One of our Club Members (Allan Speedy) took it upon himself to scour the sources and collect all the express tempo markings found on pibroch scores (chirographic or typeset).
I reproduced his work (though limited the survey to primary source material up to 1854) at the Musical Materials site. It is in the form of a sortable table that allows you to view and compare tempos across multiple sources. It is fascinating.
The result is simply eye-popping. Setting aside the question of the historical distance of our earliest scores from the Gaelic cultures from out of which bagpipe pibroch thrived centuries earlier, the fact of the matter is: we are playing our pibroch at speeds unimaginably slower than those performing it even as recently as the 19th century.
An example: PS 002. Danile Dow says “Slow”. Angus MacKay says Andante, which he defines as “a little faster than Andantino“, which itself is defined as “slow and distinct”. [While you are reading MacKay’s definitions of “Italian, Gaelic and Other Musical Terms”, take another look at Cadenza; Barnaby has a post about it here.]
In the 19th Century, Maelzel’s revolutionary metronome (used by none other than Beethoven himself) defined Andante as 126-152 beats per minute!
Look for yourself:
Okay. So let’s say that’s crazy. Let’s say that the 19th century was a period of great flux with respect to interpreting tempo indicators and that Maelzel’s scale was controversial and not definitive in the classical music world, much less the piping world. (I am not at all certain we would be right about either of those assumptions, but for argument’s sake…)
Let’s go with a more familiar tempo of 76-108 BPM. That puts the urlar of The Carles with the Breeks at walking speed, a tempo closer to today’s 2/4 march competitions.
Compare that with how it is performed in the modern era: listen to John Burgess on Tobar an Dualchais. Literally half the speed, at a tempo anyone with any classical music background would call Adagio. Not Andante.
Interestingly, MacKay knows all about Adagio, and knows that Andante is quicker than Adagio.
Once again, empiricism is key: these scores, and the trained musicians behind them, share a wealth of information about our art that we routinely ignore. And as a result, we lose sight of the fullness of musicality that these primary sources represent for our art: their range of styles, tempos, genres, motifs and expressions.
In sum: today’s competition-style pibroch, simply put, is too slow.
To complicate the issue further: why did Joseph MacDonald always refer to the urlar of this music as ‘adagios’?
A possible surmise might be that the Army’s adaptation of the pipe, along with its already being used to sound alarms and other calls in Highland para-military circles, called for a brisker pace. It is hard to imagine ‘Cogaigh no Sidh’, described by ‘Spanish John’ in his letter discussed on this site, being played as an adagio when Cumberland’s troops were approaching and haste was called for.
But after dinner, when the patron and his friends and guests were replete with wine and enjoying some uplifting pipe music recalling ‘days of glory’, then the tempo might shift towards the grandiose or heroic as more suitable.
Here is an example of a relative tempo adjustment (I call these relative tempo adjusters ‘modifiers’) in the Irish tradition.
http://www.kitchenmusician.net/giftunes/orourke.gif
I don’t see what you are referring to?
Joseph MacDonald, Donald MacDonald, Angus MacKay et al all make the following quite clear assertions about the nature of a piobaireachd ‘porst, tune or air’:
1) Piobaireachd comprises a theme in adagio time (slow and stately) called a ‘ground’ or ‘urlar‘.
2) Variations (usually on that theme) are played in allegro time (fast, quickly and bright).
3) The theme (adagio) is repeated from time to time throughout the variations.
4) The essence of piobaireachd is the tension (usually repeated) between the adagio of the urlar and the allegro of the variations.
If a ‘musician’ can’t figure what that means in terms of playing performance then perhaps the local football or stamp club is more to his talents (meant in a caring way of course!)
I was always told that the Campbell Canntaireachd did NOT show urlar refrains.
I believe the CC does show refrains. That is the meaning of the word ‘Motion’. It means motion (allegro) in the sense of speed incontrast to the urlar (adagio). If you look at the way CC sets out his tunes he divides them thus:
1) Urlar, then thumb then doubling etc this is the adagio
2) ‘First motion’ ie first [group] of allegro variations
3) {Adagio: Every piper knows at the end of a group of runnings to return to the urlar; there is NO NEED to state this}
4) ‘Second motion’ ie second [group] of allegro variations
5) {Adagio: Every piper knows at the end of a group of runnings to return to the urlar; there is NO NEED to state this}
6) ‘Taolive‘
7) {Adagio: Every piper knows at the end of a group of ‘taolive‘ to return to the urlar; there is NO NEED to state this}
8) ‘Crulive‘
9) {Adagio: Every piper knows at the end of a group of ‘crulive‘ to return to the urlar; there is NO NEED to state this}