Barnaby had the chance to talk with Allan Macdonald on his Clasp-winning performance of the Unjust Incarceration. Together they explore perspectives on musicality, emotion, the Campbell setting, cadences, phrasing and Allan’s deep commitment to bringing out the melodic line, even to the point of shifting the rhythm of a mach movements.
Allan also offers us a performance (on the practice chanter) of the ground as he would play it today.
Here is a wealth of information from one of our most important and remarkable advocates of pibroch.
We hope you enjoy!
A fascination exploration of the ambiguities of early notation of pibroch.
One theme touched on was Frans Buismann’s considered view that in the Nether Lorne Ms, the ‘hiharin’ was meant to be an abbreviation, and he felt evidence supported it being rhythmically parallel with the movements called double shakes ( or na crathinin) which
were stressed ‘ONE two three’, and not as we generally play them, the ‘double echo’, ‘one-two-and THREE’. Allan has adopted this in his playing here.
But while he was explaining that Donald MacDonald had attempted, in his published book, to communicate with people who were familiar with Italianate staff notation , and “Not his own world” (eg. pipers and gaels), he neglected to consider the unpublished Ms which has a very clear example of a ‘Hiharin’ played as we do, a sort of birl on low A: the last motif of each line of the urlar of ‘MacDonald’s Warning’, which is the same as in ‘The Unjust Incarceration, followed by a G cutting to give an extra beat.
And to undermine somewhat the idea that the double echo ( hiorodo, hiorodo) was played long on the first vocable, DMcD in the same Ms records ‘Bodaich na Sligachin’ with this very motif in the middle, or pivotal point, of the urlar exactly as is standard today - two quick B’s, followed by a low G, then the third B.
However in other tunes, such as ‘Cumha Chleibhers’ at the end of the same Ms, DMcD does employ the ONE-two-three stress pattern. Here it has an elegiac effect, corresponding to the poetic metrical foot called a ‘Choriamb’ (Long short-short Long).
What this shows is that Barnaby’s point about a variety of possible interpretations of Campbell’s notation system is germane; one has to experiment with his settings to see what is most suitable, and sometimes no clear conclusion can be reached.
A case in point is the unheard ‘Slanfuive’,( which I think is best translated as ‘A Health to Plunder’, an extremely prevalent practice in the mid-17th century Highlands ); it has a urlar ending with three ‘Hiharins’ (and ‘Hiorodos’ in the contrasting phrase), a unique occurance, very striking.
How should these be played? The ‘quick-quick-slow’ rhythm seems appropriate, suggesting the emphatic strumming of a Spanish Flamenco guitar ( a style of music fashionable in 17th century Scotland, as Tobias Hume’s composition for the young King James 6th, ‘In the Spanish Manner’ suggests). But then, in the middle of the urlar, in the pivotal phrase, we find ‘…himto hinda, himdrea. himto hinda, hihorodo hihorodo…’
These motifs seem best played with stress on the first note, ‘Him'(low G preceded by a G cutting), giving a ‘ONE-two-three FOUR’ rhythm (‘HIN to- hin DA’). But should this pattern be followed by a similar one when playing ‘Hiorodo hiorodo’? That seems to follow suit, yet the contrasting way is also effective.
Ronald Smith commented on my statement in recording: ‘he neglected to consider the unpublished Ms which has a very clear example of a ‘Hiharin’ played as we do, a sort of birl on low A: the last motif of each line of the urlar of ‘MacDonald’s Warning’, which is the same as in ‘The Unjust Incarceration, followed by a G cutting to give an extra beat.’
I cannot at all identify with what he refers to. Clearly I am reading the score and listening in a very different way from this. I always taught ..and played…the ‘hiharin’ figure in several ways, with long first A, with the first two short or as three even notes…and variants of all these….But none of these are equivalent to what is heard today. Modern performance has a long E followed by a ‘birl’. This is quite different from what is notated in DMcD Ms.
Oh, and I have also always taught the ‘crahinin’ in a number of ways as well, not always with the stress on the first note, although I have probably made more of a habit of this way of playing…but certainly in laments that suggest the ‘caoineadh’ where these are often exist in twos or threes, I sometimes play them all differently - like a chant - so that I might play a long first note followed by a figure of two consecutive short notes or vice versa or somewhere in between with tension to imitate the chant.