In preparing a CD for lower-grade-level competitors, I looked at Little Prince, You Are My Choice, and developed the idea that it is written poorly in the Piobaireachd Society book. I wrote about it here:
The three-line format makes the memorization much easier, and gives the tune a sensible structure for playing as well.
The setting in the Piobaireachd Society (First Series) is very good!
Readers may be unfamiliar with Joseph MacDonald’s ‘discovery’, mentioned in his Treatise’, that pipers used a four-finger pattern in composing pibroch. This point was highlighted by Robin Lorimer in a paper published by The School of Scottish Studies in the sixties, which was later mentioned favourably by Barnaby Brown in a talk given to The Piobaireachd Society several years ago. These are all available on this site,
Lorimer examined several three-lined tunes and demonstrated that they could be re-cast in four lines, and showed that the ‘logic’ of using three lines lies in the musical idea that every line should end with the same phrase.
This idea is a distortion of the logic used by the composers in the past, who of course used memory only to retain their music, and would appear to be the result of losing touch with the four-finger rule.
It is not the case that confusion arises from the old method; rather the opposite: tunes are much easier to learn, memorize, and improvise upon if one sticks to the old method. I have used this for years and find it second nature now. Three lines seem unnatural and illogical. I find a helpful concept in making this switch is ‘The First Shall Be Last’; in other words, the concluding phrases are stated first, then the order is reversed. There is a ‘mirror’ in the middle which reflects the first phrases.
Basically, one has to think In terms of balance, with the first two lines (or fingers) consisting of two contrasting phrases, which for the sake of abstraction and brevity, might be called A and B; these are played twice; then they are reversed and played twice again: AB AB: BA BA. another variant of this pattern is AA BA: BB AB. In this, there are four possible combinations, and the last is the most satisfactory.
Barnaby also highiighted a fascinating document on old Welsh harp music known as the Ap Huw Ms; this dates from the 17th century and contains a list of the patterns or forms used by harpists to compose. The symbols used are 0 and 1. One of these patterns, labelled ‘Korffinder’. is the same as that used by the composers of Pibroch: 10100101. These contrasting phrases have been designated as ‘home’ and ‘away’ by some students of the music, and show that there existed a structural similarity between harp music and pibroch. However, the forms listed by Robert Ap Huw are all in a single, continuous line, not arranged into separate ones, so both the four-lined concept and the later, modern, three-lined lopsided structure can be seen in the relevant one, ‘Korffinder’.
‘Little Prince’ is a good example of the four-lined structural pattern, and makes perfect musical sense in that form; likewise ‘Macgregor’s Gathering’. If one s to learn an ancient musical form, it is as well to stick to the logic used by the old pipers and not distort the tunes by re-casting them in modern ideas. One of the aims of this site is to return to the old ways and cast off the brainwashing of 19th century collectors who seem to have lost the plot.
I rather like John’s idea, as it shows up an interesting melodic parallel that may bring new interpretive insights.
I do NOT find the PS Collection setting (showed on John’s site) useful at all. The line breaks, for the purpose of creating a four-line structure, is counter-intuitive to me. While I find Joseph MacDonald’s report interesting as evidence of a mnemonic for (generally speaking) non-literate pipers, I am not convinced by Lorimer’s examples that this mnemonic can describe the structure of all pibroch. I’d be curious how to make it work for MacKintosh’s Lament, for example, where the 2nd and 4th lines add a 5th phrase. Or Unjust Incarceration, where Cambell adds a fifth (counting the first line repeat) line. Neither are “3 line” pibrochs, but I’m unclear whether Joseph/Robin/Ronald’s point is that all pibroch falls into this 4 x 4 rubric. If that is the stronger argument, it runs aground against these two examples.
What I actually see is a three line structure of four “measures”, as does the PS editor, who chose, for reasons I just don’t fathom, to shoe-horn the structure into four printed lines. If one choses to repeat the first line, that might be arguably the fourth line, in which case I would agree with Ronald, but not with the PS editors of that particular score.
Still, I am enjoying the interpretive possibilities of John’s 3-line parallelisms and am wondering, “Why not?” It’s music, and is therefore meant to be explored…
“the PS editor, who chose, for reasons I just don’t fathom, to shoe-horn the structure into four printed lines…”
The reason can quickly be fathomed, if one looks at the Nether Lorne MS, where this tune was found. The first line is followed by Campbell’s instruction to play it twice. If any ‘shoehorning’ was done, it was fitting a four-lined tune into a three-line structure.
I did not say, nor did Lorimer, nor did Barnaby in his paper to the PS about the structure of pibroch, that all tunes fit into the four line pattern. The exceptions mentioned are but a few of a number of the ones that do not.
This structure is one of many found in Robert Ap Huw’s Ms, suggesting that composers of Pibroch did not find the others interesting, or else had lost touch with that diversity of compositional patterns.
What I think Lorimer revealed was that collectors of pibroch after Joseph MacDonald had lost touch with this one survival from the old harp tradition, and had begun to shoehorn tunes into a three-line pattern because that enabled them to have each line ending with the same phrase - the older idea, of a pattern which obeys a different logic, did not make sense to them, apparently. Nor does it today; many seem incapable of breaking out of the three-lined pattern and actually prefer it. I don’t think it makes any difference from the performance point of view, as in both cases one plays the same sequence of phrases. But, conceptually, there is a difference.
The four-lined pattern comes in many variations, as a perusal of Barnaby’s paper will reveal, and it shades into others - part of a spectrum, one might say.
My feeling is that it is not just a mnemonic device, although very useful in that way; it is a way of conceptualizing the combinations of phrases, a compositional principle, in a way similar to poetic forms such as the Limerick or the Sonnet. They, too, have variants. To understand it is to get closer to the musical imaginations of Joseph MacDonald’s contemporaries and predecessors.
To further clarify this seemingly abstruse concept of the typical pattern here, which I think Barnaby named ‘Interwoven’ in his paper, here is the tune as Campbell recorded it, with key motifs emphasized, to make the structure more clear:
Line 1 Hodin ba in che ve I, hodin ba in HIO DIN; hodin ba in che ve I, hodin ba in HO o
line 2 ” ” ” , ” ” HIO DIN; ” ” ” ” ” HO o
line 3 ” ” HIO DIN, ” ” HO o ; ” ” ” ” ” HIO DIN
line 4 ” ” che ve I, ” ” HO o ; I ve I che ve I, hiodin ba in HIO DIN
__________________________________________________________________
The pattern of phrase endings, abstracted is: HIO DIN
HO o
HIO DIN
HO o
_______
HO o
HIO DIN
HO o
HIO DIN.
This should make clear the ‘mirror’ reversal that is typical of this structural pattern: AB AB: BA BA.
The motif ‘HO o’ is inconclusive, or open, while the motif ‘HIO DIN’ is more final.
Note that the third line BEGINS with a ‘down’ motif HIO DIN, and also ENDS with the same HIO DIN. This pattern is widespread in other tunes.
I wasn’t being clear. Let me try again.
This is a typesetting mess (first “line” ending in HO o is on the next line):
Try putting this tune into 6/8 and thinking of it as a siciliana or slow jig (or in 3/4 as a waltz). This is why I do not like staff notation realisations of Campbell’s notation: the reader’s imagination is limited to only one possibility when there are almost invariably two or three equally plausible and equally compelling solutions. Colin Campbell gives us a naked lady; staff notation dresses her in a kilt, sporran, Argyll jacket and Glengarry.
Reading Campbell notation is lighter on the mind than staff notation - there is less to process. It makes it easier to see and to feel each part as a quatrain, or stanza of poetry. I relish the frisson, the syncopation, of 4:4:4:4 against 6:6:4 and I think 18th-century pipers did too. Without this tension or rhythmic dynamism, the music looses something vital. The units of sense, or musical phrase, and the units of construction do not align simplistically as they must in dance music (otherwise the dancers complain); they are in counterpoint, interwoven. It is like reading great poetry rather than nursery rhymes. The human mind values complexity and this is the Highland pipers’ answer to polyphony or keyboard music where the voices or hands take up independent rhythmic patterns.
So, rather than right or wrong, I would keep both presentations in mind: you don’t get syncopation without tension or interplay between two different rhythms. The MacCrimmons were also not looking at written scores, they most likely had images in their heads. Trained medieval craftsmen and scholars would pre-visualise - holding an organisational plan or archetype clearly in mind - before starting to make anything. As Mary Carruthers said in a brilliant lecture I attended a month ago (9 February), precision in this mental image was a skill now outsourced to CAD, so no longer practised. It was an instrument widely used in the Middle Ages to control the flow of invention.
What did the mental image look like? Mary Carruthers explained that it was in the shape of a building or storage box with four sides. Ethical compositional discipline in the Middle Ages looked to the Bible for a plan and often focused on the Ark of the Covenant. In medieval universities (where music and poetic metre were taught on the same course), the Ark served as a vivid image for constructing the allegorised, mystical, moral ‘house’. It was a scaffold for constructing a composition in any medium - stone, vellum, words or music. In 1266, Roger Bacon argued for the study of Biblical geometricalia - “geometrical plans” - specifically Noah’s Ark, the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon, in order that “the ineffable beauty of divine wisdom may shine out again and its infinite benefit be made abundant.”
It seems to me that pibroch flows from this distant medieval world, undergoing transformations along the way for sure. But I’m with Ronald 100% in deriving pleasure and satisfaction from the interplay between 4:4:4:4 and 6:6:4. Do try it! For the Welsh evidence pointing in this direction, see ‘Scottish traditional grounds, Part 2: Maol Donn – IIOI OOIO’ in Piping Today 39 (2009).
Think Calypso - 3+3+2 against 4+4 - but at a majestic, epic pace. You don’t need to have the 4+4 sounded, it is there in the mind. It is easier to get the musical sense when you play the tune faster. Singing, even more so. As an experiment, try taking the tune double speed - jig time, more rounded than dotted.
Looking at Campbell’s score, you can easily sing it as a jig. Come to think of it, in his section on Time, Joseph MacDonald quotes War or Peace (PS 204) with the heading “Triple Time Allegro” and describes it as “a Species of Jig Time”. At least send your students to our page on this tune (PS 147) and encourage them to look at Campbell’s score and to practise pronouncing the Gaelic title. What is its literal meaning? “Little Prince, you make me happy.”
Making the primary evidence the starting point for musical interpretation adds something special. Thank you, John, for drawing attention to such a perfect example of why the Alt Pibroch Club exists.
Coming at this from the older harp perspective, I really struggle to understand the point of the 6:6:4 division. Especially in a tune like this, it just seems bizarre. If you sing it fast and swinging as Barnaby suggests, then the foursquare nature of the entire tune is just so clear and simple. In a tune like this I see the musical phrases and the units of construction aligning perfectly.
I would of course agree that the disjunct between phrase and structure can be thrilling and powerful but I rarely find it via a putative 6:6:3 structure.