The Big Music (46 page)

1
For more information on the progress of this project refer to pp. 453–5 at the back of this book. The Foreword at the beginning of ‘The Big Music’ and the section ‘How to use the Appendices in this book’ may also be useful to the reader interested in building up a wider picture of the world of The Grey House and the kind of landscape it occupies. These pages indicate how one may use the additional material that has been compiled – notes, scanned documents etc. – and fashion it into a kind of installation, bringing all these elements together, as it were, into one room. Indeed, this is how ‘The Big Music’, as a whole, presents itself to us as a space we might enter as we might enter a gallery or a concert or an exhibition. It is somewhere we may stay for a while, or perhaps leave and return to, experiencing it in different ways at different times, before we finally close the covers of the book, walk out the door.

2
The line ‘I’ll not be back!’ resounds through the pages of ‘The Big Music’, in all three movements – though comes to be more and more complex in its meaning as the theme of the inevitability of return set against the more short-term force of will comes to express itself in the life of John Callum MacKay. See in particular pp. 107; 115–19; 123; 134–6; 160–2; 207–8.

3
The history of The Grey House as a centre for music has been fully established in the Crunluath movement, in particular, see pp. 256; 263–4; 267–9; 273; 275–8. The role of Callum Sutherland as a teacher in this school is also detailed throughout that movement, and in relevant Appendices 5, 6 and 9 we gain a thorough sense of the domestic space functioning also in a social and educational context. As we know, from certain remarks made by Iain Cowie, Callum Sutherland’s so-called ‘Winter Classes’ had a particular charm that even someone like Iain, who himself had no knowledge or experience of piobaireachd playing, could appreciate – and they were able to carry on, these classes, right up until only two years before the time of the old man’s death. ‘Because of you’ old Callum Sutherland had said to Iain. ‘This place is in your hands.’ This is not to say that there was not a downside to a boy’s home being given over to a father’s activities – and it is clear from ‘The Big Music’ that John Sutherland’s sense of isolation was due not only to his own nature, and that of the lonely aspect of the district of Sutherland itself, but to the ambivalent role society played in his life. While he was in the midst of the life that he governed and seemed to enjoy, his father was also isolated and unable to extend himself to his family. In the same way, in the midst of all the music that was played in the House was a remote and fearful quiet – pp. 135; 178; 296 of the Crunluath describe this.

4
Refers to pp. 114–5; 118; 120; 123 of the Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’, describing the funeral for Roderick John Callum, with particular reference to his military connections and role as a musician and composer for the Army: ‘So they gave his father a proper funeral in the end.’

5
In the same way that Johnnie doesn’t associate Sutherland with these activities of his father, neither is the story of ‘The Big Music’ concerned with this aspect of Callum’s life – concentrating instead, as it does, on his role as musician and teacher. However, it has been noted in various inserts, variations and additional material that the Sutherland family in general were always entrepreneurial in their business as well as musical activities, and John Sutherland’s father was no exception. Throughout the history of The Grey House we see a programme of continual expansion and development in operation, from the increase of holdings of land and stock and development of related interests to the various extensions made to the House itself. The List of Additional Materials found at the back of this book may be of interest here, as will Appendices 4–9, which give details of the history of the House.

6
This is the period of ‘The Return’, that piobaireachd written by John Sutherland following his re-orientation with his birthplace, after his father’s death. Yet it could also be said that this is a return that had actually begun many years earlier when he was called to the House upon hearing of his mother’s sudden and apparently grave illness. That is when he first returned home, after many years away, and that is when he met Margaret MacKay. Indeed, she was the one who first called him home. It is significant that the secret name for this piece of music, found amongst John’s personal papers after his death, was ‘Margaret’s Song’. The manuscript for this can be found in the List of Additional Materials at the back of the book.

7
The Urlar movement gives the first indication of the House and its position as Callum drives up the lonely road towards it and reflects upon its name in Gaelic, meaning ‘End of the Road’, when he turns the corner and sees it there in front of him, standing out against the dusk. It is not known when this older name for the House was fully in use, as throughout ‘The Big Music’ it is generally simply referred to as The Grey House or the House, but it is possible that it goes back to the period of the late 1700s when the House was a well-used stopping-off place for shepherds and cattle drovers. The road then, as now, would have finished at the House and from there on travellers would have made their way down the open strath towards the west where there are no paths or set ways, though certain tracks were established over the years. The End of the Road at that time would have represented a welcome respite from days of hard travelling, a place of rest, shelter and music.

8
There is some debate throughout ‘The Big Music’ as to the note that Margaret comes to ‘own’ in the sense that all notes of the bagpipe scale have certain attributions and meanings. ‘F’, as we know from relevant papers and Appendices, is the note of Love, so could seem to be the note taken up by Margaret in the piobaireachd – chiming with clear and lovely regularity through the second line of the Urlar in particular – see the manuscript in the relevant section of the Appendices. Yet this line of the ‘Lament’ is also the Lullaby theme – so the note also chimes with Katherine Anna, the infant John holds in his arms up on the hill and tries to comfort. Of course, that she – unbeknownst to the composer – is related to him, as surely as grandmother and granddaughter are related, adds texture to the note being used in this ‘double’ fashion. In addition, however, we see in the Crunluath movement that when Margaret’s note finally sounds in the mind of John Sutherland it is his own note he hears – the High ‘A’ – known as the reached-for note, the Piper’s own note – suggesting that the ‘double’ here refers to the great love story that is John and Margaret’s relationship – a story that is somehow invisible to the world, the note of the beloved hidden, as it were, behind the protagonist. Either way, Margaret’s note is finally revealed to be John’s own – and there is a hint in the above score that the composer was aware of this, on some level, while creating his great ‘Lament for Himself’, even with the ‘F’ note claiming a prominent position in the theme.

9
This line appears in Helen MacKay’s handwriting, on separate paper, yet is included within these pages. Evidence of her beginning to organise some kind of narrative, perhaps? The tone of her comments suggests this.

10
We have seen the use of tape recordings and transcripts earlier in ‘The Big Music’ – in particular in the section ‘The people at the House and what they thought of him’ in the Crunluath movement. There are many recordings and notes generally held in The Grey House archive – mostly on CD or digital recording devices, including Helen’s mobile phone – and these are in the process of being transferred to one central ‘file’ and transcript. The recording referred to here, however, was found on an old cassette recorder, featuring voice and chanter music. It is significant that the ‘F’ note is played here, as we hear the name ‘Margaret’ sounding over and over again.

11
Of course this refers to the significance of the Little Hut – as a hidden and secret place John Sutherland could go to and feel himself there to be in the complete state of physical isolation that he believed matched his psychological state. Yet, as we have seen throughout ‘The Big Music’, the theme of loneliness can also sound out in the most social passages of the book – when John is living in London, say, or hosting house parties – and in this he follows exactly the manner of behaviour and sensibility established by his father before him. Nevertheless, the hut was built to be a place apart from the House and its dichotomies of intimacy and separation, sociability and emptiness. The Little Hut exists apart from all this.

12
As before, this is a cassette recording found at the Little Hut. We hear repeated phrases and some notes and sequences practised over and over – all taken from the line represented in manuscript at the back of ‘The Big Music’ and including the following sequences:

‘F’ to ‘G’

‘F’ to ‘A’

‘F’ to ‘G’

‘E’ to ‘E’

(the final opening bar of the second line that was used in the final composition)

As well as:

‘F’ to ‘G’

‘F’ to ‘G’

‘F’ to ‘G’

‘E’ to ‘E’

And:

‘E’ to ‘G’

‘E’ to ‘G’

‘E’ to ‘G’

‘E’ to ‘E’

(both unused)

13
Also referred to as the little sitting room and the Study, the Music Room is favoured for its intimacy and acoustic – allowing for both chanter and pipe playing, when the door down to the hall can be left open and the piper can go up and down, from the room down the hall and back. It was first established as an important focus in the House by ‘Old John’ Sutherland, John MacKay’s grandfather, who first gave lessons there and called it the Music Room, even though at that point it would have had additional more general use.

14
All the themes above are explored and developed fully in the various pages of the Urlar movement in particular. See especially the following passage taken from p. 5 onwards: ‘For it’s a tune for her, is what it is. The smallest, gentlest song against the broad and mindless hills. He can hear it in his own “Hush”.’

15
This, like other notes not attributed to JMS and often marked NB:, appears in the same computer font and on the same paper stock as many of the pages and inclusions provided by Helen MacKay that were also written by her. The project of organising these files and stories and accounts is, to an extent, ongoing, and only a selection of a large volume of material finally could be used for ‘The Big Music’. The Foreword notes: ‘The more I read into these pages, the more deeply involved I became in their provenance and meaning. Were the sections part of one journal? They appeared to be, a large portion of them – as the reader will come to see – with all of a journal’s quality of the personal, of something direct and urgent that needs to be told. Yet other sections of the file were more like transcripts, or notes for stories, or finished stories, some of them …’ and relates how the pages were placed in sequence, over time, to reflect the shape and structure of the piobaireachd the various pages were referring to throughout. The fragment shown above in this Crunluath A Mach movement of the music indicates something of the process of the pages’ – and inevitably the book’s – composition.

16
It is significant to the structure and theme of ‘The Big Music’ that there is no sequence of notes, no single note even, that has come to represent John Sutherland’s son Callum, named for his father who, though he was christened Roderick John, was always known as Callum. In this there is a kind of absence to the music that reflects, exactly, the relationship between father and son – and indeed, plays back to the relationship between John Sutherland and his own father. The three generations do ‘meet’, however, in ‘Lament for Himself’ in the sense of the use of the singling and doubling variations of the Urlar theme both in the manuscript of the music and in John Sutherland’s perceived meeting with both his father and his son up on the hill: ‘He’s stopped./ Waiting./ For it’s Callum./ It is. It’s Callum there./ And very close./ Up there with the dogs, for they’re his dogs, they’re Callum’s dogs … / Callum./ ‘How are you, boy?’/ And with him … Yes. It’s his father too./ Come up with Callum, he must have, and now they’re both here together, just over that hill./ His father./ His son … Enough to turn the theme.’ The last phrase suggesting how the use of the dithis singling and doubling will ‘lift’ the music, open it out and set it in a broader context outwith the theme of ‘Himself’, prepare the composition for the Taorluath and Crunluath movements that will follow.

17
It is not entirely clear to what notes John is referring here. No doubt he intended to hide the theme of Margaret within ‘Lament for Himself’ as she was hidden in the earlier composition ‘The Return’ – however, as has been noted earlier, the use of the High ‘A’ and its role as a note of confirmation, of statement, in the ‘Lament’, as a note claimed by the piper himself that is also Margaret’s note, suggests that she comes to have a fuller role in this composition than one may have initially expected. Certainly, this is played out in the structure of ‘The Big Music’ itself – in the way Helen MacKay has presented those papers that refer to her mother and her mother’s life as being key to understanding the structure of John Sutherland’s composition. Perhaps it was intended by John himself to have a section of the music that celebrated his coming together with Margaret – by creating a leitmotif to represent a part of the House he always associated with safety and love. It would have been a great thing if he had been able to fully express that in the manuscript – but as it stands, this must be a theme that the music moves around, as do the pages of ‘The Big Music’ move around this love story without ever alighting fully upon it. In the end we must be content with the idea that a certain sequence was in the composer’s mind, even if he was not able to express it. Perhaps we may imagine the sequence as containing the Low and High ‘A’ and the ‘F’, as being three notes with great significance and therefore emerging in a range of ways throughout the composition, bringing together in different patternings the notes of love, lament and return.