The Highland bagpipe

Dr. Johnson—Inspiration of Scottish music—Professor Blackie—Highland music simple—Scottish airs once Highland—Age of Highland music—Capability of the bagpipe—How it has suffered—Peculiarities of the pibroch—Pipe music not fitted for inside—How it troubled the pressman—Chevalier Neukomm—Professor Blackie again—A Chicago jury’s opinion—An ode to the pipes.

Dr. Johnson, who was in several ways a bundle of contradictions, found at least one thing in Scotland that he enjoyed. When on his tour through the Hebrides, he was on various occasions entertained by the bagpipe music of his host’s piper, and he liked nothing better than to stand behind the performer and hold the big drone close to his ear while the instrument was in full blast. He was not so affected as some of his country men and women nowadays, who say the sound of the drone is unpleasant, forgetting, or ignorant of, the fact that it is simply the bass A of their fine church organs sounded continuously by a reed on a wind instrument. But to them the organ is refined and represents culture, while the bagpipe is the barbarous instrument of a barbarous people, whose chief end is to act as custodians of a part of the country that provides good sport after the Twelfth, but is best forgotten all the rest of the year. So they scoff at the national music and the national instrument of Scotland, with the spirit of prejudice, half affected, half real, which induces John Bull to deny his neighbour north of the Tweed the possession of any good thing. And besides, as Gilbert says:—

The Scots were always a musical people. Their national airs, if nothing else, prove this. But music to Scotsmen, still more to Highlanders, was always more than music; it was something which inspired and intensified all their thoughts, and, combined with the impassioned lays of the bards, was to them their principal intellectual food. The bards, whether leading their countrymen with naked bodies and bared broadswords, against their foes, or reciting in the festive hall, endeavoured by means of the choicest language, wedded to the tenderest and boldest music, to impart to their listeners all that was noble and heroic. With harp and voice they poured forth music and words that stirred the very depths of courage and fervour in the enthusiastic nature of the Gaels. And the music which they composed was, like the people, rugged but whole-hearted, “the music of the great bens, the mysterious valleys, and of deep crying unto deep,” a music which showed that the people who could live on it were not a people of sordid and sensual tastes, but a people who were by nature and circumstances fitted to appreciate the grand, the awe-inspiring, and the true. They traversed daily a country of the wildest and most diversified scenery, mountains and forests and lochs, their minds partook of the sublimity of their surroundings; they mused continually with glowing imagination on the deeds of their forefathers and their own exploits, and the music to whose rhythm they were bred was but the reflex of their character and life. “That is what makes all your Celtic music so good,” wrote Professor Blackie. “It is all so real; not tricked up for show, but growing out of a living root.”

Highland music was always different from Lowland, in that it was based largely on memories of the past, and connected by undying tradition with events that had left their impress on the country or the clan. It was always simple and unaffected, and the Highlander always preferred the simple strains of his countrywomen and the grandeur of the pipes in their native glens to the finest opera. Besides he liked variety, as the existence of marches, pibrochs, quicksteps, laments, reels, jigs, and strathspeys testify, and he was equally at home with the grave, the gay, or the melancholy. The melancholy, however, was the predominating note. One can recognise a Gaelic air among a thousand. Quaint and pathetic, it moves on with the most singular intervals, the movement self-contained and impressive, especially to the Celt.

Scottish music as it now exists has been derived largely from the Highlands. No man did more to acclimatise Celtic music in the Lowlands than Burns. By wedding Highland airs to his own incomparable poetry he gave them a new lease of life, albeit he helped to destroy them under their old names while preserving them under the new. The music of “Scots Wha Hae,” “Boy’s Wife,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Of a’ the Airts,” and “Ye Banks and Braes,” has no counterpart across the Border or among the Saxon race. It is the ancient inheritance of the Celt, made national by the genius of a national poet.

The age of Highland music is another guarantee of its excellence. It has stood the test of time, the severest of all ordeals. We have not much English poetry which can, with any certainty, be ascribed to a date earlier than the time of Chaucer, but the Scots were celebrated for musical genius since the beginning of history, genius which, an early historian says, could not be found elsewhere on this side of the Alps. We have, for instance, a “Song of the Druids,” though, to tell the truth, we cannot prove its Druidical origin; we have “Somerled’s Lament,” composed on an event which took place in 1164, though not necessarily at that date; we have a piece of pipe music composed in the middle of the battle of Inverlochy in 1427; the “Rout of Glenfruin,” which refers to a desperate engagement between the Mac Gregors and the Colquhouns in 1602; and a “March to the Battle of Inverlochy,” and “The Clans’ Gathering;” both composed on the battle fought at Inverlochy in 1645. These do not prove that the pipes themselves were capable at that time of rendering such music, but they prove that the music existed. There are some pipe tunes—Cogadh na Sith and A Ghlas Mheur—for instance, so ancient that their origin cannot be traced, but they have, by means of their own merits, and in spite of the want of the printing press, lived all through the centuries. In the beginning of the twelfth century, Giraldus Cambrensis said of the music of the Irish Celts that it was above that of any nation he had ever known, and in the opinion of many, Scotland at that time far surpassed Ireland, even while her people were sunk in misery and barbarism.

As to the question whether people of good musical taste can appreciate the music of the great Highland bagpipe, it is a fact that people who have the keenest appreciation and intense enjoyment of the music of such composers as Mozart and Handel, of the great singers and great musicians, can at the same time enjoy a pibroch or a strathspey when played by a master hand. Mendelssohn on his visit to the Highlands was favourably impressed by the pibroch, and introduced a portion into one of his finest compositions. The pibrochs are remarkable productions; all the more remarkable that they were composed by men who, we may safely assume, were of an humble class, and not blessed in any way with the advantages of education—least of all with those of a musical education.

The great Highland bagpipe is not fitted for executing all kinds, or even many kinds of music. Its compass is only nine notes, from G second time treble clef to A, first ledger line above clef. The scale may be called a “tempered” one. The C note being slightly flattened admits of a greater variety of keys than could otherwise be used, and for its own purposes the scale is perfect. The notes are G natural, A, B, C, D, E, F sharp, G natural, and A. It is this G natural, or flat seventh, which gives the scale its peculiar character. The A is that of any other instrument in concert pitch. The so-called imperfection of scale, together with the somewhat harsh tone, is the cause of the unpleasant effect on the accurately sensitive ears of those accustomed to music in the natural diatonic scale, but these also account for the semi-barbarous, exciting stimulus the instrument exercises on the minds of Highlanders, especially on the battlefield. The chanter of the Highland bagpipe has an oboe or bassoon reed broader than that of the other kinds, whence that loudness of sound for which it is known. This is a valuable quality in a military instrument, and when heard at a sufficient distance, when the faults of scale are not so noticeable, the music is very agreeable. Besides, compass and variety are not always the highest qualities of music, and, although the chanter of a bagpipe is almost devoid of expression and beyond the performer’s control, the suitable execution of simple airs is equally practicable, and of equal value with music obtained from other instruments. Simple airs may be performed on simple instruments, and a master hand can bring from imperfect materials results better than those produced by the amateur with materials of the highest class. But we should not expect from one instrument the music proper to another, or blame the one because it fails to please those who are used to the other. The bagpipes have all along been subject to the criticism of the stranger, who knew neither them nor their people, but who came to criticise and went away to scoff, not remembering that a Highlander suddenly imported into a London drawing-room would have as poor an opinion of the music there as the Londoner has of his. They have suffered too from the well-meaning efforts of their friends. Some have invented contrivances and modifications for bringing the instrument nearer to all-round music. Others have adapted for the pipes pieces never intended for them, and which only show up their deficiencies, in the hope of bringing the music nearer to the pipes. Neither has succeeded to any great extent, and neither is likely to succeed. The Mac Crimmons of Skye, the greatest masters of the bagpipe, never violated the principle of using only music specially composed, and they succeeded beyond all others in demonstrating the powers of the instrument. Those who have since departed from their principle have failed to justify the departure, but they have proved, what they might have known before they began, that an instrument cannot produce what it is not constructed to produce. The Highland bagpipe is the exponent of Highland music, and of that only.

And there is enough and to spare without invading the realms of other instruments. There are reels, strathpeys, and marches out of number, and there are, above all things, pibrochs, or, to give the proper spelling, piobaireachd (“pibroch” is simply an attempt made by Sir Walter Scott to spell the word phonetically, so as to make it pronounceable to his south country readers; but it has come into such general use that its correctness passes unquestioned.)^[3] The word does not, properly speaking, denote any class of tune—it means pipe-playing—but it is generally applied to a class which in itself includes three classes—the cruinneachadh or gathering, the cumhadh or lament, and the failte or salute. The pibroch has been called the voice of uproar and misrule, and its music that of real nature and rude passion. It is the great specialty of the Highland bagpipe, and no piper is considered a real expert unless he is a good pibroch player. It is the most elaborate of the compositions devised for the pipes, and is difficult to define otherwise than as a theme with variations. Dr. Mac Culloch, a rather cynical traveller, who wrote books on Scotland in 1824, which still pass as standard, considered it “of an extremely irregular character, containing a determined melody, whereon, such as it is, are engrafted a series of variations rising in difficulty of execution, but presenting no character, as they consist of commonplace, tasteless flourishes, offensive to the ear by their excess, and adding to the original confusion instead of embellishing the air which the ground may possess.” “It has,” he adds, “neither time, rhythm, melody, cadence, nor accent, neither keynote nor commencement nor termination, and it can therefore regulate nothing. It begins, goes on, and ends, no one knows when or how or where, and if all the merit of the bagpipe is to depend on its martial, or rather its marching, utility, it could not stand on a worse foundation.” But Dr. Mac Culloch, strangely enough, himself says a little later:—

“The proper music of the bagpipe is well worthy of the instrument. They are really fit for each other, and ought never to have been separated. The instrument has suffered in reputation, like the ass in the fable, from making too high flights. It is, properly speaking, a military weapon (sic), and the pibroch is its real business.”

A pibroch is generally in triple or quadruple time, although many are in two-fourth and six-eighth time. It begins with the urlar or groundwork of the composition and its doubling. Then comes the high A or thumb variation, after which the music proceeds:—

It is finished up with the ground or urlar as at the beginning.

The pibroch is not a mere voluntary, played as the taste of the performer may dictate, though it seems so to those unacquainted with the nature of the music, especially when the player is inexperienced. All, however, are not so ignorant or confused as the listener of a story told by the late Duke of Gordon. A piper in a North of England town had played a pibroch which wonderfully excited the attention of his hearers, who seemed equally astonished at its length and the wildness and apparent disconnection of its parts. Unable to understand it, one of the spectators at the conclusion anxiously asked the piper to “play it in English.”

The pibroch is properly a “pipe tune,” and its most legitimate form is the “gathering.” The gathering is a long piece of music composed on the occasion of some victory or other fortunate circumstance in the history of a clan, which, when played, is a warning to the troops to turn out. The lament and salute originated in a similar way, but should be used on specific occasions only. The three classes are now, however, treated as one, propriety being frequently so much discarded that the pieces are called marches, an entirely unwarranted change, considering the nature of the music. The bagpipe has its military music mostly composed for itself, and generally employed by regimental pipers for marching purposes, and there is no necessity either for using pibrochs as marches or for adapting for regimental purposes the music of other instruments as has been done to far too large an extent.

Bagpipe music has also suffered greatly in popular estimation through the efforts of well-meaning but mistaken people to lift it out of its proper place and graft it on to city life and inside entertainments. It is not pleasant chamber music even to Highland ears unless played on chamber pipes. There are times and circumstances for everything, and there are few pleasures that will admit of being transplanted out of their own sphere. The “Haughs o’ Cromdale” was a grand thing at Dargai, and a sonata by Paderewski is all right before a fashionable audience in a big city, but to exchange them would only make both ridiculous. The old pipers could indeed so regulate their instruments as to make the music almost as sweet as that of the violin, but sweetness is not the outstanding feature of the bagpipe, and it is not fitted for private houses or any but the biggest of public halls. The hills themselves are its appropriate concert room, and among them it pervades the whole atmosphere, and becomes part of the air until one can hardly tell whence it comes. It makes rhythm with the breeze and chimes in with the rush of the torrent, and becomes part of the world in which it is produced. It suits the bare heath, the solitary cairn, the dark pass, the silent glen, and the mountain shrouded in mists as no music ever did or can do, and it is at its best floating across the silent loch or over the mountain stream, or round the rugged hillsides. It is a military and an outdoor instrument, and there is no justification for comparing pipe music with classical productions. It is like comparing taties and herring with wine jellies, or hoddin’ grey with broad cloth.

Playing within doors is a Lowland and English custom. In the Highlands the piper was always in the open air, and when people wished to dance to his music, it was on the green they danced. The pipe was no more intended for inside than are firearms. A broadside from a man-of-war has a fine effect when heard at a proper distance, but one would not care to be sitting by the muzzles when the guns went off. That the large pipes are still used in halls for entertainment purposes is accounted for by the strength of association, as much as by their appropriateness. Highlanders would not consider a gathering at all complete unless they had their pipers present—a feeling which is easily understood, and which no one wishes to see die out. But that does not alter the fact that, in a small apartment at any rate, they are entirely out of place. The writer is not likely soon to forget one experience of his own, which helped to confirm him in this opinion. It was in one of the big Glasgow halls at a Highland gathering, where I was, in a professional capacity, doing a “special” of several columns for a Highland paper. To catch that week’s issue, my “copy” had to be posted before I slept, so, as soon as the chairman had finished his speech, I adjourned to one of the very small rooms behind the platform to “write up” while the musical part of the programme proceeded, expecting to be pretty well through before the turn of the next speaker came. But the “association pipers” were there before me, and what must they do but shut all the doors to keep the sound from reaching the platform, and start practising the marches and reels they were to play later on, marching from end to end of the little apartment. In five minutes the big drone seemed to be vibrating all through my anatomy, while the melody danced to its own time among the crevices of my brain. It was impossible for me to take my fingers out of my ears—a position which did not lend itself to rapid writing or careful composition. But the pipers did not think anything about it (they had in fact stopped conversation and started playing because they “did not wish to disturb me”), and I soon made an excuse to go out. I tried the artistes’ room, but the soprano was doing up her hair, the comic man was arranging his somewhat scanty habilaments, the old violinist was telling funny stories, and I seemed so obviously out of place that I could not possibly start working. Next I tried the stair, but the draught was too much for me. Then I tried the concert hall itself, but the applause was so frequent that the desks were always rattling. So I came back to the pipers, and braved it out for half an hour, after which I went back to the concert hall and did it on my knee. Anything more indescribably disagreeable than that half-hour in the ante-room it is difficult to imagine, and there seems, when I think of it now, to have been no relation whatever between that “music” and the harmonies which used to float across the bay in the days long ago, when the piper at the big house tuned his pipes and played to the gentry as they sat at dinner, the while we boys lay prone on the grass and drank in all the twirling of his notes. But in the one case there was a mile of sea between and rocks and fields around, and a blue sky above. In the other, I seemed to be caged in with some mad thing that hammered at every panel for freedom.

It was the Chevalier Neukomm, a very distinguished musician, who said, when asked for his opinion, “I don’t despise your pibrochs; they have in them the stirrings of rude, but strong, nature. When you traverse a Highland glen, you must not expect the breath of roses. You must be contented with the smell of heath. In like manner Highland music has its rude, wild charms.”

And our own Professor Blackie puts it even better when he says:—

“The gay ribboned bagpipes moaning away in melancholy coronachs, or rattling like hailstones to the clash of claymores on the backs of the fleeing Sassenachs. In this case at least—

On this point no Highlander of good taste will disagree with you. The bagpipes belong to the open air as naturally as heather belongs to the hills and salmon to the sea-lochs. Men do not mend pens with Lochaber axes, or employ scene painters to decorate the lids of snuff-boxes.”

As to the man who practises the ordinary pipes in an ordinary city apartment, with but the thickness of a brick dividing him from neighbours on either side, he is the worst enemy of his craft and worthy of all execration. The wise enthusiast will get a smaller set made for home use, having the lower part of each drone and the top of the chanter turned large enough to fit the stocks of the full-size pipes, so that one bag and the stocks in it does for both sets. These will not sound so loud as to disturb neighbours, and the performer can enjoy himself as well as with pipes of full size. It must have been of neighbours of a player on the large pipes that the Chicago jury was composed which tried an action for damages in 1899. A Scottish society was parading the streets to the martial skirl of the pipes, when they met a horseman, whose horse took fright and bolted, throwing the rider through a shop window. The subsequent action turned on the question of whether or not the pipes were musical instruments, and the jury decided that they were not. After which it may be well to conclude with the following verses by Mr. Patrick Mac Pherson, New York, contributed to the Celtic Monthly, always remembering the open air and giving allowance for the poet’s license:—