One of our Club Members, John Bottomley from Maryland (Director of Piping at West Point, Open/Professional piper, adjudicator, and pibroch composer) published an article in The Voice, where he provided a link to a recording he did.
The article was a review of the George Moss recordings released by the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. After listening to George’s thoughts and performances, he was inspired to try out The Blue Ribbon (PS 004) in a style inspired by Moss’ perspectives.
He has graciously allowed us permission to offer it here.
Nice instrument and nice technique. Great to hear hiharin kept moving (rather than the long ‘E’ of today). Overall, very good.
Here’s my visual with this tune: do you know the Old Man Dance? The one where the grey, bald, short man is standing near the dance band, with his knees slightly bent, arms outstretched in front of him, fingertips fluttering as he sways back and forth in slow, wide swings, head back and eyes closed with the grin of a dog that found where the cat kept his leavings. THAT is what this music gives me. As I age, it becomes more and more apparent that I truly understand his ecstasy. Kudos to Mr. Bottomley.
Very interesting and enjoyable performance. This raises a question I’ve pondered for a long time. How do we time tunes in 3/4? Almost everyone plays them in either 4/4 or 6/8. Now, granted, Kilberry silently changed many 3/4 and 6/8 tunes to 4/4, there has to be allowance for rubato, and cadences often infect the timing with arrhythmia. Taking all that into account, what is the rhythm of these 3/4 tunes? Something is missing, but I don’t know what it is.
John Dally
John, as a non-piper trying to deal with this material from two seperate ends (listening to performances, and looking at the early source notations), I’d appreciate a little more expansion of your comments. Would you describe this performance as being in 6/8? Do you think this is (or should be) a 3/4 tune? I struggle to understand the intrusive long Es in a performance like this.
Anyway many thanks to John for putting this out there. Its great to hear such excellent results from thinking about these issues!
Oh dear, my first paragraph was a question to John Dally and my second was appreciation of John Bottomley. Sorry for any confusion!
Cadences (the long ‘e’s you hear) are big topic, I think. There is a system to how they are played, believe it or not, depending what note follows and where it is in the melodic line. The way they are written the music is beyond the ken any piper not taught by an authority. Andrew Wright explains the modern practice in detail. Angus MacKay, I think, was the first to treat them as melodic notes. Perhaps Barnaby can shed some light on how they were play before the Victorians. IMHO, they are made to ruin many a beautiful melody.
There isn’t the space here to do the topic justice. Sound samples would be necessary too. But you can compare Kilberry’s 4/4 setting of “Black Donald’s March” to the settings in 6/8 that predate his in order to get a glimpse at what I’m talking about. As for 3/4 tunes, they often get expressed as quarter note, eighth note, dotted quarter note(6/8), rather than three quarter notes. Or they are played as dotted quarter note, eighth note and half note(4/4). Andrew Wright’s new book describes the modern way of playing in great detail. Some notes are stressed more than others, the rhythm depending on pulses rather than beats. What’s confusing to any learner, and makes learning pibroch difficult, is the tunes are not written the way they are played. It’s curious that even today pipers appear to insist on this anachronism. Even in Wright’s book the notes do not fit the rhythm he outlines in detail below the staff. Donaldson is the first person I’ve read to write the tunes out as they’re played, cadences and all.