Who said that? I didn’t read anyone saying that.
Please be careful: “slow air” and “air” are different terms. In my mind, an air is the tune to a song (or a piece in a similar style), not necessarily slow or fast. But as I said previously “slow air” means something fairly specific.
Hi Talasiga
Pibroch or Piobaireachd to give it it’s full Gaelic spelling (it quite literally means pipe music) is effectively a specialist art form within piping - it’s alternative name Ceòl Mór, which means Big Music, is IMO more correct.
Lament for the Children is one of the more ancient pibrochs.
I would half agree with dunnp, in that Ceòl Mór is a specialist form of music in the Scottish tradition, but most slow airs that are playable on the GHB could be used as the ground for a pibroch.
Seeing as this is the flute forum, here is dunnp playing a beautiful pipe air Flowers of the Forest on flute. 
David
yes, given that a Ceòl Mór performance can be informed by a slow air, wouldn’t it be reasonable to presume that all urlars may be informed by slow airs or expressions analagous to slow airs?
And, in as much as the oldest traditions of Gaelic Scotland are sourced in the migration of the Gaels from Ireland in olden times, might it be fair to suggest that the Ceòl Mór holds (and reflects) the olden Irish air complex (symbiosis amongst different types of air)?
(if you know what I mean, Big Davy).
Hi Talasiga
I would think that there was more than just Irish influences, ancient and modern, Scandinavian influences as well, and influences from other parts of Scotland.
Given the number of mercenaries the highlands supplied to Europe, continental influences can also be included. Especially France, with it’s plethora of bagpipe types.
I would expect that tune wise it would be the harp traditions of Ireland and Scotland that would have been the main influence and early source.
David
I have noticed that both Nico Moreno and Big Davy have spoken on their subject matter and have used the word “tune” correctly in their posts without meaning “dance tune” per se …
Um. No.
In Scottish piping, a slow air is usually a regularly structured tune, like Hector the hero.
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/scottskinner/display.php?ID=JSS0176
It’s got 16 bars in each part, and it’s played more or less regularly (i.e., according to the time signature.) Piobaireachd grounds are never structured that way (equal parts, repeated). They typically have two bar motifs that are grouped perhaps:
AAB ABB AB
or
ABCD CBAD CD
Piobaireachd is very formalized. Most of us only ever play established tunes, many that date back to the 1800’s at least. We play them exactly as they appear on the page. In the last century, only a handful of composers successfully added to the tradition.
More to the point though, most airs use a recognizable harmonic progression that moves through some chords and resolves (not infrequently on the repeat of the tune). Piobaireachd, on the other hand, does not resolve. It usually oscillates between two adjacent tones. G & A or B & C or whatever.
And, in as much as the oldest traditions of Gaelic Scotland are sourced in the migration of the Gaels from Ireland in olden times, might it be fair to suggest that the Ceòl Mór holds (and reflects) the olden Irish air complex (symbiosis amongst different types of air)?
There is a harp manuscript put down by a Welsh harp player in the early 1700s. To me, it is clearly very related to piobaireachd. Either piobairechd came from what he (Robert ap Huw) or else both came from a common ancestor. The music ap Huw notated is a very formalized theme and variations system. The urlar, followed by variations, with the urlar returning between variations (as was performance practice in piobaireachd in the past). The variations become more complex as the tune goes along. And it does that two tone oscillation
Although this seems common sense from today’s hindsight, theme and variation as a compositional device, was a new form in the 1600s, but these harp tunes go back to the 1500s, at least in title. As far as I can tell, this older form of music, which most likely originated in Ireland, has left no trace there.
Oh, for an American slow air:
Amazing Grace.
It was a tune prior to having the famous words associated with it.
It was actually little heard prior to being made famous by the Scots Guards Pipe Band in the 1970’s.
It’s definitely an American Tune:
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/grace/grace-timeline.html
here is a very well written article on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pibroch
I found the usage of “slow movement” in relation to urlar interesting
and feel it is analagous to the idea of slow air.
Of course things of a similar ilk can take different forms in different traditions and in different sections and eras within a tradition.
That an Irish dance tune has a different form (or other detail/s) to a Himalayan dance tune does not mean that one is not.
He’s said that he particularly admired Aly Bain’s playing of scots and shetland slow airs on the fiddle. Bain’s known for playing Da Slockit Light, The Banks of the Spey, and Mrs Jameson’s Favorite - the first is Shetland, the second Scott Skinner, and the third is also scots, but I don’t know the composer off the top of my head.
It’s kind of interesting historically, that some of the earliest publishers of piobaireachd also applied the term Adagio (as a noun) to the urlar.
I think I get what you’re saying, but if I might expand a little more:
A slow air (in both Irish and Scottish traditions) is a tune unto itself. You sit down, you play an air, and then you stop and do something else.
A piobaireachd ground (urlar) is more like an appetizer. It’s but a small part of a greater whole, and it’s really not meant to be performed in isolation. You play the Urlar to introduce the variations, which comprise the majority of the tune. If you attend any piobaireachd workshop, the presenter would never teach just the urlar.
To me, it would be more appropriate to liken piobaireach (e.g., the whole tune) with slow air (at least a Scottish slow air) in that both are instrumental musical forms.
So is that it then ? No more American slow instrumental tunes to check out ?
Here’s a nice slow tune, but it’s not really American, but rather about America: The Largo of the 2nd movement of Dvorak’s 9th symphony, the “New World” symphony, from which the spiritual “Going Home” comes.
I suppose any slow tune from any movie scored by John Williams would count though.
How about “Freebird”? 
Am I right that it’s the other way around? The spiritual preceded the symphony.
I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that the tune is American in origin, though I believe that the words and that particular tune are thought to have been united in the States in - 1835? - maybe. But it’s commonly thought that the tune originated as a Scots air. Mind, we don’t really know. I’d be pretty sure that it wasn’t American in origin though, and, in fact, your timeline link that you posted suggests that the words were around a long time before the tune, not the other way around. Interestingly, I don’t actually think that’s right (I reckon the tune’s an old one), but it probably is true that the words existed without a melody at all for a long time.
Ah, but Jim, apparently Going Home was developed into a spiritual based on the theme by Dvorak, not the other way round. At least according to Wiki.
In a 2008 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, prominent musicologist Joseph Horowitz asserts that African-american spirituals were a major influence on the 9th symphony, quoting Dvor(ák from an 1893 interview in the New York Herald as saying, “In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”[
…
It has been claimed that the theme from the Largo was adapted into a spiritual-like song “Goin’ Home”, by composer Harry Burleigh, whom Dvor(ák met during his American sojourn, and lyricist William Arms Fisher,[9] but the song was actually written by Fisher and based on Dvor(ák’s Largo theme. Richard Taruskin, however, states that it is unknown whether or not there already existed a spiritual that was used by Dvor(ák. What is known for sure, however, is that the tune since became one or was popularised as a result.[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Dvořák)
So the tune was developed into a spiritual based on the symphony, but there is a real possibility that the tune in
the symphony was based on a pre-existing spiritual. Interesting, huh?
I could believe that. Dvorak would have been that sort of composer, I think.
Yes.
Did “Wayfaring Stranger” get mentioned yet? Sounds lovely played very slowly on flute.
I’d been thinking of starting a similar thread on sentimental songs that are great for warming up or for playing (in my case,anyway) when the faster stuff just isn’t working. Not American, of course, but “Oft in the Stilly Night” and “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms” (free pint for anyone who knows where William Burroughs quotes that one…) are favorites of mine. And the Judy Collins version of “Farewell to Tarwathie.”
Thanks for TRYING and thanks for the nice info in your posts.
However I don’t think you actually understood what I said.
Saying that urlar may be informed by slow air or expressions analogous to slow airs (which is what I said in the post you responded to) is not the same as saying that urlar is a slow air (which is how you seem to have taken what I said). I was actually conversing on Big Davy’s comment that “most slow airs that are playable GHP could be used as the ground for a pibroch”.
The musical landscape of Scotland is well published. If the tune we sing Amazing Grace to were a Scots melody, it would be pretty amazing (no pun intended) that someone like Scott Skinner, Cpt. Fraser, or Nathaniel Gow wouldn’t have published it. Those fellows and others like them, seem to have published everything they could get their hands on.
But if you look at the evidence in the link above, it is clear that William Walker, who was the music director at 1st Baptist Church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is the creator of the melody as we know it today. He used a melody he found in the Virginia Harmony, and changed about 2 bars that just didn’t work well. The two books were from 1829 and 1847. There is no record of how the tune came to be in the first book, but since it is unattributed and since other tunes are attributed, it was probably collected as a folk tune in Virginia. There is no record as to whether Clayton and/or Carrell, the compilers of the book, may have similarly edited what they collected prior to publication, but since they published the tune in three part harmony, it’s not unlikely – they weren’t out to record folk tunes; they were publishing harmony parts for hymn singing.