roderick Cannon. He and I discuss things on the phone time after time. There’s a huge amount in Roderick’s brain to tease out!

And interesting discussions on the evolution of pibroch are a part of it.

But the basic thing that keeps me hooked, though, is hearing something that is really good playing these tunes on the bagpipes.

One of the things I do, is I’m one of the conveners of the Northern Meeting piping competitions. And it’s great to do that, because you’r in contact all of the time with people who are the best modern exponents of the music. To hear them play that and interpreting it, is just wonderful.

JDH — You’re in the cat-bird seat, aren’t you? These people come and play, and to be surrounded by the quality has got be a very exciting thing.

AF — The same is true of the Music Committee of the Piobaireachd Society. The people who are on that (Andrew Wright, Jack Taylor, Malcolm MacRae) - all have very interesting views on pibroch, and it is something that you can just relax into and enjoy discussing with them.

JDH — What topics pop up when you chat? Are they about music? Are they about interpretation? What causes excitement and brings you together?

AF — One of the principle reasons for the Music Committee is choosing set tunes for the big competitions. And that is always an interesting challenge, in the sense that we have a number of principles upon which we operate. These include: Setting appropriate tunes for appropriate levels within the competition structure, and within that, setting tunes that are broadly well balanced but nevertheless provide a challenge to the pipers, but also provide interesting listening for judges and audiences, which is a very important aspect.

We’ve tried over the years to vary our approach to some extent, to expand it, to see how they work and how they work with the public and competitors themselves.

For example, we set modern tunes a few years ago. And we set tunes which were from Donald MacDonald settings, and from McArthur-McGregor settings. We set small tunes at one time, set them in pairs.

All was done just to see how people liked it.

So we’ve tried a whole range of things just to see what works and doesn’t work.

Oddly enough, what seems to work is the very tradition tunes set in a very traditional way. There is a reluctance to take on all the settings and different interpretations of tunes. And I think it’s partly because we are operating within a competitive system. And, well, the pipers themselves have broader interest than the music: when they are playing in a competition, they are in it to win a prize. And to some extent, they tend to second guess what the judges will approve of.

So it’s quite difficult to get pipers, and indeed judges, I suppose, to think outside of the box of how tunes are played nowadays. When we set these different types of tunes in the past, the kind of comments we get back are, “It would be nice to hear these in recitals and, from time to time, as curiosities, but for the competitions, keep the traditional settings of the tunes.”

I’m not convinced about that, though…

Nevertheless, I think that is a feature and function of the competition.

JDH — You absolutely confirm every discussion we’ve had on the site with competitors. The competitors are the most conservative group of pibroch players that we encounter.

New competitors, new generation of pibroch players are interested in the other settings, but as they go through their system, the judges shape their expectations and eventually the competitors fall into line.

AF — And, of course, most of the judges are or were competitors themselves. So they’ve evolved in that same sort of environment. So, I think, in many cases, despite wishing to be open minded about it, they tend to be conservative as well.

JDH — In my experience, the response by judges to presenting a tune based on primary source manuscripts is one of two extremes: it is either, “Wow, this is interesting!” or “Get off the boards!”

It can be tough being a determined pibroch competitor wanting to explore these settings.

AF — I know that when we set the Donald MacDonald and McArthur-McGregor tunes a few years ago, we also ran judges seminars. (We have two seminars a year in order to discuss the Set Tunes.) We had the most difficult discussions we’ve ever had in discussing these tunes. Because, quite rightly, competitors wanted to know what the rules were: do you have to play a redundant low A, or can you do a conventional crunluath? What are the limits here? It became really quite difficult to pin down precise rules.

But, of course, we NOT to be too prescriptive. That’s the thing.

But within the competition system, people want you to be prescriptive.

JDH — It’s like any other competition environment: if the rules are too open, you feel like someone is going to take advantage of the situation.

It’s hard to get the competitors to be courageous.

AF — It is hard, and I can perfectly understand that.

For example, I judge a bit myself. And there are certain tunes which I’ve played for years and years and which I like very much indeed and I’ve decided how I would like to hear them played. So, by definition I’m biased. So when someone comes along and plays them differently, I’m not too sure about it.

If someone comes along and plays a tune I’m not familiar with at all, they can do anything they like with it.

JDH — Isn’t that harder to judge, though?

AF — I think is some ways it’s easier to judge, because you are judging without any baggage whatsoever.

Now, of course, most tunes, over the years of judging and listening, you get to know most of the tunes. It’s difficult coming up with anything new or different.

JDH — It’s frighteningly small, the number of tunes we have. Pre-1840, there are only 312 or 313 tunes.

Occasionally I look at Campbell Canntaireachd and when I come across a tune whose sole existence is due only to him having captured it in this unique form of notation, I think: what an amazing stroke of luck. But for this one hand-written manuscript, itself nearly forgotten and misplaced, this tune would have been lost forever.

It’s precious, these older materials.

Which is my motivation to bring them to light. The Highland Societies did such a remarkable job undertaking a kind of a field anthropological study to save what they could of the remnants of this art form. But canonization was always going to take place: people just like cleaning up messes, particularly on subjects that are important to them.

But the New Secondary Orality of the Internet age has and will allow several things to take place:

It lets everybody with a connected device have easy access to materials that had otherwise been sequestered away in libraries.

It also relieves the caretakers of tradition from the burden that they have carried out of the fear of the loss of that tradition. Now that audio/visual recordings are ubiquitous and digitally eternal, they no longer have to worry that their tradition will be forgotten. The obligation to retain a tradition at all costs has been lifted by the new digital world.

So, it seems to me that we can begin again exploring the old materials, learn from them, bring them into the present, explore them not as museum artifacts, but to bring them alive into the future.

AF — That’s interesting. I don’t doubt that sound recording has made a huge difference in understanding how other people have played in the past. Everything the Internet offers broadens the scope hugely.

But I’m not quite clear about what you’re saying here. Are you saying that the traditional way of playing pibroch, as it’s seen at the moment, will disappear? Or are you saying that because it is so widely available, it will become engrained and will become the way to do it?

JDH — I think what I’m saying was that there was a fundamental motivating factor at work that brought people to capture pibroch to begin with, standardize pibroch, and then reinforce pibroch interpretation in a particular fashion, out of the fear that, something would otherwise would have been lost.

I am saying that this fear, as a context for maintaining a kind of orthodoxy of interpretation, is now gone. There is no fear of loss.

AF — But what is that might have been lost? Because the way that pibroch is played nowadays probably became thoroughly established really around the beginning of the 20th century. So, it’s not the ancient tradition. We can’t get at that. We’ve got ideas, and the research that you and other people do are very helpful in throwing up possibilities.

But what we are talking about losing, really, is something only established about 100 years ago.

JDH — It’s interesting that in the competition system and for the competitors, that’s the de facto standard by which to judge pibroch performance.

I’m arguing: we may wish to discuss this as a standard, whether it is a good one or not (and it may very well be), but the reason this is happening even today is because it came out of context of a fear that something was going to be lost.

And I don’t believe anything, from now on, will ever be lost again.

So, what are we losing by trying something else?

AF — I think that’s an interesting idea, but the thing that might set (what we do today) in stone is the competition system itself. Unless we get away from this approach that says that you can’t try anything different, because it will not be acceptable in the context of the competition, you will need some other outlet for it, some other way to get people playing with a more open mind and more experimentally than they do in competitions.

Much more to follow…

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