[The title of this series is admittedly provocative, but also tongue-in-cheek. After all the times other people have told me, ‘you are playing it wrong’, I thought it would be fun to turn the tables a bit. ]

So,

think you know how Cholla Mo Rùin (PS 201 - The Piper’s Warning to His Master) is supposed to go?

Perhaps you think something like this:

Really good, right? I mean: 1) Fay Henderson, and 2) Donald MacDonald version. Very well done, and stuff you don’t get to hear very often. We really should encourage this type of performance, and not just at specialized Quaichs - we should hear them everywhere!

You can a lot of excellent versions on the Internet of this great tune. (Check out Jack Lee’s version here, for example.)

But now, just listen to Mary Morrison sing it at the website Tobar an Dualchais

Suddenly, the tune takes on certain urgency, doesn’t it?

Makes one ponder the possibilities for exploration. Grab a copy and try to play it at her speed, with her urgency. It’s a very different, and very exciting experience.

The more time spent with these primary sources, the information subtly pops out at you.

Case in point: there is some room for discussion regarding the interpretation of cadences. We looked at them several times before (here, here, here, here, and here). From our perspective here at the Club, they represent extremely fluid and flexible embellishments that can be interpreted by the performer in ways allowing for a large range of interpretive expression: from quick, to tripping, to elongated and held.

Of course, others have long argued that the way the cadence is performed today also has a very long history. This is clearly true, as we can see from numerous sources: certainly Angus MacKay very much approved of the held-E, standardizing it in his scores as a the dominant interpretive expression for a cadence. Check out these crahinin examples:

But we also see held cadences in Peter Reid:

and even the anonymous transcriber of the Hannay-MacAuslan collection:

The question is: how frequently was this the case? If all we can was Angus MacKay’s writing, one would be inclined to assume this was very much the dominant interpretive form.

But turning to other scores, it is not so clear. Donald MacDonald likes his cadence runs. His tunes are full of them:

Hannay-MacAuslan and Peter Reid do as well.

But it is unclear whether their notation was literal when it indicates even tempo runs, or whether there was already an idiomatic presumption regarding it’s “actual” performative style.

In the absence of evidence one way or the other, no one perspective could definitively state their case, but neither could they be disproven.

Until now:

This is from Donald MacDonald’s manuscript. Note the fermata under the middle E of the second cadence.

It appears that this mark is original to the manuscript (not a later emendation). It therefore also appears that the transcriber was fully capable of and willing to capture this particular style of expression when he desired to do so - as evidence here.

It is also therefore possible to conclude: in the absence of a fermata (or indication in the staff itself), the E was not intended to be held.

There was no assumption of an “idiomatic” interpretation of the run - if the E were meant to be held, it would have been indicated as such.

And it was.

Clearly.

Some additional thoughts for pondering:

1. This confirms the validity of the approach made here at the Alt Pibroch Club: that these manuscripts be taken as empirical evidence of specific stylistic choices of performers as captured by the transcribers.
2. These transcribers were consummate musicians and musical theorists fully capable of retaining the quality of the performance they knew and heard. There is no empirical reason to doubt their scores.
3. The insistence that notation cannot capture the living expression of musical performance may be true, but that only means it is up to the performer to provide the interpretation using all the tools at her disposal (rubato, expression).
4. If there is any question about the accuracy of a score, that may be only due to the canonization and interpretive standardization processes of the last century, in particular. The plethora of interpretive options captured in the original scores themselves suggest remarkable differences, and the question of their accuracy only comes from our own desire to make them conform to our standards.

It appears that if Donald MacDonald wanted to cadence run to be a held-E cadence, he would have done (and in fact did) so.