The Craft of Pibroch: patterns for weaving new music

Introduction to the historical craft of music-making visible in Celtic sources

In this session, we'll introduce the building blocks of a transregional craft, evident in Scottish sources of pipe-craft and Welsh and Irish sources of string-craft: 

1. Sources: how do we know? An overview of the cultural contexts that generated manuscripts, bringing prestigious cosmopolitan traditions out of invisibility. The arc of scholarship interpreting these sources over the last 200 years.
2. Cycles: what do we loop? An overview of all the patterns visible in these sources and our reasons for choosing six of them for this course. In each session, we will embed a different cycle in memory through singing, finger counting, and moving the body. We’ll start with Hebridean canntaireachd, singing examples from pibroch, then adapt the vocables to sound more like harp and lyre techniques.
3. Techniques: how do our fingers move on the strings? Introducing a limited vocabulary of ‘cuttings’ (gearraidhean) and ‘movements’ (lùthan): gestures that shape phrases and pieces, articulating structure, emotion, and energy level. The techniques found in Welsh, Irish, and Scottish sources inspire awe and wonder. We will consider how to practise them, finding your appropriate edge and keeping the summit in mind.
4. Tonalities: how do we create a variety of tastes? We will let go of wrong beliefs about modes in the face of glorious evidence. 314 classical pibrochs reveal how the Rankins on Mull and MacCrimmons on Skye gave pieces distinctive ‘tastes’. We will focus on a different region of pibroch’s taste world in each session, exploring time-honoured ways of changing taste within pieces, moving listeners with little sensory shocks, generating intensity, bitterness, and sweetness, and crafting new tonalities.
5. Practising and memorizing. How to use the voice, the body, rhythmic repetition, awareness, vivid imagination, and playfulness to make good technique permanent and complex pieces unforgettable. Tips on avoiding injury when cultivating virtuosity and how to be savvy, making the path towards awesome results shorter, safer, and more fun.

Homework assignment 1. Choose one of the scales and one or two of the techniques on the syllabus (see handout). Use them and nothing else to compose two cycles using the ‘Woven’ measure 11O1 OO1O – the most important structure in pibroch, with over 150 examples.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

Binary complements and metrical games

Sessions 2–6 will follow the same format:

1. Singing (5 mins) – picking up the idiom in the time-honoured, whole-body way.
2. Sharing (50 mins) – sharing work in progress (e.g. 7 students, 7 mins each).
3. Expanding (10 mins) – introducing new patterns on the syllabus (see below).
4. Clarifying (5 mins) – answering questions and clarifying the next assignment.

The Singing will recap the cycles introduced in previous sessions, using finger counting and expressive gestures that embody the plot of the measure for a more powerful recall. 

The Sharing is an opportunity for students to play and receive feedback on work in progress. This generates ideas for everyone on how to deploy the patterns on the syllabus, building new music that is rooted in ancient evidence and tailored to your skill level. Course materials will provide resources to guide your composing down ancient Celtic paths, weaving sonorities to create interlace that marries exuberant vitality with cosmic order: an idea of musica divina cultivated for centuries in schools of Greek, Latin, and Irish learning. 

In this session, the Expanding will introduce the measure Korffiniwr – 11OO 1O11 – the second most important pattern in cerdd dant with 56 recorded uses. Popular throughout the Irish and British Isles, we will hear it as a complete cycle in the Gathering of the Clans (PS 163) and Gosteg Dafydd Athro; and as a fifth of the cycle in The Unjust Incarceration (PS 3) and Y Kaniad Krych ar y Bragod Gower. These epic compositions illustrate how composers elaborated measures using their binary complements – in this case OO11 O1OO – like yin and yang. They also exemplify the playful metrical games ubiquitous in pibroch’s early sources, expressions of spirit that died out as editors regularized the music, replacing multiformity with scripture. 

Homework assignment 2. Begin composing a Korffiniwr study AND/OR develop your Woven study, adding a ‘journey’ (siubhal) in which the only thing that changes is the finger movement(s).

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

Structural dynamics: raising the energy level and releasing tension

During the Sharing, we will touch on predictability and dynamism in:

— how measures are used in the Robert ap Huw manuscript;
— how measures are used in the earliest pibroch sources; and
— how finger movements are developed during a performance, incrementally raising the energy level.

In the Expanding, we will hear how Caniad tro tant (RapH MS pp. 67–69) develops the 7-unit measure Korfinfaen – 1O11O11 – noticing parallels with The Unjust Incarceration (PS 3).

Homework assignment 3. Begin composing a Korfinfaen study AND/OR develop your previous studies, adding cycles to practise new finger movements. Exercise extreme economy: train like a warrior priest! 

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

A hundred tastes with no retuning

In the Sharing, we will focus on the conventions and dynamics of tonality within pieces.

When Expanding, we will introduce the Interlaced measure – 1O1B O1OA – looking at the classic pibrochs ‘War or Peace’ (PS 204) and ‘The Earl of Ross’s March’ (PS 118), noticing how many of the cycles in Welsh string-craft and Scottish Gaelic pipe-craft feature harmonic reciprocity with interlocking halves, equal and opposite.

Homework assignment 4. Start composing an Interlaced study AND/OR develop your previous studies. Experiment manipulating tonality to emotional effect across the short span of the ùrlar and the long span of a multi-cycle ‘journey’ (siubhal). You can end up distant from the tonality you started with, the listener shouldn’t know what’s coming! 

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

The dynamics of pulse elasticity: from soft luxury to hard discipline

In the Sharing, we will focus on the craft of manipulating pulse elasticity in the pibroch ùrlar and across a siubhal: how to be slack before building tension, and how to tighten the pulse little by little, working towards a climax. The Hebridean habit of making pulses so highly elasticated that the metre may be imperceptible can be understood as reflecting the release of tension after endurance training or battle – necessary after superhuman energy is sustained for a period.

When Expanding, we will introduce the Well-Woven measure – 1O11 OO11 O1OO 11OO – as a whole cycle in Lament for Sir James MacDonald of the Isles (PS 61), and as a half measure in McLeod’s Lament (PS 135) and The Horse’s Bridle Tune (PS 107).

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]

Pulling it all together

The last cycle we will look at is thoroughly cosmopolitan, found all over Europe and popular not only in pibroch but in Scots fiddle and vocal music too. A sonata form in miniature, the Rounded Lyrical structure can be reduced to this formula:

AO A1 AO A1  BO B1 BO A1

The examples we will sing together showcase Hebridean ingenuity, weaving magisterial music from very few pitches: Lament for Allan Og (PS 285), The Piper’s Warning to His Master (PS 201), and one of the most beautiful pieces in the pibroch repertory, Cherede darievea (PS 90). In the final Sharing, everyone will be encouraged to find freedom in the form and, on the solid rock of cultural success stories, to develop a unique voice.

[Barnaby Brown and Bill Taylor]