Favourite download: blank music paper
I'm interested in the evolution of folk music in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This was a period of rapid change; the Scots, Irish and Northumbrian traditions developed into their current form, as did our three countries' pipes and many other instruments.
We have monthly Fenland meetings of Northumbrian pipers, not just online but
also in person when the rules allow. Email me if you want to join.
Hugh Cheape's thesis may be worth a
read; he was curator of Scottish material culture at the National Museum in
Edinburgh for many years.
The
life of John MacDonald is a biography by the late Roderick Cannon of my
piping teacher's teacher. Roderick and I also scanned some other items of
interest to pipers:
Here's an interview
I gave Piping Today on the pastoral pipes, a hobby of mine. I've given talks
and demonstrations on the pastoral pipes where I play an eighteenth-century
Robertson set I've got back into playing condition. (The set is described in v
2 no 5 of the Sean Reid Society Journal.) Here's a recording (60Mb) and slides from a talk in 2008 at the William Kennedy festival.
The rest of this page has a number of highland pipe manuscripts, mostly scanned
by the late Roderick Cannon and myself, followed by a number of old highland piping MP3s and other resources. Then there
are many of the music manuscripts that trace the
development of the pastoral/union/uilleann pipes and the Northumbrian pipes
from the mid-18th century onwards. They enable us to trace how the three
traditions developed as they grew apart from the mid-18th century onwards.
You'll then find Irish pipe music MP3s (of old
out-of-copyright recordings) and some assorted piping
links. Finally, there's a regular podcast on the subject by Jeremy
Kingsbury.
We have scanned, and host here, six of the most important sources of pibroch -
the classical music of the highland pipes. For more on pibroch, see the Wikipedia entry and the Piobaireachd Society website. For
sound samples, visit the Piobaireachd Society's music index, or listen to the first four tracks by John
MacDonald below.
Donald MacDonald's book has been put online by the Piobaireachd Society here;
the Society also hosts the Hannay-MacAuslan
manuscript. See Jim McGillivray's
site for the Nether Lorn Canntaireachd, the manuscripts by Peter Reid and
David Glen, and the remaining manuscript by Angus MacKay. Archive.org has the
Gesto
Canntaireachd. The Piobaireachd Society has a web page
with copies of, or links to, most of these manuscripts. These resources give
you free access to all of the major early source materials.
There is a paper by Roderick Cannon on future
publications of the Piobaireachd Society.
Now here are some music recordings that are now out of copyright, and so free
for anyone to download and use as they wish.
John MacDonald MP3s - Here are five recordings by John
MacDonald of Inverness. The first is thanks to Michael and Diana from Juneau,
Alaska, while the last is taken from a 7-CD set of out-of-copyright pipe music
available from Tony Langford, who is t.langford AT ucl.ac.uk. The others are
from Brett Tidswell.
Brett has also provided a track of Reels
by John MacDonald, but we're not sure by which John MacDonald; Donald
Anderson and Josh Dickson suspect it may be the John MacDonald of South Uist
(Seonaidh Roidein).
Robert Reid MP3 – Here's a recording by Robert Reid:
Captain
MacLean, Tullochgorm, The Piper and the Dairymaid (1937).
John McColl MP3s – Here's John McColl playing The Campbells
are Coming and the The Cock o'
the North followed by a strathspey and reel. These recordings were made in
1899.
Willie Ross MP3s - And here are some recordings made by
Willie Ross. (The Reid tracks and these five Ross tracks are from Tony
Langford's collection.)
More Willie Ross MP3s: Here are MP3s of twelve
recordings by Willie Ross, dating back to the period 1910-1939:
December 31, 2007: for seasonal cheer, here's Auld
Lang Syne the way pipers played it in the 18th century, pinching the high
B. This isn't an electronic special effect – I played it on a standard
set of highland pipes. The trick is to get a fairly soft reed, and when playing
the high A you put down the first and second fingers of your left hand, so that
the A is played with just your thumb raised. Then you increase the pressure to
keep in tune, and continue to slide your thumb over the thumb hole so you're
now playing an A with the thumb hole half closed. Then raise the B finger just
as you close the thumb hole.
1743: The first book of music printed for the pipes was Geoghegan's Compleat Tutor (there's a high-res scan of the frontispiece here). Thanks to Roderick Cannon for this copy; for comparison, here is the
one in the British
Library.
1740s: The Young-Macfarlane manuscript is nominally for the fiddle but contains a lot of pipe
tunes, many of which ended up in the Northumbrian repertoire
1765: Here is a manuscript from the Advocates' Collection
of the National Library of Scotland, thanks to their trustees: Part 1 (front of book, tunes 1-33), Part 2 (front of book, tunes 34-end) and Part 3 (back of book). There is also an article I wrote
about this manuscript for Common Stock, the journal of the Lowland and Border Pipers' Society.
1785: Here is John Sutherland's manuscript: the front matter, the index, pages 1-40, 41-80, 81-120, 121-160, 161-200, 201-240, and 241-266. Here are some of the tunes I typeset, in pdf and abc
formats, a copy of the fingering chart at pages 143-5, and an article I wrote on the manuscript for An Piobaire (magazine of the NPU). The tune index is here.
1794 saw the publication of Robert Riddell's Collection
of Scotch, Galwegian and Border Tunes, which contains a number of variation
sets and other tunes that became popular in the Northumbrian piping tradition
– plus the fiddle pibroch Mackintosh's Lament.
1804-10: O'Farrell's
Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes appeared in 1804-10. Here's volume one,
volume two,
volume three
and volume four.
Thanks to Matt Seattle for
volume 4. These books are also available nicely bound from Pat Sky.
1805: Peacock's
Favorite Collection of Tunes was the first book of music for the
Northumbrian smallpipes, and gives us a snapshot of border music two hundred
years ago. It's long out of print; this is a scan of Francis Wood's copy.
1828: The MacKie manuscript came down to us along with a fine
pastoral
set that's recently been on display in the piping museum in Glasgow. Here's
part
1 and part
2.
1830: The Millar manuscript has settings for both the
Northumbrian pipes (from page 1) and the union pipes (from page 29). The
Montrose musician Robert Millar was given a set
of union pipes, which had been made by Robert Reid, in 1830 after he left
the army. This tune book of his has the earliest known arrangements for Union
pipes with regulators. Here's pages
1-16, pages
17-32, pages
33-48, pages
49-64, pages
65-80, pages
81-96 and pages
97-123. Finally, there's a bio of
Millar by Keith Sanger.
1840: Colclough's Tutor for the Irish pipes was published
about 1840. Here are the introduction and the tunes,
thanks to Ken MacLeod (whose copy it is) and Wilbert Garvin (who scanned and
retouched it). There's also a picture of the author Dudley Colclough (whose name was apparently pronounced `Cockley').
1840: The Rook Manuscript, also from about 1840, contains
over a thousand tunes collected for the Northumbrian pipes and other
instruments. Start from the front page or the
index (which is also available as a spreadsheet). Thanks to Anita and Rob Evans who scanned and
indexed it, and to Matt Seattle
whose copy she used.
1936: Tadhg Crowley's tutor dates from between the wars, when
Irish piping almost died out. Here's the tutor and the tunes. His style owes a lot to the Highland pipes, which he learned
first.
2006: Here's a manuscript of tune settings donated to this
site by local piper Dickie
Deegan.
The tunes in the above manuscripts were generally played on pastoral pipes until the
late 18th century, then union pipes (the name given to the instrument as the
foot joint was abandoned and the number of regulators increased from one to
three). The instrument became known as the uilleann pipes with the Gaelic
revival in the early 20th century. The first three sources - Geoghegan, the
Advocates' manuscript and the Sutherland manuscript - let us track the
evolution of the music during this transition. The McKie manuscript is the last
pastoral source known to us. Finally, the Millar manuscript supports the
hypothesis that regulators increased in number to three after the Napoleonic
war in order to provide accompaniment to dance music. Except where noted
otherwise, the above manuscripts are mostly thanks to Ken McLeod.
The Sean Reid Society is the club
for people interested in the history, organology and musicology of the pastoral
and early union pipes.
You can see pastoral pipes being played by Carlos Nunez here
and by Remi Decker here: Carlos's tunes
are from Geoghegan while Remi is playing modern tunes. In addition to the
old instruments, reproduction sets have been made in recent years by Geert Lejeune, Jon
Swayne, Chris
Bayley and Brian McCandless. Finally,
Duncan Gillis sells a foot joint that can
extend modern uilleann chanters to play pastoral tunes.
Richard
O'Mealy recorded ten tracks for the BBC in Belfast in 1943, in his
uniquely staccato style. Here they are, thanks to the BBC archives folks and
cleaned up by Ronan Browne. The
tracks are O'Mealy's
Hornpipe, Harvest
Home, The Wheels of
the World, The
Blackbird, Drops
of Brandy, The Sligo
Lasses, Smash
the Windows, The
Donegal Reel, The Mountains
of Pomeroy, and The Maids
of Mourneshore. There's also a surviving film clip.
Seamus Ennis: Here are four acetate recordings Seamus made
for an American friend in 1948. They are Salamanca,
Lord Gordon's Reel and the Merry Blacksmith; The
Bucks of Oranmore and The Sligo Maid's Lament; Paddy
O'Rafferty and the Reverend Brother's Jig; and The
Groves.
There are mp3s taken from old 78s of Patsy Touhey playing
The
Maid on the Green, Jackson's Jig and Give us a Drink of Water; of him
playing Drowsy
Maggie, Scottish Mary and the Flogging Reel; and of Michael
Carney playing The
Jolly Tinker. Phil Martin plays The
Greencastle Hornpipe, The Quarrelsome Piper and The Cork Hornpipe, and The Cup of
Tea and The Flogging Reel. Seamus O'Broin plays The Green
Groves of Erin and a hornpipe.
There is a performance of An bheann do
bhi cheana againn (My Former Wife) probably by Sergeant Early.
Dinny Delaney plays The
Repeal of the Union and The Old Hag at the Kiln; and Bean air
Tir air Urlar ag Obair and The Geese in the Bog.
Uilleann cylinders: Here are three old cylinder recordings
of the uilleann pipes. The first two are of Bernard Delaney
playing in Chicago in 1898: the tracks are Colonel
Taylor's, or the Beauty Spot, and The Cook
in the Kitchen. The third track is the last of the old-school Kerry pipers,
Mici `Cumbaw' O'Sullivan, playing fragments of Alasdrum's
March - possibly a seventeenth-century piobaireachd lost to the Scots
tradition but preserved in the Irish.
Irish fiddle: Here is Padraig
O'Keeffe playing Caioneadh Ui
Dhomhnall - the Lament for O'Donnell after the Battle of Kinsale, recorded
in 1948 or 49.
Most of the 78s, plus the cylinder and the fiddle recordings, are courtesy
of Ken MacLeod.
There are over a hundred old uilleann pipe recordings at archive.org, and still more at the Irish Traditional
Music Archive. And probably the best collection of Patsy Tuohey's music is
in the Dunn
family collection.
I plan to put many more old tracks and books online, as time permits. (Email me
any out-of-copyright stuff you think I might put up here!)
Sheet music: here are some links to online sites where you
can download out-of-copyright or other public-domain sheet music.
A couple of my tunes were published in the RMMB
book: a jig called The Chaffinch,
and a pipe adaptation of the Cajun song Ou ce que t'es
parti. I also wrote a jig, Dogmatix and the
Bricklayer, which you can play on the highland pipes against A drones, on
the Northumbrians against G drones or on the uilleans against D drones; it
sounds quite different in each case.
I am concerned about the effect that the copyright lobby has had on traditional
music; see here, for
example, about how things developed in Ireland, and here for flamenco.
I summed up the issues in a response I wrote to
the EU's consultation on the collecting societies.
Finally, since I admitted in my EU response to having been a busker during my
student days, there has emerged an embarrassing
photo of me, on the Ku'damm in Berlin, aged about 20 (thanks to Francis Sim
for identifying the location). I put it here to forestall the blackmailers!
My proper home page is here.
Some selected historical materials
Highland Pipe manuscripts and recordings
Note how the tempo has slowed – Willie Ross generally took 2 minutes 40
seconds to play a march, strathspey and reel in 1910, and 2 minutes 50 in 1937.
Competition players took about 3 minutes 40 forty years ago, and almost 4
minutes now!
These are from the test disks Willie got from the record companies, and
which are now the property of his granddaughter, Lesley Ross Alexander
– to which we owe our sincere thanks for making them available. Thanks
also to Richard Powell for digitising them.
Pastoral/union/uilleann and Northumbrian pipe music
Irish music recordings
Links