One of the things we are dedicated to providing here at Learning Living Pibroch is making available formative works of research into pibroch, pibroch performance and pibroch history.

To that end, we have made available a couple dissertations on pibroch that we believe are very informative and helpful for understanding pibroch performance.

We would like to highlight one of them here, today.

The Highland Bagpipe: The Impact of the Highland Societies of London and Scotland, 1781-1844.

In 1988, Ian MacInnes wrote a tour-de-force thesis for his M. Litt. at the University of Edinburgh. This work provides insight into the significant impact (whether positive or negative is up to the reader) that the Highland Societies had upon pibroch performance.

When you see all the links on the page, you may say to yourself, “I don’t have time to read all this!”

Make the time.

It is an eye-opening experience to see which certain forces came together historically to both save and yet also fundamentally alter pibroch.