rubha (n): cape (head/point), headland.
Dè ur ceist/cuspair, Mgr. Shackleton? A’ bheil ceoil mòr na pìob mhòr gu dearbhfìor thall an rubha seo? Cha chaomh leam an smuain na seannaidh ceol mòr air a’ phìob uilinn gu leòr, ach cha “lùghadh” i, tha mi a’ smaoineachadh. Cha ball-coisrigte e an phìob mhòr.
Balkan tunes on uilleann pipes can sound quite nice, but I’ll take mine without the dated synthesizer backup, thanks.
Now Breton tunes on uilleann pipes…Those are fun…
I said I was trying to learn gaidhlig, not that I’m already fluent. Can we get a translation team in here? I only understood a ver little of that.
There were many fewer rules in the old days. Go back 200 years to O’Farrell, and there are many Scottish tunes mixed in with the Irish. Go back further, to the 18th century manuscriptts on www.piob.info, and you find minuets too. Further still, and Alasdrum’s March (mid 17th century) has many of the attributes of an early pibroch. After all, the two cultures only really diverged after the Cromwellian wars.
Personally I play pibroch much more these days on my Garvie border pipes than on GHB - and at the first Gold Medal competition in the 18th century, one of the competitors turned up with border pipes. (He was unfortunately turned away.) I expect people played pibroch on pastoral pipes, though I’m not aware of any manuscript sources; for goodness’ sake, people even played violin pibrochs in the 18-19th centuries.
Some pibrochs run quite well on UP. Many don’t (low G, crunluath). But there’s no reason not to have one or two in the repertoire
Ross
I actually have a recording of Seamus Ennis doing a load of Scottish stuff durign a tionol (Seamus was a good warpiper and he translated the scotish tunes interestingly well to the Uilleann chanter). Pat Mitchell has made notations of those recordings ‘for the book’ and had them down as ‘piobrochs’ not sure they really were though.
They may or may not be, hard to say without knowing their origin.
Piobraichd, in its basic form, is a tune and variations that feature traditional HGP fingering in increasing skill and difficulty each time the tune is replayed. If you have the ear or stomach for it, it is truly an amazing thing to behold.
I do not see how the Union Pipes can truly replicate the Piobraichd as played on the Highland Great Pipe. If all one is intending to accomplish is learn the melodies of these great tunes and perhaps create their own set of variations/exercisses, then knock yourself out. But it isn’t Piobraichd in the strictest traditional sense.
Ross–Loved the www.piob.info page. Some fantastic music on there.
I quite enjoy playing ceol mòr on smallpipes–the E baritone drone really can add a lot in certain tunes.
The piper who showed up at the competition in Edinburgh was from around Caithness and likely would have played tunes more influenced by NE Scottish variation sets than tunes out of the Scottish Gaelic tradition, Caithness being an island of Scots speakers surrounded by a Gaelic sea at the time (although Gaelic speaking pipers did play Border pipes…Calum Piobaire was a noted example: he said he liked to play them because he could do his two favorite things–playing piobaireachd and smoking a pipe–at the same time).
Peter–I’d love to hear some of those recordings of Seamus playing Scottish tunes. Seamus did some recording of Scottish trad. music on Barra and could speak Scottish Gaelic. Many of the islanders didn’t even realize he was Irish, but figured he was from the mainland. A number of years ago, I spent a very entertaining evening with Skye-based Irish poet Rody Gorman who talked of going to Barra and hearing locals talk of how they still had fond memories of Seamus’ time there. He also told a funny story about seeing Seamus play a whistle “out of his ear” with Festy Conlon, but that’s another story.
Okay kids,
This isn’t QUITE OT, but it’s getting a bit close…
Barnaby Brown and the boys at http://www.siubhal.com are releasing Allan MacDonald’s first entirely solo release, Dastirum, which features his playing of a number of lesser-known ceol mòr pieces in his unique “18th Century” style, derived from years of research. This is, in my opinion, the closest you’ll get to hearing how ceol mòr likely sounded more than 200 years ago.
Eight years ago, I had the pleasure of taking some lessons with Allan when I was living in Glasgow. He was very kind and helpful to me and is truly a musician of awesome prowess.
In an article about the album, Allan talks about how pleased he was to recently hear a box player playing a ceol mòr piece as he feels this is an example of bringing the tunes back to the oral tradition that they came from. You can read the article here:
http://www.siubhal.com/features/dastirum.pdf
Hey, if you can play this stuff on the accordion, surely it’s alright to give it a try on the uilleann pipes. Tunes that emphasize the D on the GHB might have an intriguingly different feel with UP drones and regs.
While it is true that that roots of Ceol Mhor go back quiet a ways in time, and that a great many of the concepts behind this form likely originated in the harp/crwth/Gaelic poetry tradition, this music evolved into the form we recognize on the GHB and her players and is inseparable from it. To deny this is ignore history and fact.
Although it is called “the Classical music of the GHB”, Piobaireachd is completely outside of the mainstream European classical music tradition. To compare “The Red Specked Bull” to a Mozart Sonata is like comparing apples and…parsley.
That isn’t to say that Ceol Mhor is unplayable on other instruments, I’ve heard very convincing renditions of the great music on fiddle, box, Gaelic harp and hammered dulcimer. There is a long tradition of this in Scotland in fact. But, these successes were created by players steeped in this form, and that requires extensive interaction with the music at it’s source.
I agree with Joe on this, great as an instrument as it is, the Uilleann pipes are not well suited for this music. Even in transposition the scale of the Irish pipes creates problems with the gracings and tune structure. It would a great player to transcend these issues. Yet, I’d love to heard what the Pastoral pipes could do with these tunes. The pipes that have similar fingering/scales to GHB, i.e., smallpipes, border pipes etc. don’t encounter this same problem.
CM
Well it is often told where ever he went Seamus sounded to the locals like someone from the next parish and that was why he was so successful at collecting music. Chris Langan once remarked when we discussed this ‘yes but for some reason he never sounded like a North Co. Dublin man’. If you look at Eamonn de Butleair’s marvelous documentary ‘Miles and Miles of Music’ about Seamus’ collecting days you can hear him tell how during his time in Scotland and the Hebrides he swam every day through the harsh winter they called ‘the big freeze up’ and for that reason was known as ‘the mad Irishman’. In the film he sings and plays a lovely version of Port-na h-eala air an traigh which he collected there.
Are you talking about the 1980 Bettystown tape? There’s about as much pibroch in what he plays there as you get from a Jimmy Shand record. Those are strathspeys in A he played, Braes of Mar (Johnny Will you Marry Me?), and Haughs of Cromdale I think the other one is. Those are just Seamus messing around, Pat knows better so I assume you’ve another tape in mind.
I’ve posted an MP3 of Ceol Mor on the Uilleann pipe on the other forum under the post your tunes thread.
http://uilleannforum.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=320&start=90