The Great Highland Bagpipe

Visitors to Highland Gatherings will invariably see and hear two types of competition piping - solo piping and that of the large Pipe Bands. At the Crieff Games you will experience up to 30 such bands from various corners of the globe.

Comrie Pipe Band, Crieff Games 2000

In the competitions, bands play a medley of marches, strathspeys and reels for between three and nine minutes, dependent upon the grade in which they are competing. In solo piping the most valuable prizes are usually for Piobaireachd (pronounced peebroch and in writing, Anglicised to pibroch) which although meaning simply pipe music, has come to be applied to the classical music of the bagpipes - the great music or in GaeliPage 16c ceol mor, (pronounced keyall more).

Lighter music, for dancing or marching is known as ceol aotrom or ceol beag but it is for the Piobaireachd that competitors and connoisseurs alike will travel the globe.

Like much classical music, it consists of themes with variations and since each Piobaireachd can last up to 15 or 20 minutes, it demands considerable feats of memory as well as playing skill.

The composers of the golden age, including the famous McCrimmons, taught their pupils by word of mouth and chanting - canntaireachd, which was the form in which these compositions were first written down. Unlike the composers of other types of classical music they left no instructions about how the tunes should be played including whether they should be fast or slow.

A Piobaireachd starts with the ground or basic theme and is developed in more and more complex variations until the climax when the simple ground is repeated as a finale. In normal Piobaireachd competitions, the player has to submit three tunes and the judges select one of these tunes to be played. Thus the Piobaireachd competition is a test, not only of piping skills but of memory and concentration.

What judges are looking for is not only good technical execution in fingering and in the playing of the grace notes, but a well-tuned and balanced instrument. They are also judging on whether the player seems to convey what they believe to be the emotional expression required by the chosen tune.

Whilst the Great Highland Bagpipe was often regarded as an instrument of war with its battle tunes, gatherings and salutes, much of the repertoire consists of Laments. With an instrument on which one cannot vary the pitch, cannot play more loudly or softly, it is not easy to express pathos but some of our best players, playing some of our most famous laments, accomplish this with great skill.

In the old days, pipers would sometimes say, not that a man had won a competition but that he had pleased the judges. This acknowledges the fact that good interpretation is of the essence of rine Piobaireachd playing.

The History of the Pipes
With its beginnings in ancient Egypt, the bagpipe is one of the oldest instruments played by man. The primitive form of today's pipes was played by the Greeks and Romans and variations of the instrument spread throughout Europe.

By the 18th century however, population centres had grown in size, outdoor entertainment had decreased and music had become more of an indoor pursuit with the noisy bagpipes being replaced by the forerunners of today's much quieter musical instruments.

In Scotland however, the bagpipe's martial music found a permanent home. Clan chiefs had their own pipers who held a very high position in the clan hierarchy and frequently had their own ghillie to carry the pipes.

The position of clan piper was often hereditary and the most famous of these was that of the MacCrimmon family in Skye who were the hereditary pipers to the Macleods of Dunvegan - who have inhabited Dunvegan castle since 1255. It is generally accepted that the Macleods gifted lands at Borreraig to the MacCrimmons around the end of the 16th century where they established their piping school at one end of a long two-storied farmhouse. It is said that in that building and the surrounding caves and hollows, some of the world's finest pipe music was composed. Caves and hollows were the equivalent to today's tape recorder - the piper could hear his own work.

After the unsuccessful rising of 1745, the bagpipe was considered an instrument of war and its playing in Scotland was forbidden. The piping colleges were broken up and the hereditary families of pipers were scattered.

Having had a taste of the considerable martial instincts of the Scots, the British government set about harnessing that military potential and commenced raising Scottish regiments. In the infantry regiments the English fife and drum (the fife was a small, shrill flute) were replaced by the pipe and drum and there is no doubt that it was that fact which was largely responsible, not only for the continued popularity of the bagpipe, but also for its steady growth throughout the world wherever Scottish regiments served.

There has always been a great interdependence between pipe and fiddle music with each borrowing from the other's repertoire for dancing. More recent developments include combining pipe bands with military bands and the introduction of the bagpipe into folk groups with great effect - in common with much folk music, pipe music uses a pentatonic scale (consisting of five notes). Even more modern, has been the very innovative combination of the bagpipe with African tribal drums called Afro Caledonian which produces a most unusual and rhythmic result.

Unique to Scotland Of the multitude of bagpipes in the world today, the Great Highland Bagpipe is unique to Scotland and probably the best known and certainly the most frequently played. This is undoubtedly the result of expatriate Scots spreading the word and the very great influence of the colourful displays mounted by the Scottish Regiments serving in all corners of the globe. The bagpipe is played by firstly blowing air through the blowpipe into the sheepskin or cowhide bag which incorporates a non-return valve. The bag is then squeezed between the piper's arm and side to force air out through the chanter and drones.

A young competitor at the 1926 gathering

The chanter is the part of the instrument on which the melody is played. Chanters have a double reed but unlike other reed instruments, the player cannot tongue the reed to produce special effects and he must rely on playing grace notes to accent and embellish the tune. A grace note is a momentary chirping sound in front of a note and is indicated on a music sheet by having three short tails on the shaft of the note.

The Great Highland Bagpipe is one of the few in the world to have three single-reed drones, each producing - as their name suggests a different but continuous note which act as a background to the melody.

Rules, entry forms, sponsorship details can be downloaded from here.

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