Noting the Tradition. The teaching of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol.

Transcription

1 Noting the Tradition. The teaching of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol.. Chair Jack Taylor Jack Taylor I am very pleased to introduce to you this morning. He has kindly agreed to come and talk to us about his Noting the Tradition project, and in particular what he has found about the teaching of Bob Brown and Bob Nicol. I am particularly grateful to James for coming. He has had a very busy time. This will be the sixth weekend in a row that he has been doing work at weekends on behalf of the National Piping Centre. James is originally from Inveraray. He went to school in Lochgilphead and in Oban. He went to a miscellany of universities he seems to have been an eternal student. Celtic Studies at Edinburgh University, a postgraduate diploma in librarianship and information studies from Robert Gordon s Institute of Technology in Aberdeen. He then went to Aberystwyth where he did an MSc in Economics. He previously worked in health libraries because he had an interest in health informatics, but of course his real interest was always in piping, so he came in 2010 to the National Piping Centre as librarian. During his time the he has developed the archive and has initiated the Noting the Tradition project. He is a fluent Gaelic speaker. He tells us on Twitter that he occasionally tweets in Gaelic, that he has Highland Tendencies. Make of that what you will. Thank you very much for coming. We look forward to hearing your talk. Good morning. I want to start off by talking a bit about the Noting the Tradition Project just to give some background to it. I have a number of recordings from the project here and what I want to do is to allow those recordings to speak for themselves. They are people who were taught piobaireachd by Robert Brown and by Robert Nicol. We have Ann Spalding, Dr Jack Taylor, Jimmy Macintosh and Malcolm Macrae. I really want these people to speak for themselves about being taught by these two influential figures. At the end I would like to draw the thing together by suggesting avenues for further research for members of the piobaireachd society or individuals who may be undertaking more formal qualifications in perhaps ethnomusicology or cultural studies. Noting the Tradition was a project which ran between July 2011 and July 2013 at the National Piping Centre. It was funded partly by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The aim of the project was to gather oral histories of individuals who had been involved with piping at a number of levels over 50 years or so, so we were looking to interview people who had been active in piping since the late 1950s. Our aim was to collect 40 interviews in total. At the end of the day we actually collected 45. We also had a number of other aims in terms of training volunteers to carry out the oral history interviews. I think that there is one of our volunteers, Howard Tindall, here today. We trained them in how to conduct oral history interviews and also in the history and culture of the Highland Bagpipe. We also undertook to roll out oral history training to schools, and a couple of the volunteers who were based

2 in Glasgow actually did this, notably in Drumchapel High School in Glasgow which is in area of deprivation. We also worked with Clevedon High School in Glasgow. I think it is important to say at the outset that this was not originally an academic oral history project. It is not something where there are research questions set by the project overall. It was more a case of allowing the researchers to get some training as far as piping was concerned, but also to allow them to research the background of the individuals they were interviewing and perhaps to see what emerged, so in that regard it is quite a bit different from some of the work that has been done in the ethnomusicology of piping, notably by Decker Forrest who is now at Sal Mor Ostaig, and also George Dixon at the Royal Conservoire of Scotland who used oral history methods as part of PhD D Theses, but who in doing so were actually looking to answer fairly specific research questions as part of that. We didn t have that sort of framework behind it. We were more looking to see what emerged from it but I think you will hear when we listen to the interviews that what we have gathered is primary historical source material which is of value, and what I hope will come out of this eventually will be further research work. One of the themes which emerged was the influence of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol in the transmission and teaching of Piobaireachd in the second half of the twentieth century, and how important these individuals were for a number of the people we interviewed. When I was looking over the project that was one thing that stood out, and I am very grateful to the Piobaireachd Society for giving me the opportunity to come and talk about that. I would like to move now into playing some sound files. What comes out of those is the sort of teaching methods that both Robert Nicol and Robert Brown espoused, but also what their understanding of Piobaireachd was. They had an understanding of Piobaireachd which, as far as I can see, was sort of peculiar to themselves, or original to themselves. I would be interested to hear any views from people about that. The first sound file we will hear is Ann Spalding who was taught by Bob Brown as a teenager. She is speaking here about who he was, how she was taught by him, and also a little bit about piobaireachd itself. The lady who is interviewing her is Lowry Potts, who has no background in piping. She just saw an advert for the project. She came along to one of our training sessions and she interviewed Ann, so you will probably hear that one or two questions are questions that somebody with more knowledge of piping might not have asked. So we can listen to Ann talking here. Ann Spalding Another reason that I wanted to go to Aberdeen, and I was only there for three years, at that time I was getting my piping tuition, my piobaireachd tuition from Bob Brown at Balmoral and that was Obviously going to be closer to go for instruction there. I had been going to Bob Brown since I was fourteen or fifteen.

3 Tell me about him, what was he like? He was the Queen s piper and he lived at the Balmoral estate. The Bobs of Balmoral there was Bob Brown and Bob Nicol, they were great pipers in their day, they competed then I heard them both Competing as well. That was just the place to go, that was who you went to. My mum arranged it all it was all done by letter we wrote a letter asking if it was alright to come up. It was my mum s friend that had a car then we were driven up to, I wish I knew all the details. Did you audition for that? No, he had heard me playing at a competition he had been judging at and the request had gone in would he be prepared to teach me piobaireachd. My mum felt that she had taken me as far as she could go. We took the car up to the foot bridge, we had to park the car walk over the bridge and he picked us up at the other side and took us into his house on the Balmoral estate. I was quite fascinated as I would be standing playing piobaireachd and I looked out the window and there would be deer outside the window. But that would be a whole day Sunday. Tell me about the importance of the piobaireachd. The piobaireachd is the big music of the pipes that most solo pipers will aspire too. The people that don t play piobaireachd tend to not like piobaireachd because they don t understand it; I think you have got to play it to understand it. It is the classical music of the pipes that was the original music of the pipes. You couldn t get more authentic than learning it the way you learnt it in Balmoral could you? Not really, I was very fortunate I suppose, at that time I didn t realise how fortunate I was. The other unfortunate thing was that when I did get up to Aberdeen in 1971 that was the year Bob Brown died; he had been out in Australia teaching. That was really quite hard and I kind of didn t do very much, I didn t get any real instruction until I then came back home after I had qualified and started teaching. I went then for my instruction to St Andrews to Bert Barron and I carried on learning piobaireachd with him and it was then I seriously started competing. What about the approaches your different teachers have had and how they have affected you, did they have different styles and reputations? No because Bert Barron was taught by Bob Brown as well so it was the same style. It was done in the same style. Could you describe that style, would I know what I was hearing if I heard it or was it too subtle? It is probably too subtle, I think it is less now, at that time it was an east coast and west coast thing John MacDonald of Inverness taught Bob Brown, I always felt there was an east coast/north east style and a west coast style I didn t really look into it enough to be honest.

4 Could you hear it now, that difference in sound? It s just the interpretation of the tunes that can be different. I think piobaireachd as it is played just now is much more standardised, I think, than it was then. You would get people playing different styles; I think it is just all the same now. Is it written down, is it captured in that way? Sort of yes, piobaireachd is written down now. But when I first went to Bob Brown to be taught, I was learning a new tune The Earl of Seaforth, we had the book but we had no chanter involved at that point you had to sing it. I was fourteen or fifteen at the time and I didn t want to sing really but he said sing damn you sing, so I had to sing with him. You had to sing through the tunes, there is a way of singing piobaireachd and that is the way it has been handed down and it s the canntaireachd, there is a set Nether Lorn canntaireachd which is the beginning of all the books, and I have been through it and I can sort of do it but I do sing my own canntaireachd because Bob Brown did it quite differently from the books as well. It is the sound of the movements and that is what you sing. So that s Ann Spalding s experience, obviously as a young girl going to Bob Brown. We ll hear a bit more about their character, the differences between them, and of their approach. The next excerpt I have for you is of your President, Dr Jack Taylor. It is a fairly lengthy excerpt, and I ll let it speak for itself. The interviewer is Bill Gallagher. He is a piper who comes to the Piping Centre quite a bit. He was quite keen to be involved in terms of that. Jack is really here speaking of his experiences of learning piobaireachd with Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. Jack Taylor So when did your lessons actually start, they started at the beginning of your university career? Yes I remember it well. I had gone - I had decided to go to Bob Nicol, Bert said just go and the best day was a Sunday. Bob did not have a telephone; he stayed away at the back of beyond in Glen Gairn, a wee place he stayed up there. He lived with his sister? He did. He stayed with his sister up there and there was no phone contact and I just chose to go, Bert said Sunday is usually a good day. So I just chose to go, it was a real cheek. So you had been introduced to Bob Brown? I had been introduced to Bob Nicol but I had not met Bob Brown by that time. So this was Bob Nicol and so you went up at knocked on his door? I basically went and knocked on his door and he said what are you doing here and that was it and he gave me a lesson.

5 Right there and then? There and then. I actually did not realise I had got the bus to Ballater and I walked from Ballater to his place which is actually a good deal further than I thought. Glen Gairn to Ballater is about five miles and I remember walking [laughter], I did not know, but anyway so he thought I was completely daft. He said yes fine and you just made arrangements, usually by letter, for your lessons. So it was not every week? No. You would go away and practice? Yes and there was no use really going to see them unless you knew the tune. If you wanted to learn a turn you would familiarise yourself with it and then you would go. So that is what you said they would do any finishing and polishing? Yes. Can you describe Bob Nicol what was he like. I understand he had lost sight in one eye? He did. He had. Bob he was a very nice man, he was a bachelor, he was very direct, gruff even but he had a great sense of humour. But when you went for a lesson with Bob, well come in sit down, what tunes do you want to do and you would choose the tunes he would not and so you would say My King has Landed in Moidart. He would say yes this is how I got it from old Johnny and he would sing it to you. He would sing it to you? Yes. And that was John? MacDonald he had been a pupil John MacDonald from Inverness and Bob Nicol especially was very insistent that what he was giving you was what he had been given. He saw himself as somebody just passing it on and he was not doing anything to it himself musically which I think you could argue. I would now argue with that approach but this is how I got it from old Johnny, this is it and we had tape recorders coming in then so we would tape recorded stuff. It is interesting it seems as if he actually encouraged people to record? He did. So there are quite a large number of recordings of Bob Nicol. So I suppose he was ahead of his time at that time? He would have been, Brown was the same he encouraged the recording and of course he recorded lots of stuff as you ll know.

6 Did he take the view I think I think I read he took the view that it was not just simply to be copied the way he played was to set you the example but he did not expect you to copy it absolutely? He would say this is the bones you put the flesh on it. Those were his words and he would repeat these words often and if you played something to him and he would say that was quite nice but you would maybe prefer it this way and then he would show you that way and normally you would prefer it that way. I have heard I have read that he was habitually clad in tweed plus fours was he? Yes he was. He was employed by Balmoral Estate as a gamekeeper/gillie/stalker I think was his main thing, stalking. So he always had the baggy plus fours all the time. I think he had an accident with or an illness that affected his right hand? Yes he got Parkinson s later on, I think medically I was diagnosing it as a kind of Parkinsonian tremor of his right hand he got which made curiously enough he could still play when his hand went on the chanter it was steady although it would have affected his technique to a degree. So you would play the tune on the pipes would he play the pipes or did he play the chanter? He usually played the chanter but he also played the pipes and he played the pipes quite a lot. He would play variations of tunes, he would play light music. Bob Nicol was a great light music player much more than he was known to be. Was he? And there are recordings of Bob playing light music and it is pretty damn good playing. Did you do any light music with him or was it all piobaireachd? No I played the odd march to him and he said, You need some lessons on how to play marches [laughter] and I never got the lessons. Quite direct [laughter]. Yes. So what about Bob Brown? How was your contact with Bob Brown? It was through two people, it was through Bill Fraser who was pipe major of Aberdeen University at the time, he made a contact and he took me and I think Ian Duncan or was it Bill Wotherspoon, I am not sure up to see Bob Brown once. That was the first time I ever went and he was staying at Garbh Allt Shiel there and that really hit me and that was when the sound of piobaireachd started to mean something to me. So what was Bob Brown like then? Bob was a warmer more charismatic character who was much more willing although, yes he would have said this, he was much more willing to put his own feeling into his music, Bob Nicol wouldnae have done that but Bob Brown would and he was a great musician. He was a highly intelligent man

7 who had really thought hard about piobaireachd and how it should be played and about how he would play it. The first time I went they were learning a particular tune called MacFarlane s Gathering and somebody said would you mind just playing it and Bob said och, aye, the pipes aren t going very well, and he played and I thought wow yes I now understand what this music is all about and I really would say that I had not particularly until that time understood it. So when was that can you remember? It would have been 1968 probably. So was that before you started lessons with Bob Nicol? No after. I went to Bob Nicol first of all and then went to Bob Brown and they had no problem with that. So because you were not a regular weekly pupil you could say I will go to see Bob Brown send him a letter and then you would go? Aye, that is right. You have written the let me see the entry for Bob Brown in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography? Yes I did do that. And you describe him as a warm unassuming man with a deep love and understanding of nature? Yes. He was a gamekeeper? Yes he was. His particular skill apparently was salmon fishing and he was an excellent salmon fisherman but he did all the things that a gillie would do. But he did believe that closeness to nature actually was helpful to people in the musical sense. Nicol did as well actually. So a man of many parts? Yes. You refer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography that Bob Brown s gift was to bring piobaireachd alive and I think you have just covered that? Yes. And you refer to his sure touch fluency and definition of melody and phrase, could you just elaborate on that? Yes I mean a piece of music should not be played in a straight line and to me piobaireachd often was just played in straight lines until I went and heard him and it was not. So you would get a series of four notes occurring one after the other which really would have the same note value but Bob Brown

8 would not have given them the same note value, one would be stronger, one would be weaker, one would be medium, one would be stronger and he would just do that and one phrase would clearly answer the next phrase, he would push a wee bit out here and then take it back melodically with the next note. He just did all that kind of stuff that to me just made sense musically. He was just good at it. He was singing through his bagpipes. Yes. How did he teach, did he teach with canntaireachd? Singing. Mainly singing and again I can remember just to site one example, going for a lesson it was learning the set tunes for the competitions and then tune was MacLeod s Controversy and he said yes well this is it and I had my book, I had not studied the tune and he sang it and then as he sang it I would mark my book with the nuances and influences that he put into it and he would say well that is the way it is have a think about it, come back and the next time you can play it over. I think just looking through that we can see the influence of singing in terms of teaching piobaireachd, and it is a common theme that we find running through all the interviewees who were taught by Robert Nicol and Robert Brown. Very different I have to say than some of their contermpories, or some of their older contempories. One of the individuals we interviewed was PM Robert Kilgour, formerly of the Scot s Guards. He received a lot of piobaireachd tuition from Willie Ross at Edinburgh Castle in the late 1940s, and I think was maybe one of the last surviving pupils of Willie Ross. Ross s approach to the teaching of Piobaireachd was completely different. There was no singing at all. He actually was very much against singing. He used the chanter. As Robert Kilgour related in his interview, which I haven t got a recording of with me, Willie Ross showed you something twice, and if you had to be shown it a third time, you were too late, you would never get it from him. So he had a very different approach to it. Interestingly enough when Willie Ross himself was interviewed by Alan Lomax in the 1950 s about learning to play the bagpipes away back in probably the 1880 s when he was a child he said he was taught by canntaireachd and he actually started singing a little bit of canntaireachd to Lomax when he asked him to do that. So there is a curious turn there and a curious approach, and it is maybe something that would be worth further investigation at some point. Why, having been taught by canntaireachd, did Willie Ross within his own teaching actually use the chanter? Two of Brown and Nicol s major pupils in the 1960 s and 1970 s were James Macintosh and Malcolm Macrae. The next tracks I have are from them. First of all from Jimmy Macintosh, then from Malcolm. I ll speak about the Jimmy Macintosh tracks first of all. I am the interviewer. The interview was done at Newark Airport during the Metro Cup in You may at one point here a jet taking off in the background. But here is Jimmy talking about his first forays into professional solo competition in the 1950 s/1960 s. He had been a boy soldier and had been taught piping in Dundee, had joined the army spent quite a number of years in the army, and by the 1960 s he was taking up professional competitive piping. So here he is speaking about that. James Macintosh He was talking about Inverness, he was obviously thinking about all the great players and everything and that was way above my level. So I entered for Inverness anyway and I didn t do

9 anything in the piobaireachd, I did some things that weren t very good, I could only remember three piobaireachds. But I did win a couple of prizes with the March, Strathspey and Reel. I decided then that I needed to study so I went to Bob Brown then. Bob took me on. When would this about? I started with Bob Brown in So really in the fifties had you been involved with the band and stuff like that and then kind of moved on and your solo piping career really started in the sixties? That s right. I was in my forties then. That was really the best decision I ever made during my whole life. He changed my whole life. I went up to Balmoral and he says Play something and I played Donald of Laggan and he said Yes, you ve got it all but you need to learn to play it from your heart not your feet. Put down your pipes. So I put down my pipes, took out the practice chanter and he said you can t use that, you need to use singing. So, that was it, from that point on every piobaireachd I played like that as a song. I progressed very quickly with him. It was just chemistry that worked. He was that kind of person. He very easily conveyed to you what he wanted. I did very well then, I mean I really started and I kind of dropped away from light music. So what were the tunes that you were doing with him? All the tunes, he would just say, he would give me three or four tunes and just say now memorise them and as soon as you have them memorised, don t play too much till you come back. When I went back he would comment on them. I wasn t long started with Bob when Malcolm MacRae came from Australia. Bob said to me there was a young Australian chap coming. I d like you and him to do what Nicol and me did with Macdonald, the two of you come together for lessons and take different tunes so you can help each other out after these two years. Was this the early seventies by this point? When did Malcolm come here now? Was it, 72 or 73, something like that? No, it was before that actually, I think about 67. Oh right, because I think he came and then he went back to Australia and then he came back. Yes he went back. It would have been 1967 I think. So Malcolm and I did that for a few years. He was sharing a house in Hamilton with a New Zealand chap, Donald Bain. Donald was here for two years, and he was studying with Donald MacLeod. The day that Bob Brown was buried, I just started with Bob Nicol then, I had had some lessons from Bob because Bob Brown wouldn t teach you certain tunes, the likes of The Big Spree he said you need to go to Nicol but then when Bob died I just started with Bob Nicol then. Bob died in And the other Bob died I think about 1972 or 1973, is that right? 1972, Bob Brown died, yes. So yourself and Malcolm were going to both Bob Brown and Bob Nicol during that period?

10 Yes, basically all my piobaireachd teaching was from those two. So, really, Jimmy MacIntosh s experience of going to Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. The last three tracks I have are from Malcolm Macrae. Malcolm, again a pupil of those individuals. And just to fill you in on a bit of the background of the circumstances of the recording I interviewed Malcolm at the National Piping Centre when he was over here during the summer of However we had a bit of a technical disaster and a lot of the interview was not recorded, so very kindly Malcolm, when he went back to Australia, recorded a statement for us about his piping experience. It covers a whole range of things. It covers his early days in Australia learning with an individual called Peter Davidson who had been a pupil of Robert Reid. It covers his coming to Scotland, his sharing a house, as we heard there, with Donald Bain, and then eventually moving to Scotland in the early 1970 s, his time as president of the Piobaireachd Society, and one or two other aspects of his piping career. But what we are going to hear about first of all is his coming to Scotland and becoming a pupil of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. So I will just let him speak about that. Malcolm Macrae I was at university studying law and then I was practising law. I qualified about 64 or 65 at about the time that Robert Reid passed away, Robert Reid died in 1965 so the idea of going to Reid for tuition proved impossible. I did eventually travel to Scotland at the end of 1966 and at one of the indoor competitions in Glasgow in 1967, I introduced myself to Robert Brown, he, of course, had fond memories of Peter Davidson s time with him back in Peter had also been a good friend to one of Bob Brown s daughters, Marion. Marion was married to a tea planter. They were first in India but latterly in New Guinea, they used to come to Sydney, Walter and Marion Johnson used to come to Sydney for their holidays. I met Marion during several of those visits to Sydney and of course because of the contact with Marion I dare say that Robert Brown felt that he had to help me for Peter Davidson s sake. He was kind enough to tell me to contact him and to feel free to go to him for tuition. I remember well he said that you won t have any difficulty remembering my phone number it Braemar 251, that s two fifty-first Highland divisions. After some months in Glasgow I contacted Robert Brown and commenced going to him for tuition. I had a job with Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and the job was nothing spectacular I was trying to sell advertising space in the Chamber of Commerce s monthly journal, not very successfully. But there was a little car went with the job, little Ford Anglia, with a funny back window, but anyway, I used the car to go up to see Robert Brown and I was going up of a weekend, probably every second or third weekend during the first half of After I had been going to him for several months he said look you should really team with another piper from Dundee, Jim Macintosh, he has been coming to me as you have been and it would help if you two were to come together as King George V said when he sent me, (that s Brown and Robert Nicol) to John MacDonald of Inverness one will forget, two will not forget. So I made the acquaintance of Jim Macintosh who was living at Broughty Ferry just outside Dundee and we got into a routine of me driving from Glasgow, or latterly Hamilton where I was staying,

11 through to Broughty Ferry on a Saturday afternoon, I would spend the Saturday night with Jim and his family and early on the Sunday morning we would hop in my car and go through Glenshee to Braemar and to Balmoral, park the car by the roadside, walk over the pedestrian swing bridge across the Dee go to Bob s house at the Garbh-Allt Shiel and we would have a lesson a that extended from early afternoon to sometimes eight or nine at night on the Sunday. I would then drive back to Broughty Ferry and drop Jim off and continue on to Hamilton and go to work bright and early on the Monday morning. This was just wonderful. It was a wonderful experience and certainly it did help that Jim and I were going together because we were working on different tunes. Our principal objective was to master the set tunes for that year and we would each have four or five tunes and invariably, I think that we each ended up learning the other man s tunes better than the ones we had been working on ourselves, because you could hear and see the other player being conducted through his tune by Brown and you could appreciate exactly what it was Brown was trying to get out of the pupil s playing. Whereas the pupil had fingers and bagpipe to worry about and he could never accomplish it quite as well as you perceived it could be done. I was living in Hamilton during 1967 and 1968 because early in 1967 I had made the acquaintance of Donald Bain a piper who had just a month or two before I had; he d gone to Glasgow to have tuition from Donald MacLeod. But Donald had his wife Alice and two little boys in tow and they were living in a tenement flat just off Alexandra Parade at Townhead, Toonheid, in Glasgow, near the infirmary where Alice worked as a nurse. However, the boys were not enjoying Glasgow life, certainly not tenement life in the middle of winter so we teamed up and we rented a house in Hamilton, a bit out of Glasgow but we both commuted into Glasgow. Donald had a job working for a company that serviced Gestetner duplicating machines and he had a little van so we both had wheels. From my point of view the most interesting aspect of being able to stay with Donald was we were able to compare and contrast the tuition that we were getting, he from Donald MacLeod and I from Robert Brown. He too was working on the set tunes so we were quite mystified early on as to why it was that there were subtle differences between Donald MacLeod s ways of the tunes and Robert Brown s ways of the tunes. Ultimately we could only put it down to the fact that they were taught by John MacDonald at different stages of John MacDonald s career. Robert Brown had started going to John MacDonald in Inverness in, I think, 1926, Nicol having gone the year before in Brown and Nicol had continued going to John MacDonald until the outbreak of war. Donald Macleod as far as I know didn t have regular tuition from John MacDonald until after the war, mid to late 1940s. Whether that is the reason for the slight differences in style I really don t know but that is all that Donald and I were able to put it down to. Certainly it has been said by many to me that Donald MacLeod didn t ever hear John MacDonald play pipes and it may be that that is part of the reason for the differences that Donald Bain and I were able to detect in the teaching we were receiving. I had the impression before I went to Scotland that to play piobaireachd it was a matter of simply copying parrot fashion the playing of a master player such as Robert Reid and certainly although Peter Davidson had had good tuition in New Zealand from, amongst others George Yardley who was a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies, the way Peter learnt tunes from Reid s recordings was simply to sit there with an ear glued to the loudspeaker of the tape recorder and to try to analyse the relative

12 lengths of notes and try to reproduce the tune in that fashion, so that is the way I learnt piobaireachd as well. After I had been going to Brown, I suppose for three or four lessons the penny dropped. There was rather more to it than simply parrot fashion learning to copy the way of the tune. Rather there were rudimentary rules that gave you the key to any particular tune. Now, Brown talked about scansion, he used to describe any particular tune by reference to its scansion. By scansion he meant the pattern of accented and unaccented pulses or beats within each phrase. So a four pulse tune he would describe as the scansion being strong, medium, medium, strong. Three pulse tunes would be strong, medium, strong or medium, medium, strong depending upon the particular tune. Of course once you were told the scansion of a particular tune was strong, medium, medium, strong it all became predictable and intelligible and you were able to use this knowledge of the pattern to be able to present the tune in a way that was both musical but made sound sense in a way. This was a great revelation; I wondered where the term had come from. Nicol also talked about scansion, I spoke subsequently to other pupils of John MacDonald and they said that, no, they didn t remember John MacDonald talking about scansion in that particular way. The conclusion I reached was Brown and Nicol were able over many year analyse the way John MacDonald played and they were able to identify the pattern of pulses within the phrases and were able to discern that this was akin to scansion in terms of poetry, where a line of poetry can be scanned and the syllables can be identified as strong or weak or having a particular pattern. Notwithstanding scansion was a great aid to being able to interpret and present a tune in a sensible but yet musical fashion and this was the one particular feature of Brown s teaching in particular that made a great impression on me. I have one more track to play in which Malcolm talks in a bit of detail about the teaching methods of Bob Brown. Malcolm Macrae Could I say a little more about Brown s method of teaching? We did not play the practice chanter to any great extent. The practice chanter was really for demonstrating and practising embellishments. Brown s method of teaching involved him singing the tune to us without reference to a book although both Jim and I would do as all piobaireachd pupils do we would sort of mark up the book with all sorts of magic symbols. But invariably it is very difficult to remember exactly what you intended by a particular mark that you might have put on a score. It was a matter of learning the song of the tune, particularly the song of the ground. You would have an indication of the scansion and you would listen to Brown singing it, you would then sing along with him. Unfortunately there was a certain reticence about us using tape recorders in our lessons, and this was not encouraged so we didn t record our lessons. Therefore it took a long time, like maybe four or five lessons over several months to get the way of the tune precisely as Brown would want it. Jim and I would sing the tunes to each other driving up and down the road going to and from our lessons, but almost always there would be subtleties that we would immediately become aware of once Brown again sang the tune to us.

13 I can t help but contrast that method of learning which took a lot of time with the methods that pupils invariably seem to use these days where immediately they come for tuition the tape recorder or the mobile telephone or whatever goes on and the whole session is recorded. I think this is really wonderful, where it might have taken me many weeks or even months for a tune to mature and for me to feel I was playing it more or less how Brown wanted me to play it. Now one of my pupils might say they want to learn a tune, so I say oh set your recorder going and I sing the tune to him. Depending upon how experienced the player is I might sing the ground and just a little of each variation or I may sing the whole tune. The pupil takes that recording away and almost invariably within a week or two, or three he is back and can play the tune on the bagpipe. Now, Jim and I took much longer than that to learn any one tune because of the repetitive nature of the process of going through the song of the tune again and again at successive lessons. I just wish we had had the temerity to have said to Bob Brown that we would really like to record your singing of this tune so that I can listen to this before I come next time, so that hopefully I could have the tune off by the next lesson. Ok, he would sing the tune, we would sing along with him and then we would play the tune once we had memorised it on the bagpipe, not on the practice chanter. We would play the tune on the pipe and he would conduct us through the tune. We would move slowly around the room and he would either stand in the one spot or move in front of us conducting us with his hands and his arm and you were very quickly able to interpret his hand movements and the way in which he was conducting. And, indeed sometimes the way he looked at you, enabling you to appreciate the nuances of expression that he was looking for. I think this is a wonderful way to learn and to teach others. That is the method that I have used, I think successfully, over the last fifteen or twenty years that I have been teaching. When you could play the tune right the way through he might comment on technical matters, embellishments and so on but the concentration was on rhythm, on the tempo of the ground and the variations and above all on the expression. He wanted you to be able to show the start and the finish of each phrase. This has made me appreciate that because of the limitations of our instrument where we can t vary the volume and we can t stop the sound, the setting out of the phrases and showing the phrases and showing the ends of the lines is of paramount importance. Brown used to liken piobaireachd to poetry, lines of verse and the expression that you gave to the line and phrases that made up the line was all important. He used to not speak about the term rubato, he did not use that term, but he used to indicate that you would take a little off this note and put it onto that one for effect. He talked about robbing Peter to pay Paul, he talked about the lights and shades and these subtleties of expression made his playing very distinctive. I feel that this represents the heart of good piobaireachd playing as contrasted to the many players who can play the tune pretty much as is accepted as the customary way of a tune as compared to what might amount to a literal interpretation of the score. But the subtleties nevertheless are still missing; some of these subtleties that Brown was able to impart really made each tune very distinctive.

14 Brown had died, of course, before I went back to Scotland in 1974 and I went to Robert Nicol from 1974 until his death which I think was in the late 1970s. I found Nicol a wonderful teacher in that he left you in no doubt whatsoever as to what he required. He had a very positive and forthright manner of singing the tune and conducting you through the tune. I felt there were rather less subtleties in his expression, but nevertheless if you could play on the bagpipe the tune as Nicol sang it you were playing a really good piece of music. So, the teaching of Robert Brown and Robert Nicol. That is the final excerpt from Noting the Tradition that I have for you. I think that for me there are a number of things that arise where did the term scansion come from, what about the differences between individuals who were coming from what seemed to have been the same source, for example Donald MacLeod being taught by John MacDonald of Inverness and perhaps taking a slightly different approach to tunes. I think it is about the nature of tradition; it is about individuals interacting with tradition. I think there is probably the foundation of a research project there, because there are other people who were interviewed who have something to contribute to the transmission of Piobaireachd in the 20 th century. Howard Tindall, who is sitting in the audience, interviewed Hugh MacCallum. Now Hugh was taught by Ronald MacCallum by and large but he also received some tunes from Willie Thomson who lived in Kintyre, probably born about the turn of the 20 th century, had been taught by Ronald MacKenzie, who in turn had been taught by John Ban MacKenzie, so you have people there who are going back not many early remove to those who had the old Gaelic oral tradition, which indeed the evidence that we are hearing here seems to that which these two individuals very much espoused. So that is really all I have to say. I am certainly happy to take questions, and any comments that you might like to make. Jack Taylor Any questions for James? Tom Graham Sometimes tunes seem to be all fingering and no melody. You were saying that they would sing to their pupils. I maintain that they must have sung the tunes when they were invented. There must have been a rhythm to them; otherwise it wouldn t have just arrived. I must confess that a lot of piobaireachd just sounds like expert fingering rather than expert song. So is that my fault? Interestingly one of the things that has come out of this and I didn t really play we could be here all day Ann Spalding makes the comment, and Malcolm alluded to it at the end of his piece there that the approach is much more standardised now than it was formerly, and there are one or two other interviewees who make that point as well.

15 Tom Graham Do you think that it was more rigorously taught this way? There is some evidence which suggest that pipers who approach music orally actually have a different take on the music than pipers who learn to read music. There is an article in Scottish Studies by a man called Tyber Fallsit which looks at the piping traditions of Cape Breton where the pipers were by and large mainly Gaelic speaking. They were mainly ear-trained pipers and they weren t able to read music. If I have understood what he is saying in the article he is saying that those individuals have their own aesthetic which is different from that of those who have learnt to play from the page. Roderick Cannon My question follows directly on from what James just said, but it is really for Jack. Jack, you talked about having lessons from Bob Brown and as he would sing to you, you would be making marks on the score, as you were listening. I want to ask, do you still have these? And would you be prepared, not just now, but possibly privately to sing yourself into a recorder to illustrate what those marks convey to you. Jack Taylor I do. I didn t do that for very many tunes, certainly the tunes I got from Bob Brown I still do have the markings, and, unlike Malcolm I am able to understand my markings. They are very helpful. I was thinking about Malcolm s remarks about tape recorders. Bob Nicol was very happy for us to use tape recorders. But it made me think. Maybe it accelerates learning in one way, but maybe having time to go over stuff, and then go back to the teacher, could mean that learning becomes more firmly entrenched. I remember going to Bob Brown, and he would give us a new tune. You would go away with it in your head, and then it would disappear somewhere, and you would try and capture it back, and it took a long time before you felt you had caught what he was trying to give you. You only really realised whether you had or whether you hadn t when you went back for the next lesson and you would do what you thought he wanted you to do that you would realise that is was or wasn t right. Peter McCallister On the same point about that, I have been going for lessons for a long long time, and sometimes the teacher changes which is really interesting. I wonder if you have any ideas on that regarding the oral tradition James. You mean the actual person changed, or the teacher s approach changed? PM The teacher s approach changed.

16 JB I have had various discussions about this with pipers, but also I wouldn t personally agree with Malcolm s analysis of why Donald MacLeod had a slightly different approach from Brown and Nicol towards Piobaireachd because I think that there are a number of other possible explanations other than the fact that Donald MacLeod received his teaching from John MacDonald at a later stage in his career. Yes I think that John MacDonald changed his views about tunes. I had a discussion with Roddy MacLeod about that. Roddy was making the point that he has actually revised his views on tunes throughout his piping career. And also I think that with Donald MacLeod you are actually dealing with a consummate musician who would have been putting quite a bit of himself into tunes as well. One of the other interviews we have done, fairly recently, is with John MacDougall. After the tape machine was switched off, he said yes I went to Bob Brown and so on but you actually have to put quite a bit of yourself into these tunes. That was a fairly strong statement from him about that. Tom Graham Sometimes you hear a piper playing, and he misses a grace note or something like that, but in the process of memorising that grace note that they have actually missed, they have forgotten how the tune goes. And sometimes to memorise a tune properly you have to get this rhythm in your head about it. I am doing a tune now and in fact while I am sitting here now I am practicing the movement rather than listening to the tune. May it is just because I am a Scouser, but it seems to be overplayed how wonderful your fingers are, how well you can play that tune. JB Which maybe is the Breton approach to things, that the taste of the music is much more important than the actual technicalities. Malcolm Whyte A lot of us here will remember Rhona Lightfoot giving us the MacFadyen talk at Stirling Castle, and she maintained that, first it helped if you had the Gaelic; second the music had to be in the family whether it was clarsach fiddle or pipes and you had to understand the history of the tune. If you did that, it came from the heart rather than the head, and that was the impression I got from listening to these tapes, that you have to understand what the tune is about and the history of it and where it was written. Would you agree on this? JB Up to a point. I think we need to move away from the concept of these tunes being written, because I think we don t know how these tunes originally emerged. That would be the point that I would make. It is important not to forget that with Gaelic culture you are dealing with something that until the beginning of the 19 th century was primarily oral, and the transmission of song, the transmission of literature, oral literature, and the transmission of music, is done orally, and I think that, at this stage when we live in a highly literate culture, it easy to forget just how oral these cultures were, and how strongly oral they were. I mean if you move sideways and begin to look at

17 Gaelic Song for example, there are songs that are composed, not written, composed, in the 16 th century still being sung in the 20 th century, and these songs have been passed on orally. So I think that it is important to see it within that broader context. Keith Nicol It is just an aside, rather than a question. My wife comes from an Irish background, her mother was a Gaelic speaker from the north west of Ireland, and when I introduced her to some of the tapes form the masters of Piping series with Brown and Nicol, which are very good, she recognised the styles of some of these tunes which she had got from her mother which I thought was interesting because her mother would sing these songs when she was doing the washing or doing the housework, so it was ingrained in certainly the Irish culture. JB It was ingrained in the culture of the Highlands as well. You find travellers coming to the Highlands as they are opening up in the 19 th century and one of the things that they comment on is just how ubiquitous music is, because people sing when they are in the fields, when they are working in the house and when they are doing all sorts of things. Jack Taylor If there are no other questions it remains for me to thank James again for his excellent contribution by getting that project up and going, analysing the material, and proposing ideas for further research. In particular highlighting that thing which was a word that Bob Brown seems almost to have invented, scansion, and what all that actually means. So James thank you very much for your contribution. It has been much appreciated.