The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967.
I’d admit to plagiarism of Pink Floyd’s early album title except that…they ripped it off from Chapter 7 of Kenneth Grahame’s children’s book, “The Wind in the Willows.” 🙂
Music plagiarism seems to be the only area of music conspiracy I’ve heard of – and it’s not really much of a conspiracy theory since it can be determined by a judge/jury listening to the disputed song. Mozart, the Masons, and The Magic Flute, notwithstanding! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_and_Freemasonry
However, I read of this tale on the web, which seems to fit the description of a music conspiracy. Containing as it does, Royalty (two monarchs), Scotland, music notation, the quality of a piece of wood, the name of a Sydney suburb, and…Donald Trump!
A music conspiracy about a musical instrument itself. The Great Highland Bagpipe.
Some music fans might laugh, “Bagpipes are music?” I think musicologists would take the line of the description of Intelligence, “Military intelligence is to Intelligence as military music is to real music.” The regimental bagpipe band marches recognised around the world I suspect your conservatory/university musicologists would sniff, “Totally uninteresting, musically.” With solo bagpipe playing, piobairchead (pibroch), notes held for 30 seconds or longer, “Ah…this is an original sound. Much more innovative.”
Alistair Campsie (of Sydney suburb name!) an amateur piper declared in a 1980 book that pibroch could not have come into being the way it has been descibed because:-
a) Sir Walter Scott fabricated the legendary piping school on the Isle of Skye, supposedly run by the MacCrimmon family since the Middle Ages.
b) Piper Angus MacKay, who received the MacCrimmon musical notation from his father, and then wrote the classic book of Pibroch piping could not have done so because… “MacKay was probably clinically insane from the age of 20, long before most of his work was written, and was dragged off to Bedlam after an indiscretion at Windsor Castle involving the Queen when he was raging drunk with “ardent spirits” at Christmas, 1853; he was certified insane in 1854.” http://www.amazon.com.au/The-MacCrimmon-Legend-Madness-MacKay-ebook/dp/B00962G4J4
Well a) and b) are something to ponder, are they not? As to a) (and this will sound intellectually lazy)…there had to be something there. Probably not what we would think of as a modern music school, to which every bagpiper in Scotland went for in-residence tuition (more likely some old fellow in his croft). But, like his fellow-Scot, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, whose daughter when told of Mormon objections to the depiction of the early L.D.S. Church in Sherlock Holmes’ “A Study in Scarlet.” conciliatorily replied many years later, “Daddy made up a lot of things.” (he didn’t make up a lot about the early LDS Church else they would have sued him or his publisher!), so I suspect that Sir Walter Scott heard something too about bagpiping tradition/tuition on the Isle of Skye. Some place had to have brought it into existence.
b) certainly lets the cat out of the bag(pipes)! If only Campsie hadn’t made a mistake on his timeline as Mackay went insane after writing The Great Book of Pibroch. Still it raises a musical dilemma. If Mackay was mentally ill even prior to his indiscretion, in front of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, could he still have written coherent musical scores? Common sense says not. I can only think of the composer Schumann,
whose widow Clara, along with Brahms, burned some of his scores on his death. She certainly thought, as a pianist, that these last compositions were affected by his illness. Campsie received a lifeline from his error on the timeline on just this point of Schumann from this man…
No, Not THAT Robert Reed!
Though his authority in the world of bagpiping was as authoritative as that of Mr Brady in his household.
THIS Robert Reid.
Pipe Major, Highland Light Infantry Regiment, World War 1. Post-army retirement, bagpipe manufacturer, Glasgow. The Eric Clapton of pipers in the twentieth century.
One surmises that Campsie got the story of Angus Mackay from Reid himself. Whatever, Reid’s view of Mackay’s music notation of Pibroch was that it was, to put it mildly, incomprehensible. It didn’t make sense in terms of music from the point of view of a composer or someone trying to read it and play it. Exactly Clara Schumann’s point. Robert Schumann/Angus Mackay may or may not have been insane when the piece/s were written. The sheet music itself was unreadable. Thus Campsie’s error in correctly dating the diagnosis of Mackay’s illness was immaterial to the question. The music itself was mad.
Needless to say, The College of Piping (the Establishment) and Reid had an uneasy relationship. What with this idea of the origins around. Even so, they have purchased, from his estate, recently discovered tapes of Reid playing.
https://www.pipesdrums.com/article/Piobaireachd-Society-acquires-Robert-Reid-recordings/
Other observations from Reid to Campsie:-
“You could not play Pibroch on this.” (Reid upon examining an early Highland bagpipe). Of course, a cricket bat is not as finely turned a piece of wood as that found in a bagpipe. Or is it? I will not add to my dislike of modern cricket bats and their massive amplification of 4s and 6s. Merely to say that Albert Trott
put a 6 over the Lord’s Pavillion in 1889.
With a piece of wood like one of these.
Massive hitters of the modern era with the best English/Indian willow haven’t done it to this day. Who’s to say that MacCrimmon-style pipe music couldn’t be played?
Baron Stamfordham, George V’s Private Secretary, wrote a Letter of Thanks to Reid, “His Majesty took great comfort listening to your music, on the turntable, as he slipped in and out of consciousness.” But what Pibroch was George V, in great pain, listening to? I don’t like to say it but..
It was Cameron Style.
Chinese may not have invented the sport of table tennis, though it is the archetypal Chinese sport. Surely they had something like bagpipes in ancient paintings?!
Did George prefer the slower rhythm Cameron Style, which was Pipe Major Robert Reid’s style of Pibroch? A hint that this was better bagpiping compared to what George’s grandmother, Victoria, liked?
Has there ever been a case in music where only two styles of playing an instrument existed and the more radical style got chosen by the establishment as the standard over the more conservative? As if in the future an enterprising computer hacker erased all traces of the electric guitar and only two styles remained. Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. And the chosen style of playing the instrument was…Jimi-Style!
Which brings us back to Pink Floyd, in a sense. The song ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
“I opened the door and nearly s**t myself … by Christ it was loud. I had certainly never heard anything quite like it before.” Abbey Road Balance Engineer Pete Bown describing “Interstellar Overdrive.”
Quite. But what was ‘it’? To add to great court cases in music, the owner of a Catholic youth club in London hired the band to perform in 1966. After listening to ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and their other psychedelic songs, he refused to pay them, arguing that it wasn’t music. Pink Floyd sued for payment. Judgment for the defendant Catholic youth club by the London Magistrate. That payment justifiably withheld on grounds that it wasn’t music.
Oh well, something new comes along in music and it happened with the bagpipes too!
Who was the original orderer of The Piper? Ordering the legendary Macrimmons who passed on the music through their piping school.
Nothing got done on the Isle of Skye without Clan Macleod’s go ahead.
Clan Macleod motto and symbol of a black bull.
Strange as it sounds, Highland Clans in Western Scotland and the Islands, before the advent of the Great Highland Bagpipe, went into battle against each other listening to…harps. Like the Irish harp.
That was no doubt the influence on western clans with links to Ireland like Macdonalds, Macleans (my clan by descent), probably even Camerons.
Until the changeover to the bagpipe.
We see the written record noting the difference and pouring scorn on what went before.
“Thy chanter’s shout gives pleasure, Sighing thy bold variations. Through every lively measure; The war note intent on rending, White fingers deft are pounding, To hack both marrow and muscles, With thy shrill cry resounding… You shamed the harp, Like untuned fiddle’s tone, Dull strains for maids, And men grown old and done: Better thy shrill blast, From gamut brave and gay, Rousing up men to the destructive fray…”
Clan Macleod were of Norwegian Viking origin. Different to their fellow-Scottish Highland and Island Clans. On the Isle of Skye, with their new music and experts, the MacCrimmons, they had put down an ultimatum and offer. “Are you Scottish or are you Irish?”, “Have we got a new instrument, to go into battle, FOR YOU.”
The Art of the Deal, indeed!
The original orderer must have been an ancestor of Mr. Trump. Through his mother, Mary Trump, nee Macleod, who emigrated from Scotland to the U.S.
Bill Clinton (observation on the rise of The Donald): “You just can’t insult your way to the Presidency.”
Me: “I don’t know Bill. His ancestors managed to insult their way to a world-famous musical instrument!”
An idea, “Think Big”, plagiarised by The Donald from New Zealand Prime Minister (1975-1984) Sir Robert Muldoon?!
Some Pibroch and unless my tree-spotting skills are badly awry I’d say that’s an Australian piper in front of some gum trees!
From Angus Mackay to the present day. Piper to the Sovereign. http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/OfficialRoyalposts/TheQueensPiper.aspx
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