JDH - The question I wanted to ask you about the tunes you are working on currently for your recording was, what is the story you are trying to tell? What is the intention behind the interpretive decisions you are making, and how does that intention shape the particular approach you are taking, whether line by line or motion by motion?
BB - Well, speaking for myself (and I think it is a personal thing), the intention can be quite abstract. It does not necessarily have people and characters and “real world” images. It could do: you could have a story going on in your head with images, like a film story board. You could have that.
Thus far in my musical life, however, I haven’t done too much of that. I’ve been very aware of it as a possibility: I know that Iranian musicians (and I believe many Middle Eastern musicians) follow a text while they are performing an instrumental solo. They are thinking through the lines of a poem and that serves to give structure, a certain expressive dynamism, a vivid imagination that breathes spirit into the music. It gives it colour and gets the brain working.
But it’s not the only way. Sometimes, I’m very focused on aspects of sound quality - its palpable, titillating effects. I’m interested in texture and I love small changes, subtle differences. My ear is listening to the sound of the instrument and the tiniest of things. It’s all about one’s level of magnification, I suppose.
If you go for a storyline, you are probably getting a much bigger picture. You’re standing back from the canvas and you’re grasping a broader sense.
JDH - That’s something I would ask you to contemplate. From my own personal experience, if I can’t be succinct about the intention, then I don’t really know what I am communicating.
It’s a little bit like learning something new: I find that when someone is starting out in a new discipline, they talk about it all the time, in great detail. As though they are processing things through. At some stage, though, that processing leads to a point where the student can step back and summarize, quite clearly, the most significant aspects of the discipline or argument.
The more familiar you are with something, the easier it is to describe it.
I think that’s important to do in music. I think, any music you play you should be able to say, “I intended to communicate this…” and lay it out, clearly and succinctly. And if you can’t do that, you haven’t really worked it out.
BB - I agree with you that doing so would be very helpful. Having worked with a lot of people, I would say it isn’t the only way to do it. I think with some people who are wonderful musicians, it just naturally pours out of them. They are not analytical about it, it’s just not what they do.
JDH - Yeah, but they ought to. I think my point is they should be reflective and know what they are trying to say.
BB - But what about people who are not analytical? What about people who are just very naturally expressive and have done it since childhood and they don’t have to think about it? You get people like that, people who have not had to work hard at something, who just do it naturally and it is totally their subconscious mind that governs what they are doing. You ask them to think about and it all goes to pot.
JDH - That’s just because they haven’t thought about it.
I think the next stage in a musician’s development isn’t to describe how they’ve done it, but what they are trying to do. I honestly think that’s a very important step for any artist.
BB - Do you know what? I disagree. I don’t think the ability to articulate something is essential. Sometimes, for people who struggling, who are learning, it can help hugely to be articulating things, to make the interior world exterior, to articulate the unconscious. But in a lot of societies and musical cultures, the way it flows best is when it is completely subconscious, when the conscious mind is not interfering. And that’s because they’ve been immersed in it since birth, they’ve been hearing it all their lives and it just comes naturally.
For example, reading a story aloud with expression, whether reading from the bible or a children’s story: if this is something you had little experience of before the age of 14, say, then you have to be taught how to read expressively. But if you’ve been read to in an expressive way since - well, since you were in the womb, then you won’t have to be taught that skill.
Now, I think there’s an analogy with music learning, with being expressive when performing a piece of music: if the way that bit of music goes has been in your experience from birth, then expressing it well doesn’t depend on your ability to articulate what you are doing consciously.
If you are an adult learner, then yes. But I don’t think it is the only path. I think it is an essential path for people who start late, for whom expression doesn’t come naturally.
JDH - Well, I would suggest that the population you just mentioned, the population who have grown into and naturalized pibroch (particularly what we see in the earliest manuscripts and their reflection of living music and variability), is very tiny.
BB - Well, yes. It’s extinct. Completely extinct.
JDH - So, I hear what you are saying, but since all of us are coming to this as foreigners, to some extent it becomes necessary and incumbent upon us to be more “analytical” and intentional.
BB - That’s precisely the issue. I’ve been trying to convey pibroch’s time-tested idioms of musical expression to Bill Taylor and Clare Salaman, and they are each top of the game as instrumentalists, but they don’t have the pibroch cultural background. It’s a foreign world to them.
The more subtle nuances, the craft of expression that is not visible on the page, are things I’ve had to articulate, draw out for them. And the things I find myself saying, the metaphors I’m using and the images that are helping them to become fluent, native speakers of pibroch, have been quite illuminating. And maybe it would help to add some bigger picture.
JDH - It’s a matter of intentionality. Music is a form of communication: what are you communicating? Certainly music has it’s own method of communication, but I find sometimes in the process of learning that if I can say, “I’m really trying to communicate to this…”, it provides some sort of framework and guidance.
Jori thinks what I’m suggesting is something a bit like Stanislovksi’s method acting: the actor creates a story, a background, a history of the character, none of which will necessarily ever be known or shared by the audience. But that background shapes the motivations and choices of the actor.
The same thing can be done with music: have something in mind to help shape your choices.
BB - So basically your mind is not vacant. It has some sort of intention. And I think there is a lot of vacuous playing, you are quite right.
So, the capacity to fill every note, every bar, phrase and cycle with some intention, and to have some sort of intention that expands the piece…
JDH - You always talk about pibroch as a journey.
BB - Yes! Multiple journeys, because every time you come back to the Ground, you see the Ground (your “home”) in a new light. So, there is a journey from Ground to Ground; repeated journeys.
JDH - That’s a very powerful metaphor and can be extended to ask: what kind of journey are we making? A sad journey? A cheerful journey? A militant journey?
And I’m finding that being able to answer those questions gives me a framework within which I know what I’m doing and I step up and play.
BB - I agree. I think it’s hugely helpful. But I don’t think it has to be one image. You could change the image, the intentionality through a performance, from performance to performance.
JDH - But it is something other than vacuous playing, something other than finger exercises.
It’s funny, but I feel as though I can hear a difference. My ears perk up when I hear something that has intention behind it. Whereas so many other performances sound as though all they are saying to themselves is, “Just play this correctly. Just play this to win.” The differences in these intentions are the differences in the depth of the musicality brought to and expressed in the piece.
BB - I think it’s a beautiful and powerful image to be working with. And in fact it resonates very closely with something I saw when I was working with Donald MacPherson while recording his CD, A Living Legend. He would hear every little thing, and brought intelligence and thought to every sound: for example, the speed with which specific finger movements would be opened out or closed up, or a new idea eased in. These little things are where the intentionality comes out. And, if we don’t have an intention in mind, they all come out the same. It’s mechanical and unmusical.
So, what we are talking about here is bringing music to life, bringing a human quality, something living and breathing. And that can be prone to swings, to moods and imagination and ideas and people being different from one another.
This was discussed well over a month ago, and during the interval I’ve come to believe it is the most important step toward musicality that a pibroch performer can take. Yes, we can talk about technique. We can uncover old movements, play urlar refrains, consider the multiple genres. We can integrate new approaches to cadences and expression. But all of those are pure technique. A technique is only as musical as the intention behind it.
We need an Inner Ear to guide our playing. We also need enough thoughtful, careful reflection to be able to know, succinctly, what exactly it is about our interpretation that we hope to communicate through our decisions.
Regardless of the musical genre or instrument, great music is played with soul. The great Motown and jazz bassist, James Jamerson said it best: “play what you feel, and feel what you play.”
Many pibroch players feel the titles of tunes were intended to convey intention; but as one studies these and discovers how they vary from collection to collection, and over time, and in some cases are plainly garbled or confused, some reflection may be required.
One way forward is to consider tunes which have words associated with them, or are based on words.
‘Togail nam Bo’ (lifting the cattle; ie, cattle - rustling) is one such. The motifs of the urlar reflect the rhythm of these syllables, almost as if one is playing the words. It has been observed that, in musical traditions such as Blues and Jazz, with their African roots, instrumental technique often imitates vocal effects. In Gaelic tradition, it was felt the pipes could, on occasion, ‘speak’ - an idea embodied in the music associated with ‘The Piper’s Warning to his Master’, or ‘I got a Kiss of the King’s Hand.’
In both cases, there is an emotional burden which is being shared.
This raises the question of language; does English convey the sound or texture of Gaelic? Some feel that Opera should not be in English, as it sounds different from Italian, and moreover lacks the ‘exotic’quality.
A more complex layer of interpretation and intention comes with ‘descriptive pieces’. In the Irish Uillean pipe tradition, there are old descriptive pieces, such as ‘The Battle of KnockanDos’ (1647, where Colkitto was killed) which seek to convey various moods by appropriate music, such as the march to the battlefield, the hand-to-hand fighting ( a passage called ‘buail is gearr’ - strike and slash - which resembles a part from the reel ‘Cameronian Rant’), the weeping of the women over the slain (very like a pibroch air, such as the 2nd variation of ‘Cronan na Cailliach’).
There are pibrochs with titles that suggest a similar function, such as ‘The Battle of Glenfruin’, but, generally, the changes in mood appear to have been smoothed out, and in any case, the tune is now detached from its cultural roots, where its associations gave it meaning to the listeners. And what is one to make of a piece such as ‘Slanfuive’ (CC) which apparently celebrates pillage?
In general, I feel there is a very considerable gulf between us and pibroch, and a fair amount of imaginative preparation has already been laid down by previous generations, which in some cases might not be helpful. It may be quite a journey to reclaim the connection between music and intention.
Well said, Ronald. A change in intention can have a profound effect. I wonder, is a more recent intentionality inferior to a time-tested “traditional” one?
As we become more accustomed to handling differences in intention or in performing environment, is it helpful to privilege one way over another? I think it’s dangerous to be purist! A piece of music takes wings and flies, becoming something else in another time or social environment or moment of imagination. If something that might originally have served for galley rowing is now played in an “art music” style, pulling rhythm about in a way incompatible with pulling oars, that doesn’t worry me - both interpretations are genuine and valuable, and I suggest it matters more that they brim with intention than that the intention is time-honoured.
Intentions, I suggest, are even more capricious and evanescent than performing contexts and have potentially greater impact on how the music sounds. I’m thinking of Willie MacDonald, Benbecula’s recollection of Lachlan Ban’s interpretations of The Lament for the Union or The Desperate Battle of the Birds. Now, there are two priceless recordings that should be put online: his Piobaireachd Society talks, ‘Reminiscences’ and ‘More Reminiscenses’ - the audio to complement the transcription in the Proceedings which, for the second talk, was done by Roderick Cannon. Hopefully there is a tape somewhere. Willie was a player brimming with intentionality - a natural storyteller. It was part of a normal upbringing in the Western Isles to make up stories, and that imaginative vibrancy comes through in the playing.
It’s the act of storytelling, not the story, that counts.
In rhetorical theory, we describe several intentionalities:
The intentionality of the author; the intentionality of the performer; and the intentionality of the audience.
Reconstructing intentions based on the idea that the “original” author (and/or perhaps even the “original” audience) should be the canonical touchstone against which to judge any performance and reception is not only fraught with all sorts of theoretical difficulties, but is also a questionable enterprise (it is known as the “fallacy of authorial intent”).
From a performative perspective, I use the tool of “storytelling” to help me, as a performer, shape my interpretive intent behind a performance. It may or may not be that of the audience (a judge may not like it; an audience of lay people may not like it: audience expectations may not be met). The specifics may not even be understood by the audience. But for me, as a musician, it requires me to see the music as a whole, to understand how the details fit into that whole, and provides me with a thoughtful performance.
Of course, a competitor may have a different story to tell: s/he may simply want to guess the expectations of the judges, and therefore limit her/his intent to what s/he thinks it is they want to hear. I know of some competitors who specifically state that is exactly what they do, in fact.
But that limits their audience to one or two people. And limits their intent to that of meeting very specific criteria. And it explains why large audiences simply don’t enjoy or understand and are not attracted to competitive pibroch - they are ignored by the performer. The competitor doesn’t care about them - s/he cares about impressing one or two people in the room.
I think we can expand our construction of our “intended” audience, and create bigger stories to tell when we play. And when we do so, more people will listen, because they will become part of the audiences to whom and for whom we are playing!
I’m not convinced there always has to be a backstory that needs to be explained, and I certainly don’t believe that backstory has to be consistent. There’s a wide chasm between the “play what the judges want” intention and the “let the notes guide your path” intention. If conveying a story is something a player desires to do, then more power to them, or if a player wants to initially form an intention to aid interpretation also go with grace. But to eliminate old suspect tune titles and let the time drift between and on notes in ever changing ways, no matter how slight, makes the music present and alive. Literally breathing in ways that may find the slightest change strays from the original intention and settles into pure emotional communication. This is the true power of the music–to cut straight to emotion without visual support or the need to “decide” from where it comes and to where it’s going. Sometimes, it’s just the siubhal, man…
Yes I think the intentionality has to come from the performer, but it can go in any direction the performer chooses, as various comments abobve suggest.
Where does the performer get it from though? I wonder if it is intimately connected to understand the structure and nature of the tune, whether you are following a set score or memorised version, or making it up as you go along. I seem to spend a lot of time trying to understand a tune, and once I feel I understand it the intentionality seems to come much easier.
Some tunes are very hard to understand though, and sometimes it seems impossible to shape something into a comprehensible form. And at that point it is very hard to add intentionality to playing, as it is just a sequence of notes and technical movements.