The Big Music (10 page)
Authors: Kirsty Gunn
Who could say I wouldn’t love him?
The way we came together, that first time – though …
He’ll never know, nor Iain.
Only Helen.
Because only Helen has the story in her, of how John Sutherland and I came to be together and what happened then.
For sure, there was not much else for her, Johnnie’s mother, by the time her little boy was sent away. Her husband was long lost to her by then, deep into his practice and composition and would barely have known the difference between whether the child was there or gone. He’d be in his room alone and rehearsing and practising or else he’d have his students staying with them at the House, or other musicians and composers, and they’d be together, all the men, and John’s mother would see them at the dinner table only.
34
‘A fine day, Elizabeth?’
‘Oh, yes, a fine day.’
So there was her loneliness, the heart of it, in his mother, the way she learned to gather it up, making herself be surrounded by it as though she were used to it, silence after silence. And as for her son, well. Few boys of that generation would ever remember much, would they? And sure
Johnnie
can’t, of ever feeling that he had such a great craving for that man who
was his father. Wouldn’t remember, for example, missing him or wanting him home. When Callum Sutherland was in London, say, and this just after the War, or in Edinburgh or somewhere else and always for music. When his father was away, or even when he was just at home but off in a room somewhere playing, the room where he sat with his piper friends or his pupils … All that time John Callum can’t remember being after his father’s companionship or attention at all. He was used to it, not wanting it. Like his mother made herself be used to it. No expectation there to have the man’s time or his tenderness, much less again the thought that he might give his love.
I don’t mind.
Like he didn’t have a father.
I don’t mind.
Like he never had.
So no surprise now, why should it be, that he’s come to seem as though he’s the same man himself, could be, as his own father. Put to the same instrument his father was put to, set up from the beginning to have his own long hours away from anyone else he might care for.
His father someone he remembers just in bits, in little pieces.
35
Only his mother comes back to him entire. Her hand on his head. Her taking of the chanter
36
from his lips, to set it to one side: ‘That’s enough now. That’s enough for today.’ And those times when his father would ask him into his room to have him play for him, the tough cast of his father’s jacket, the tweed cuff as he reached in to straighten the pipes in the boy’s arms. Was there a smile then? A word or two spoken?
A word with a tune?
All this is way back in Johnnie’s past now and hard to remember. Not much left, of the memories, not much besides. Of those times. His father, and his cuff. Maybe a word was spoken, a phrase that comes back to him: ‘Do it again!’ For the section of the music he’d been playing but the notes
were all bad. That whole line wrong, his father said, all bad and the
fingerings
were smeared – so: ‘Play it again! Do it again!’
‘And again!’
‘Again!’
So many times. The notes were all bad.
So there’s nothing left. Nothing. Only –
‘Who are you, Johnnie?’
He asks in the dark.
‘That you would remember your own father so?’
37
Green/grey: the shape of the hills against the grey sky. The final part of the first section before they bring him back off the hill, wrap him up, inject him, bring him home.
1
‘Lament for Himself’ appears in various versions throughout the Appendices attached to this book but in the first instance is represented here as opening ‘remarks’, that is, the outline of a sequence of notes that introduce the main theme of isolation. This is created by a set of open intervals ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’, ‘B’ to ‘E’, ‘A’ to ‘A’ etc. that appear to sit against the emptiness of the background of the drone, the baseline ‘A’ note. Appendix 10/i contains more details of this sequence, and manuscript.
2
The Gaelic word ‘urlar’, the first movement of a piobaireachd, translates as ‘ground’ and lays down all the musical ideas of what will follow. Appendix 11 has more details of piobaireachd structure and form.
3
Common usage – ‘ben’, meaning at the back, or to the side, in this sense, it’s the favoured side of the hill. The Glossary has a list of Gaelic words and expressions used in this book.
4
Various maps at the back of this book describe the area in which ‘The Big Music’ is set; general, particular and historical.
5
Appendix 3 relates to the history of the Highland North East region and includes details of the notorious ‘Clearances’, when many were forcibly evicted from their homes from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries and relocated elsewhere or abroad.
6
Details of the Sutherland family and the history of the place where they have always lived appear throughout ‘The Big Music’, particularly in the Taorluath and Crunluath movements, and in Appendices 4–9 that relate particularly to The Grey House.
7
Some Gaelic words are in use that are also translated into Scots/English versions of the same that sound similar to but are different from the full Gaelic pronunciations – ‘sligheach’ is such a word, also pronounced by people like John Sutherland in the more anglicised form of ‘sleekit’; see Glossary.
8
‘E’ is known as the ‘echoing’ note on the bagpipe scale. The Last Appendix gives a chart with a full translation of the notes’ meanings and characteristics.
9
The base note is the ‘A’, also known as the Piper’s note.
10
The ‘F’ note, or note of Love, figures as a ‘return’ in both Margaret and Katherine Anna’s themes in the Urlar and in ‘The Big Music’ generally.
11
This sequence of notes is the opening line of the fragment of music known as ‘Lament for Himself’ and is reproduced in manuscript at the back of the book. These first bars indicate the main theme of John MacKay Sutherland; the later ‘drop’ from High to Low ‘G’ occurs in the second line, as part of the so-called ‘Lullaby’ sequence – see later in this Urlar for further details.
12
The House is known as The Grey House throughout ‘The Big Music’ but occasionally it is referred to by the Gaelic that translates as ‘the End of the Road’, owing to its position and history as a stopping place for shepherds and black-cattle herdsmen en route to the West and South. A full history of The Grey House, itself a name deriving from its original architecture as a grey ‘longhouse’, is available in Appendices 4–9; see also various maps and plans.
13
The manuscript at the back of the book that shows the fragment that survives of ‘Lament for Himself’ is all the composer knew of his piobaireachd and so he would have been largely unaware of its full meaning and patternings. However, the fact that the Urlar had nevertheless been written by John Sutherland in full, some weeks and months prior to when the events of this and subsequent movements of ‘The Big Music’ take place, gives the reader, and, at times, the composer himself, intimations of the ideas that would have been developed fully were the tune to be completed. Here is the musician hearing his own music as though for the first time, with understanding, as though composing it now. This will continue to happen to him as the book progresses and the Lament comes to reveal itself in full.
14
The Crunluath section – especially three/second paper – of ‘The Big Music’ shows John Callum at work on his composition earlier in the year, when, despite a series of earlier strokes and spate of ill health, he was still fit enough to be able to walk up to the Little Hut in the hills where he did all his writing and composing. After his death, the manuscript for ‘Lament for Himself’ was discovered on his desk there, beneath the window.
15
Here arrives in the text for the first time the sound of a voice we shall hear more of as ‘The Big Music’ continues, that enters into the narrative and remarks upon it here, in this line of what will become known as the Lullaby, ‘A Mother’s Song’. The music for this Lullaby appears in the second line of the Urlar of ‘Lament for Himself’ and its words and further details can be found in this and in the Crunluath movements of ‘The Big Music’, as well as in the List of Additional Materials at the back of the book, in particular see scanned material.
16
Here, another example of what was described earlier – notes written by John Sutherland in manuscript before their meaning was grasped and understood – in this instance the octave interval and the drop of notes described in the second bar of the second line of the music representing the act of abduction that was to occur many weeks after composition.
17
These words of the composition ‘Lullaby’ that appears in sections throughout this paper are shown in full on p. 466. John Sutherland’s paper ‘Innovations to the Piobaireachd’, contained in the List of Additional Materials at the back of the book may also be of interest.
(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.
18
Here is a substantial reference to the small bothy or shelter John Sutherland built for himself in the Mhorvaig hills soon after he returned to The Grey House following his father’s death. Having what he always referred to in his private journals by the initials ‘LH’ gave him somewhere he could be entirely alone and could separate himself from that musical legacy he’d inherited from his father. There are further details about the significance of the building and the music and notes that were found there that will play out in the Crunluath A Mach movement, and there is also further information in the List of Additional Materials.
19
Information about traditional Highland lullabies that really might sing a child to sleep is given in the Crunluath movement of this composition. It is unlikely that John Sutherland would have known any of these – hence the line here no doubt describes the voice we heard from earlier in this Urlar, not his. See following paragraphs also for further evidence of this.
20
The Taorluath and Crunluath sections of ‘The Big Music’ show certain transcripts of recordings of conversations between Margaret and her daughter Helen, and notes made that describe their relationship and discussions. In addition, Appendix 8/i shows how these transcripts were used in establishing a history of The Grey House that is now held in archive and may be consulted at leisure.
21
‘Himself’ was the pet name given to John Sutherland’s father, the great Modernist bagpiper who went by the name ‘Callum’ though he’d been christened Roderick and became ‘John’, after the death of his elder brother, according to the Sutherland family tradition of so naming the first-born. There are more details about this, and about family trees, genealogy charts etc. in relevant Appendices 4–9. For now it is enough to note that Iain here is using the name ‘Himself’ ironically.
22
The Urlar is the opening movement of a piobaireachd – as is clear from this section of ‘The Big Music’ – to be followed by three other movements. Details of all these – the Urlar, ground; Taorluath, stag’s leap; Crunluath, crown; Crunluath A Mach, the showing of the crown – can be found in Appendices 11 and 12, along with notes on structure and meaning.
23
Here again is evidence of a narrative voice that is placed outside the experience of John Callum and others in this book. Is it the same person noted earlier entering into the text this way? I think we are asked to consider here that this may be the case. Either way, the first person ‘I’ appears here, and with increasing frequency as ‘The Big Music’ continues – though will not always be annotated separately.
24
The manuscript ‘Lament for Himself’ in its original form shows how the theme was to be developed within the Urlar, as two variations – first a singling (the insertion of a number of single gracenotes around the existing notes) and then a doubling (where these gracenotes are doubled from the ‘top’ to provide a sort of mirror image of the original tune). This is marked on the MS ‘dithis’ (pron.
zhitt-ee
), and note also the siubhal (pron.
shoo-al
), Gaelic terms meaning this particular musical development in bagpipe music.
25
There is information about the structure of ‘Lament for Himself’ in Appendix 10/i, ii and iii, and about piobaireachd structure generally in Appendix 11. Also the Crunluath A Mach movement of ‘The Big Music’ contains details of an essay by John MacKay Callum Sutherland, ‘Innovations to the Piobaireachd’, that refers to a tune being more than just a theme but is also about the particular deployment of that theme.
26
The crown here refers to the Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ – crunluath meaning ‘crown’, and the important concluding ‘narrative’ section of piobaireachd music that is then followed by the show of technique that is the A Mach.
27
Appendix 7 indicates those sections of ‘The Big Music’ that refer to John Callum’s family; history; business interests. Throughout the book we come to see how John Sutherland may have vowed never to return to the place where he’d been born (‘I’ll not be back!’, p. 14) but did come to live out the end of his life at The Grey House after all.
28
The Taorluath and Crunluath movements give details of the Sutherland family’s history.
29
The Music Room, or the Study, as it was also called in John Sutherland’s father’s day, is also the little sitting room at The Grey House.
30
Note the use of first person in this segment of the text; also refer to pp. 8 and 25 in the Urlar, as examples of a certain tone, style of voice emerging in the narrative. Also, opening section of Taorluath movement.
32
This is from a poem by Robert Frost, and describes Helen MacKay’s interest in American poetry (that in her journal she refers to as ‘real-voice poetry’, a phrase lifted from her PhD thesis), from Whitman through Dickinson to the New York School. Appendix 8/ii: ‘Helen’s notes and reading’ shows her interest in particular poets and novelists, as well as general understanding of and research into various schools of literary modernism.
33
Iain is referring here to the notorious Highland Clearances, and the way the Sutherland family stayed clear of the evictions and relocation that took place at that time. There are further details of their position in the Taorluath and Crunluath sections of ‘The Big Music’; also Appendices 1–3, and parts of 4–9 may be of interest here.
34
By now there have been a number of references to the piping school (known formally as the ‘Winter Classes’) that took place, along with various recitals and competitions at The Grey House under the direction of Callum Sutherland, the father of John MacKay of ‘The Big Music’. The theme of this School continues within the structure of this book – as part of its history and positioning within the culture of piobaireachd – and in the Crunluath movement, in particular. There is also related information contained within Appendices 4–9 and in the List of Additional Materials.
35
These memories survive as fragments only in ‘The Big Music’ but later sections of the book cast some light on the character of John’s father, by way of various transcripts and related papers.
36
The parts of the bagpipe are illustrated and listed in Appendix 13.
37
These snatches of phrases are inserted here to show continuity with the ongoing project of describing how ‘Lament for Himself’ has been composed. The phrases appear in the patterning of notes at the beginning of the Urlar, in their repetition and pacing. The fourth movement of ‘The Big Music’, the Crunluath A Mach, also contains details of how these fragmentary style notes contribute to the whole.
