The Big Music (25 page)
Authors: Kirsty Gunn
41
The piobaireachd known by all as ‘The Return’ but that also goes by a second, secret name that has been referred to earlier in ‘The Big Music’; see pp. 120, 121. In his musical archive JMS left all compositions listed by number; the names were held separately. Appendix 6/v has details under ‘Family records of music kept, compositions’.
42
To remind the reader: the tune playing in the Music Room is called ‘The Return’ but, as noted on p. 132, also carries the secret title ‘Margaret’s Song’. This appears in full in manuscript at the back of ‘The Big Music’.
43
Details of the compositions of JMS and the Sutherland family appear in Appendices 6/v and 9/ii and iii, relating to the musical history of The Grey House, and in the List of Additional Materials. The full handwritten ms by JMS of ‘The Return’ or ‘Margaret’s Song’ can also be seen at the back of ‘The Big Music’.
44
This and the previous sentence describe the three to four movements that comprise a standard piobaireachd: the first laying out the ‘ground’ or principal musical idea, often also with a dithis, a singling and doubling on that theme; the second a movement away from the central theme into something more complex, that often carries within it a variation known as the ‘Stag’s Leap’ – a leap into the unknown, where great risk is taken with the central musical idea; the third as a grand embellishment of the first two movements, where a great deal of musical information about the original theme is given; and the final A Mach movement, a reflexive display of embellishments and variations wherein the music itself seems to describe its own making, the prowess of the musicianship and the musician, in a final show before the piobaireachd returns to play the notes of the ground or theme again.
45
The movements as above, according to their original Gaelic descriptions.
46
The secret place refers, of course, to the small building known as the Little Hut, built by John Callum in the years after his father’s death to be a retreat in the hills where he could be on his own to compose and think and write, and be free, perhaps, from his father’s still-living musical influence. Creative material and fragments from that place are on display in the Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ and details are also contained in the List of Additional Materials at the back of this book.
47
The room referred to here cannot literally be dated back to the early eighteenth century, when records show The Grey House as ‘Grey Longhouse’ or ‘Langhouse’ – a traditional three-roomed building attached to a byre. At that time there wouldn’t have been a single bedroom such as the one described here, but only a separate, larger room that would have accommodated many members of the family. However, that first house comprises the foundations of the present Grey House, and so the bedroom where John Sutherland lies now does date back to his great-great-grandfather’s day, when plans of the House show a separate bedroom next to what was the kitchen. Plans, some of which are quite idiosyncratic in parts, are included as additional material at the back of the book, and show the building and extension of The Grey House over the years, and indicate these original rooms and their use.
48
Earlier sections of ‘The Big Music’ describe the notes for this and other instances of intense emotion that cannot be fully expressed as a falling back, a withholding of the theme in the embellishments that are set around it, that will be released back into the tune in the display of technique and bravura that is the Crunluath A Mach.
49
This regular, even breathing is a feature of the opening bars of the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’, the notes patterning the resigned inhalation and exhalation of a single man, lying in the dark and awaiting, at the end of his life, his death.
50
There is no ‘space’ as such between phrases or groups of notes in bagpipe music, as the drone keeps up a steady tone beneath throughout the playing of the music. However, harmonics that occur in a perfectly tuned instrument create this effect – of ‘gaps’ in the music that sound like silence.
51
In contemporary times, the piper Donald MacPherson is considered to be one of the best piobaireachd players in the world due to the sound he gets from his instrument – the result of perfectly tuned and matched pipes.
52
The High ‘G’ is the note of Sorrow on the piper’s scale; the ‘F’, as we know, the note of Love.
53
Various sections of ‘The Big Music’ hint at the ambivalence that surrounds this note – for John Sutherland, in general, but also in the way the note figures in ‘Lament for Himself’. Yes, we have read already that ‘A’ is the base note, from which the pipes are tuned, the first full note of the octave, therefore known as the Piper’s own note, following the Low ‘G’. But High ‘A’ is also the ‘reached for’ note and, as we will come to see, represents Margaret throughout the piobaireachd as well as John himself. In this way, some might say, John and Margaret can come together in ‘The Big Music’.
54
This describes the octave of the scale – the matching of the High and Low ‘A’ to the bass drone of the pipes. A detailed drawing of the bagpipes, showing its various pipes and drones etc., is found in Appendix 13/ii, along with related information.
55
‘Lament for Himself’, as we know from the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’, opens with the repeating sequence ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’ / ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’ etc. that has about it the regular sound of inhalation, exhalation, as though breathing. Refer back to pp. 3, 4, 12 for a reminder of this.
56
The preceding Urlar indicates this.
57
Refers to the singling and doubling of the Urlar back on p. 46 of ‘The Big Music’, when John Sutherland thought he was meeting his son – and also his father – out on the hill; the three generations come together in his mind in the way they never did in life.
58
Some notes on the House, including additional information on the building, its history and construction is available in Appendix 4.
59
The List of Additional Materials contains floor plans of The Grey House; also Appendix 5/i and ii give domestic history and further details.
60
This great sense of the past that was contained in this part of the House may have been what prompted John Sutherland to build his Little Hut away in the hills – so he could have somewhere else, disconnected from that history, that would allow him to compose and think outside it – Appendix 10b, referring to the Little Hut and the Crunluath A Mach movement, will be of interest to those who wish to explore this idea further. Note also: the next movement of ‘The Big Music’, the Crunluath, gives more details of the evenings described here, including accounts and personal recollections. Finally, information about the House is included in Appendices 4–9, along with details of the ‘Winter Classes’ – a more formal version of the kinds of evenings described here.
61
The stress, in italics, on certain words in this sentence might indicate music in itself, a rhythm, sense of phrasing – of pacing.
62
As before, floor plans etc. of The Grey House, showing renovations and change of use, can be found in the List of Additional Materials at the back of ‘The Big Music’. Here see Appendix 4/iii.
63
Refers to the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’ as before – to the Lullaby theme where we’ve noted the way one part of the music is developed into more complex patternings: see the insertion of an outside narrative voice, the child’s mother and her lullaby on pp. 19, 20, and 21; see also the leitmotifs of carrying and being held that are played out in the story of John Sutherland and his own son in pp. 159 and 160 of this movement. The Index of ‘The Big Music’ may also be of interest here.
64
The Glossary describes ‘smirring’ as a general smudging; often it is used in the Highlands as a metaphor for a light rain. Here it refers to a smudging of the notes – as imperfectly played, the fingers sliding over the holes of the chanter to create a note that does not come out clean. Appendix 10 carries details on the ‘Lament for Himself’ and the MS itself shows these embellishments.
65
There is the suggestion here that the JMS piobaireachd ‘Lament for Himself’ bears similarities with some of the piobaireachd written by earlier members of the Sutherland family. Similar musical relationships can be discovered in a close analysis of the MacCrimmon piobaireachds. The Bibliography/Music: Piobaireachd/secondary will be of interest to those readers who want to pursue this idea further.
66
Intervals are the spaces between the notes – the Urlar of ‘The Big Music’ describes some of these. Also Appendix 10/i and ii explain why certain aspects of ‘Lament for Himself’ are quite particular, in musical terms. This Taorluath movement also describes similar spaces – as certain ideas that may have seemed at first far apart come to be related.
67
A breve is a long note, traditionally held for eight beats, and rarely used – though bagpipe timekeeping is different and holds to its own time signature. The Glossary carries some musical terms.
68
The opening bars of the Urlar articulate this sense of loneliness – there is a relentless quality to the repetition of the notes, as one can see on a final completed MS or listen to in full on the finished recording of ‘Lament for Himself’.
69
Who speaks here, and about whom? Is it John MacKay himself, addressing Callum on one of his return journeys home? Or is it the narrative voice we have been hearing more and more throughout ‘The Big Music’ – Helen asking this question of Callum, then? Or is John’s father or grandfather or any of the Sutherlands coming out of the past to speak to their boy? Or is it, as is most likely, all of these? Certainly that idea, of many individual themes coming together in a layering such as this, is in tune with the idea of the piobaireachd itself.
70
This refers to the Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ that follows this Taorluath movement, Crunluath meaning ‘crown’, as we know, but carrying also in that definition of something that is glittering and beautifully complicated and royal the meaning, too, of resolution, the completion of an idea that until now, perhaps, has only been hinted at.
71
As can be seen in the relevant Appendices relating to structure of the piobaireachd (e.g. Appendices 11 and 12), the final lines of Ceol Mor always return to the original theme laid down in the Urlar. Appendix 10A/ii describes this, as does the structure itself of ‘The Big Music’.
So then, the plan for John, the plan itself … It’s written already – as the central tune of this piece. You’ve heard it in the opening lines of the Urlar, the theme of the piobaireachd that’s the final thing he’ll compose, the ‘Lament for Himself’, with the first movement down, and the second
1
gathering together in the leap of its variations a story that’s his but not his alone. Now it’s the third part John Sutherland needs, to wrap around himself by way of a finish, the crown.
2
For that is what it is, the third part, the Crunluath, the crowning of the music that carries the ideas that were there from the beginning, in the tune of the little one he took up with him onto the hill, this morning it was, only this morning … But a finish to that same story now that has a sense of its own performance about it, the showing off of its makings as it is played, its construction revealed, displayed in all its intricacy and colours and shape.
So, in a way, one might describe this ‘Lament’ – in its forms, in its structure and central tune – as more dependent than most upon a theme that can be taken far, far beyond the notes’ initial calling. For as all great piobaireachd are dependent upon the stability of their ground for their variations, as they all need a musical line that, if you like, can bear the
weight of its embellishments, in the same way the tune here depends for its conclusion upon the strength of a frail lullaby, a song that’s turned into an elegy, a story, a journey and a journey’s end.
All this has been through John Callum by now.
Each note, how it must follow.
Each breath, phrase.
The construction of the whole a patterning that builds to paragraphs, phrases, pages in his mind, sung to himself through the solitary hours, laid down, much of it already, in notes upon a stave and papers that will be gathered.
3
And so the completion can be said to be in place for him by now, the notes themselves collecting all about them every accidental and roundel that will, in turn, upon the crown’s completion, make a crown of a crown …
4
His ‘Lament’ with the future embedded in it, in her Lullaby, his own farewell, the sound he’s created gone out into the world with him gone from it – for he’ll be lost by the end of the tune, he’ll not last this night. A doctor entering into his dark room would confirm it: Old Johnnie. Time to follow the rest of them by now, my boy. Your suit is laid out and waiting.
So, yes, then, a Lament, for the one who’s leaving – but a Lament too for everything he’s let slip away, the pride and the thoughts of himself as a big man, the big man and all that come to nothing. Those notes too will be worn into the tune. His failure as a father, a son, as a husband and lover – those flattened phrases too and those lines will sound out amongst the theme,
5
his return, no matter how high the music can reach, always going back to his own note, the endless ‘A’. The sound of someone who’s not been able to remove himself from his own mind to see the
ways and needs of others, for one minute, not for one minute.
‘Lament for Himself’, indeed.
For that is how it has always been.
Always … Just … Himself.
There it sounds now, as though to remind him:
‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’
‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’
‘B’ to ‘D’, ‘G’ to ‘G’
‘B’ to ‘D’, ‘G’ to ‘G’
‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’
‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’
Himself.
Who’s never let anyone in.
Lying quietly in the dark.
That self all he is left with now.
6
Earlier, as he lay in his room waiting for Callum to come in, that was what he was aware of, too. How all that was left of him was just that self, bits of parts that were his life once, perhaps, but now scattered, broken. So there’s the part with a son who might come to him –
Hello, Dad
…
– but the boy like a stranger to him.
You took your time, though.
7
So there’s that poor part.
And there’s the part, too … That had … Not only a son, but a wife …
Marriage …
That part.
Who’d had a father and a mother once. A home.
I’ll not be back!
That, too, all jumbled in with him here – in the pieces of a blanket, all these parts – of a man who could have so much but would put it all aside. That he could come to be so cut off, disconnected, that he would have someone who would care for him and be with him, who would consider him in all her thoughts and actions, who moves tirelessly, endlessly around him, in these rooms of the House – but has given her little, nothing … Then Lament for that, too. For a man who has barely lived in this world is what he is – not lived. Who has absented himself within his own privacy,
8
who has been frightened of love, who will say ‘Who are you?’ to a man or woman he’s been close to at the time, had in his home or in his bed, still he’ll be able to say ‘Who are you?’ as though he does not know that person’s name.
Because they’ve all been in his dark room today.
Those who know him, the kind of man he is.
Of parts, of bits.
They’ve all been here. His son. His father. His mother. Reminding him. Showing him.
And Margaret. The woman who moves quietly around the rooms of the House. Who comes to him in the dark.
The music of her – her particular note – that is yet to come in, that says to him, ‘I am here with you. Be at peace.’
Yet what did he ever do for Margaret in return? What did he ever allow her? What gift did he give?
As he lies, grey thing, in the dark …
Though she’s given him everything, everything – the child in his arms this morning Margaret’s daughter’s child – and he should have married her, for he loved her, he’d always loved her …
So … Margaret.
Going up the side of the green face of the hill with a child who’s Margaret’s child and he’s carrying her, the notes of her, strung all about her like a beginning.
Therefore quietly, my darling – and listen!
To the ‘F’ to the ‘G’.
To the sweetness in the Lullaby and soft.
For there’ll be nothing but the silence soon.
The singing of a lullaby is as old as singing itself and examples of this kind of music appear as instances of narrative in ancient texts such as the Old Testament of the Bible and in the Qur’an – with early known
versions
in English dating back to the fifth century and before.
The Highland tradition of folk singing encompasses many very lovely lullabies that are still sung to babies and small children, to send them to sleep on summer evenings when it is broad daylight outside and they think they should be wide awake with the sun. Or they have been
composed
to calm the same children into dreams and restful slumber in the depths of winter when the dark sky is screaming with storms and rage.
Soft songs, all of them.
Some curious and beautiful lullabies sing of the taking away of
children
, or the loss of them to faerie kingdoms, their changing of one body for another, a sudden vanishing and the child is replaced by a sprite or a monster who may look the same at first as Mammy’s darling but who is in fact a dire cast of the one who has been spirited away.
Strange, then, that the music would still sound as sweet.
In ‘The Big Music’ John MacKay has a notion of just such a Lullaby to be inserted in his piobaireachd ‘Lament for Himself’ – a sweet tune, a small run of notes we heard first in the Urlar movement that stand in for the infant Katherine Anna MacKay whom he has kidnapped and taken out with him onto the hill.
Fragments of the song appear here as follows:
(first verse)
In the small room, a basket waits,
A basket empty for no baby is there.
The mother is gone, left the room for a moment
– and in that moment he’s mounted the stair.
(chorus)
You took her away,
Young Katherine Anna,
Carried her off, tall Helen’s child.
You took her away, a baby sleeping
In your old arms, took her into the wild.
(second verse)
An old man taken the baby away,
He’s snatched her up in his arms for to see
Her life in his, to stay his dying
– but the child’s not his, her mother is me.
As seen elsewhere in these papers, in certain related information and notes that contribute to overall themes in this narrative, it is speculated that some piobaireachd music has its basis in certain Highland songs and airs that may date back to the fifteenth century or earlier. It is perhaps the knowledge of this tradition that worked upon John Sutherland in his thinking about his own final composition – the Lullaby that he had in mind being one, perhaps, that was already known to him. Certainly, while no records of such a song were found amongst his papers, the second line of the Urlar of his ‘Lament for Himself’ clearly indicates the structure of a gentle tune that might be sung to a child. It has a haunting repeat that seems to hark back to something any of us may have heard, as children, when we were distressed and needing soothing or were wide awake and restless and should be going to sleep.
This tune – the single line of it gone into a repeat – would have been parsed and set to the words shown above. Helen MacKay may have
uncovered something in John Sutherland’s private notes that suggested this musical treatment, and, most likely, found the words straight out of the events that took place that terrible morning, when her daughter was taken from her. Certainly the theme of babies lost or without their mothers was a common enough one in folk song – and the image of the missing child as a subject for song would have suggested itself easily enough as a poetic idea to a mother who had herself experienced the loss (though temporarily) of a baby.
You took her away,
Young Katherine Anna …
So it would be a simple matter to set her own story down on the page.
In the small room, a basket waits,
A basket empty for no baby is there.
The mother is gone, left the room for a moment
– and in that moment he’s mounted the stair.
Thereafter, in ‘Lament for Himself’ the Lullaby appears as a sort of leitmotif throughout the piobaireachd.
This is an unusual idea to have appearing in a piobaireachd another subject altogether (the principal subject, according to the definition of the music, being the life of Sutherland himself) but it is by no means exceptional, as the piper and composer R. J. C. Gunn notes:
Many piobaireachd have a sound to them that could be a very gentle, sweet song. This is not often commented upon in a discussion of piobaireachd – that is, the tender, even quiet aspect of many of the tunes. But certainly it is there. One feels many of the great Laments could be sung – this is the foundation of canntaireachd after all: the singing down of a tune, and often yes, a quiet and gentle singing. Remember, too, that one of the greatest piobaireachd ever written, the great ‘Lament for the Children’, is also a beautiful and very sad song. One hears the voice in it when it is well played.
Finally, the Lullaby being composed by John Sutherland is distinctive in the way the composer imagines it as also sounding out through the music as a kind of declaration. He wants the child to sleep, yes, while he
carries her somewhat clumsily up the side of a hill, but he sees her also as a new theme in the tune – ‘new life from old’ as he thinks of it – and so she has her own set of notes to accompany her on this peculiar journey that he has kidnapped her for. In this way the Lullaby works as a way of carrying the tune forwards into the rest of the piobaireachd, so that its theme becomes layered with other themes and gains depth and resonance – see the way certain notes, the return to the top ‘A’ in particular, come to represent other ideas and people as the story develops:
He’s snatched her up in his arms for to see
Her life in his …
Lullabies, after all, are rarely written for just a single child. Remember –
9
‘He looks down into his arm. She’s awake, the child is, giving him that fixed look but not judging, deep and thoughtful as though she’s from another world, as well she has been for she’s been with her mother … ‘Hush.’ He whispers quietly like he’s seen her do, the baby’s mother, pokes in one of the little cloths to keep her from the breeze. ‘You know fine’ he answers her, ‘what I’m doing with you here.’
For it’s a Lullaby, is what it is. The smallest, gentlest song against the ground, against the broad and mindless hills like quietness set into the great layout of a tune.
‘Hush …’
He can hear it in his own ‘Hush’ and in her soft way with him as she lies in his arms, just looking up at him, just looking … The whole little song of a Lullaby coming in, the few notes, like a breath of breeze against the land and him settling her in close to his side again as though that will quiet her but she’s not crying.
‘And this is the only way …’ says John Sutherland then, clear into the air …
‘The only way … You do understand me. How I needed to have her with me this way for the tune.’ The theme of it worked in by now to the very sound of the whole. Its few spare notes spun into the crown the tune wears.’
And for now he must stop. Listen!
He’ll hear the whole thread of it about them both, any minute, as he stands here on the hill. The ‘F’ to the ‘G’ and the ‘E’ to the ‘A’ and what it means for him to be carrying this child, for him to be here. Wait for it now and – there! Can you hear it? The last thin notes and what they mean? The understanding of who she is? The child you’re carrying, Johnnie? Listen. Quietly, carefully. Can you hear who she is?
