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The Radio 3 Boards > General Chat > News And Current Affairs > New research certain to irk bagpipers...
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Author Topic: New research certain to irk bagpipers...  (Read 136 times)
Reiner Torheit
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« on: 05:15:41, 19-04-2008 »
There's small comfort for bagpipe fans in this report from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/19/scotland
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #1 on: 09:26:31, 19-04-2008 »
Much of that will be old news to many here, Rei, and nothing like the disappointment the writer evidently suspects. Even if the large-pipe and kilt tradition does only stretch back a couple of centuries, that's still longer than many of the world's present nations have existed, and it's certainly endured not only for the Scots, but as an indivisible part of the world view of the country herself. The truth is that the Scotland most of the world believes in (and that counts for more than a few within in its borders) bears little resemblance to the reality, but that the mythological image helped to unite a riven nation (approximately as many Scots fought for the Hanoverians as the Jacobites at Culloden) in what can now be seen as an early exercise in 'branding' whose power has never diminished to this day.
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perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #2 on: 09:27:57, 19-04-2008 »
An interesting piece.  This book looks like a scholarly take on stories that have been circulating for some time - including occasionally in the Scottish press - about the history of the bagpipe and its role as an iconic symbol of Scotland.  In particular, research into the MacCrimmons - the clan on the Isle of Skye that is credited with the development of classical piping in the pibroch tradition - has, IIRC, been frustrated by the almost complete lack of original source material.

Incidentally, has anyone else here attended a piobaireachd, or classical piping competition?  It's an occasion in which the competitors - normally themselves older and learned in the piping tradition - play for a panel of wizened, vastly aged judges who mark according to purity of ornamentation, adherence to classical principles etc.  Although I know better, it's tempting to think that Wagner must have attended one of these events before writing Meistersinger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%ACobaireachd
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
perfect wagnerite
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« Reply #3 on: 09:41:10, 19-04-2008 »
Quote from: Ron Dough on 09:26:31, 19-04-2008
The truth is that the Scotland most of the world believes in (and that counts for more than a few within in its borders) bears little resemblance to the reality, but that the mythological image helped to unite a riven nation (approximately as many Scots fought for the Hanoverians as the Jacobites at Culloden) in what can now be seen as an early exercise in 'branding' whose power has never diminished to this day.

Much the same is true of England.  A lot of the pageantry that is regarded as part of our ancient national heritage was actually dreamed up in the nineteenth century, by Ministers alarmed at the unpopularity of Queen Victoria in the middle years of her reign.
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At every one of these [classical] concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. (Shaw, Don Juan in Hell)
Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #4 on: 09:50:32, 19-04-2008 »
Quote from: Ron Dough on 09:26:31, 19-04-2008
the Scotland most of the world believes in (and that counts for more than a few within in its borders)

With my surname, one of the first questions I get asked abroad is "do you play those bloody awful, y'know, what're they called, pipe things?".   Whilst not exactly complimentary it's usually meant in fun - there are worse national stereotypes one might have to endure Wink
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
-  Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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