Jointly written by David Hester & Barnaby Brown
For professional Highland bagpipers, the highest recognized achievement is currently attained in the competition environment. This fact often passes by unnoticed and unchallenged.
While this is not unique (after all, it is the same with athletes), it is a bit odd for musicians. Generally, competition success for musical artists is a stepping stone to paid work - engagements, commissions, recording projects, broadcasts - and these things are more highly valued than winning the competition.
Winners of the International Tchaikovsky Competition go on to touring and recording opportunities and the Avery Fischer career grants and prizes provide a major boost for instrumentalists who make performance their livelihood. Even X-factor winners are not expected to compete once they have won, but are provided opportunities to develop singing careers.
Not so with piping careers. There is no similar expectation. Although many top competitive pipers give recitals, instruct and record, there is no expectation for them to do so. Our competitions either lead to more competitions or are ends in and of themselves.
That wasn’t always the case. After a long pre-history with tales of competitions and fairy assistance, or pipers refusing to compete with MacCrimmon out of respect, the modern-era competitions began in 1781 with a rule that previous winners were barred. As in silver and gold medal competitions today, the top prize carried the winer to the next stage. In the 1780s, piping competitions were fundamentally motivated by a demand for pipers in the British Army, one that outstripped supply. On top of this, the competitions became showcase events for pipers to obtain professional positions with the landed gentry. But note, elite pipers post-1746 were low-caste servants. They were no longer the high-caste gentlemen they had been in the 1600s, people of a social standing that we would associate today with a university degree and a secure, full-time career path.
Fortunately, these things are changing. The Alt Pibroch Club would therefore like to initiate (or join in on) serious conversations contemplating what lies beyond winning the Clasp at Inverness or the Senior Piobaireachd at Oban. How can we move in small increments towards a scenario where a professional career as a big-game musician is the ultimate prize? Towards a career that allows you to pay the mortgage and support a family, i.e. ‘professional’ in the mainstream sense, rather than the piping sense (which in a good year might bring in $8,000 if you are lucky).
This vision - that competition winners can look forward to musical careers beyond the competition environment - is perhaps intimately connected with the overall aim of the Alt Pibroch Club. Currently, this is expressed on our About page as:
to expand contemporary pibroch interpretation
We have identified three goals in delivering that mission, the first of which is:
- To provide a safe space which nurtures experimentation and the confidence to play (and to reward) alternative settings and styles, encouraging pluralism in mainstream pibroch performance.
The question is, which is the dog and which is the tail - pluralism of interpretation, or commanding a wider audience? Or are these complementary aspects of the same thing, yin and yang?
We at the Alt Pibroch Club are contemplating an expansion of the mission and goals stated on our About page by considering the ways in which we may help develop career paths that currently lie beyond pibroch players’ horizons.
This would mean focusing on audience building - possibly learning a thing or two from what symphony orchestras and opera houses do in order to build their audiences and attract funding and patronage in contemporary society.
The Alt Pibroch Club is ready to forge partnerships that can make a difference. This is as much about transforming mindsets outside piping as within piping and can’t happen overnight. Things have been moving steadily in promising directions, however, and we believe the momentum exists now to do something exciting to every piper’s benefit. This is not about changing the game. Rather, it is about removing the glass ceiling that currently prevents pibroch players from climbing higher, commanding an international career like any other musician.
Here are some ideas to get the conversations started:
- We propose the formation of a steering group composed of experienced pipers and piping event organisers, experienced booking agents and promoters, prestigious venues, broadcasters and a recording label, in order to attract a consortium of patrons and sponsors who are excited by this idea.
- We propose a fact-finding mission that will observe and reflect on what can be learned from big-time international competitions outside piping.
- We propose consideration of the development of positive incentives or explicit assessment criteria to reward pipers who engage the audience and go the extra mile, rising above safe, stereotypical interpretations and repertoire. This development need not take place within the competition environment, but instead can take place within a complementary series of showcases for professional and amateur performers.
- We propose the above-mentioned series include the public performances also include Gaelic harp, fiddle and vocal music (with supertitle translations), perhaps also traditional story-telling, in order to re-integrate piping with its rich and fascinating cultural heritage and perhaps in the process make it more digestible for the young and the uninitiated.
- We propose exploring and understanding the requirements to host such performances at major international venues - New York, Vancouver, Sydney, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and London.
- We propose determining which of the legal structures out there - existing or to-be-created - would be best suited to turn this dream into reality.
- Finally, we propose to partner with major pipe band associations and piobaireachd societies to help develop channels of professional development, including but not limited to, the recital series mentioned, in order to help elite performers break through the glass ceiling and develop rich and rewarding professional opportunities.
This is our blue-sky thinking. It is not something that can be contemplated alone! But we’re ready to be part of a bigger process and believe it is attainable and sustainable.
We wish to solicit your feedback and support.
A noble vision! The parallels drawn with other musical instruments are inspiring, and the aims of audience - building and incentive creation deserve to be supported.
However, there are cultural and political aspects to the history of piping outlined above which need to be highlighted and considered.
This is because the musical world to which piping aspires to join has rather different historical roots to ours. Key to understanding this are the references above to the 1780’s competitions aims: to supply pipers to the British Army and to the landed gentry - but with the difference that they were ‘low-caste servants’, ‘no longer the high-caste gentlemen’.
The reason for this shift is not mentioned. Why not? It is of vital importance to have a clear and accurate picture of the social and historical background at this point, and not to make assumptions which ignore it.
A case in point here, although apparently not connected with piping or indeed music at all, is the Civil Rights Movement in the USA during the sixties. This was about ‘low-caste people’ who saw themselves as second-class citizens trying to claim what was rightfully theirs. In Northern Ireland, there existed a similar set of people who thought they might use the same tactic, of marches from town to town to draw attention to their plight and sympathy for the righteousness of their cause.
The result was a spiral of violence which grew into ‘The Troubles’, necessitating occupation by the British Army, internment of activists, and heightened hostilities which still simmer dangerously. It is still taboo to discuss the roots of this tragic episode, and one might well conclude that this website is not the place even to allude to such deeply political matters.
But the ‘Glass Ceiling’ has the same origin: conquest and suppression of Gaeldom by its nemesis - the Anglo-Norman society which developed in Britain after the Roman conquest, first with the Anglo-Saxon occupation and then, with heightened momentum, with the Norman conquest of 1066.
What happened in Ireland also took place in Scotland, concluding in 1746. In both cases, cultural extinction was the stated aim of those who had the upper hand.
But an important difference emerged: the poems of Ossian, as translated by James MacPherson in 1760, created the romantic notion that the suppressed indigenous ‘savages’ were in fact diamonds in the rough, ‘noble savages’ - and this idea was vastly expanded by Sir Walter Scott, who created a fantasy world through his historical novels, especially ‘Waverley’, which is set in the 1746 period.
The King, George IV, was so entranced by this vision that he came to Scotland to see for himself the real thing. Unfortunately, it had, like the Oysters who accompanied the Walrus and the Carpenter in ‘Alice in Wonderland’, disappeared, eaten by them as they strolled along the beach. (That was the function of enlisting pipers in the Army - part of the process of elimination).
Seizing the opportunity, Scott re-invented the old Highland Society - which, it must be emphasized, was not part of the very different social order of the rest of Scotland - by pretending that everyone was a highlander, wore clan tartans, and loved bagpipe music. The King ate this up; he was delighted, captivated.
His delight extended to his successor, Queen Victoria, and her German husband, Albert, who also loved hunting. They decided to live the dream by moving to the Highlands amongst the descendants of these ‘Noble Savages’ and imitate the imagined life-style there, as depicted by Scott.
And thus began a process which led to piping as we know it today.
The parallel with other musicians of the European tradition is not apt, because they were patronized by the super-rich aristocracy who vied with one another to have the best - composers such as Handel and Mozart being examples - but the bagpipe had never made it in these circles, remaining a peasant instrument throughout Europe.
The Highland Aristocracy had similar musical tastes, only it was the native Gaelic traditions of the clarsach, the pipes, and the fiddle which they favoured. The two traditions did not mix; the Anglo-Norman taste rejected that of the Gaels, and that is, I suspect, the nature of the ‘Glass Ceiling’. The new aristocracy which replaced the old in The Highlands were merely pretending to be ‘Noble Savages’ - a form of social ‘slumming’ which can be traced back as far as Rome, in which the Elite dress up like peasants or shepherds for a holiday.
Now, the situation is that piping seeks to imitate the musical tradition of the old European aristocratic circles (today much broadened and with a democratic basis). It is a massive and ambitious education program, in the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott - to convert the world to the tastes of the old Gaels, now a nearly vanished people. Good luck.
I hate to rain on the parade but the best income for pipers, in New Zealand anyway, is getting your name out to funeral directors and playing at funerals. A lot of spin-off gigs (weddings etc) also comes from this activity.
While I find the political and cultural history enlightening, ultimately I can’t say I find it something that compels me to rethink.
Pipers who are serious musicians deserve the opportunity to develop their music in a context of financial support that would allow them to develop unfettered as musicians.
They could be Scottish or Gaelic pipers, or they could be from anywhere else in the world. Doesn’t matter. And I think that is the rub: piping has moved out of the Highlands and into the rest of the world. With it, opportunities arise, and among those opportunities should include the chance for pipers to grow and develop a professional track for themselves.
“…piping has moved out of the Highlands…”
Why, then, does the picture at the top of this page focus on kilts, the archetypal form of Highland dress? Why do bands, apart from a few outliers, wear it? Why do Scottish festivals where piping is enjoyed always encourage the wearing of tartans?
If distancing pibroch from the Highlands is a goal, then should not this uniform also be ditched, and pipers dress as do the classical musicians seen as role models?
You mention classical music as a model for how to promote events, but we should think more about this plurality of approaches. I’m thinking we could take improvisational pibroch to a jazz festival. Dirtier, folkier styles at trad events or pub events. Strict historical interpretations at the major early music festivals (no-one thinks Bach is of marginal, regional interest as a German composer…)
As a new piper learning about the history and the finesse of Pibroch in the piping world it seems to me that you have a very aspiring goal. However the world of piping is so multi faceted that you may have more to do than the goal stated initially. I love the history and the idea of the classical side of pipes but with all the different types of people and what they feel is important you may never actually get a consensus of what the piping world wants to be. Here in America the Scottish festivals promote bands, solo and pibroch. They also seem to look down there noses at those who have made some sort of fame in piping unless it is resembles what they do at the festivals. I like the pipes and while I am new to the world of piping I have enjoyed all sorts of piping, festival, showbiz, or classical all have merit and ability that can promote the world of piping. Why limit the field to just the scholastic look of the piping world. Promote Historical, Classical, Festival and any other form that promotes the ability to learn of piping. As a person who started when I was 60 because it was something that I have always wanted to do I have seen many instructors who teach by repetition or route memory of the basics. There are a few that want to reach anyone willing to learn and look at getting them on the pipes as soon as possible. I can tell you that if I had to wait 4 or 5+ years to pick up the instrument I can tell you I would have just chucked the idea in the garbage. The same goes for examining the world of pipers and see who has what can be seen as abilities and give yourselves an open minded group to decide what you are looking to promote. It sounds like we are initially talking about just Pibroch but all things considered we need more pipers to be considered a growing community of musicians. I hate some of my friends attitudes about piping as they think only of the worst of us, almost as though they were listening to a beginner on the violin. There are a lot of mistakes but once learned and mastered it is a beautiful instrument and so can be the idea of the pipes. Please consider all types in your plan.
At the moment, this is a matter of working against scope creep. As a site dedicated to pibroch, we will choose to focus upon it. When successes occur and momentum takes hold, we may consider other options.
That said, much of what we are doing on the roadmap will, by necessity, require us to consider environments and contexts in which other types of piping and music are performed.
So - no closed doors. Just choosing to open certain ones for the moment.