[BITList] Art of piobaireachd - Oxford DNB Life of the Day

[John Feltham]

G'day folks,

I don't think that we should encourage them but.....



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MacKay,  Angus  (1813-1859), collector and editor of highland bagpipe music, was born on 10 September 1813, probably on the Isle of Raasay, Inverness-shire. He was the third of four piping sons of John MacKay of Raasay (1767-1848), the leading composer and teacher of his generation, and his wife, Margaret MacLean. As a boy he was piper to Sara Drummond, Lady Gwydir, and, as his adult career progressed, successively to Davidson of Tulloch, Campbell of Islay, and, from 25 July 1843, Queen Victoria. He married Mary Russell in Edinburgh on 25 May 1841; they had two sons and two daughters.

MacKay's development was precocious. In 1826 he took fourth prize at the Edinburgh competitions run by the Highland Societies of London and Scotland, and in 1835, aged just twenty-one, he won the prize pipe for first place. Even more significant, perhaps, was his prize in 1825 for setting a collection of pipe tunes in modern 'scientific' staff notation, which the Highland Societies were keen to promote. He went on to become the most influential collector and editor of pipe music in nineteenth-century Scotland.

MacKay lived at a time of rapid change in the piping world. His father had been a traditional family piper until late in his career, but Angus moved in a more individualistic and entrepreneurial market, in which the piper was more mobile, success in competition the marker of professional eminence, and a published collection the acme of a good career. Traditional oral methods of instruction-where it was said that seven years went into the making of a good piper and seven generations of knowledge before that-were coming under pressure. The needs of the army as an employer of pipers meant accelerated, and therefore cheaper, training, demanding standardized settings of tunes and fixed written scores.

MacKay's Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd or Highland Pipe Music (1838) appeared under the auspices of the Highland Society of London, a powerful institution with wide influence in Scottish cultural affairs. It contained sixty-one tunes written in staff notation. The extensive introduction and notes described the leading piping dynasties, such as the MacCrimmons, the MacArthurs, and the MacKays of Gairloch, and gave the history of the Highland Societies of London and Scotland's competitions from their inception in 1781 to 1838. The volume was issued under Angus MacKay's name, and derived its subsequent authority from his immense personal standing, but the extent of his contribution remains unclear. The Highland Society may well have determined the selection of tunes, and its under-secretary, James Logan (author of The Scottish Gael, 1831), is now thought to have written the letterpress sections, which were highly influential in determining how piobaireachd was to be interpreted in the wider non-Gaelic-speaking world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The prospectus stated: 'The leading object of the Editor is to preserve in its native simplicity and purity the ancient music of the country, by furnishing a fixed standard for future performers.' The collection attempted to fix a stable repertory for competitive and instructional purposes, to substitute for fluid oral variants a standard authoritative written text, and to lay down a more uniform and simplified style of ornamentation. MacKay's settings were more prescriptive than those of his predecessors, Joseph and Donald MacDonald (A Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe, 1803, and A Collection of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia, c.1819), which had tended, typically, to assume a degree of performer choice.

Three editions of the work were published during the nineteenth century (1838, 1839, 1899) and it rapidly became the standard text. Its expense (a guinea and a half) meant that it was not, as has frequently been claimed, 'the pipers' bible', but, with the rise of the competition circuit as the major arena for piobaireachd playing, and the bookish orientation of most piping judges, MacKay's printed text frequently dictated what was heard in public and how it was played into the following century.

In 1841 MacKay completed an extensive manuscript collection of piobaireachd, drawn from his father's playing and other sources. It numbered 183 tunes in all, written out in fair copy, and was obviously intended for publication. But at this point the Highland Societies drew back. They concluded, quite wrongly, that the best tunes were in the published volume of 1838, and declined to acquire the manuscript or to give financial acknowledgement to the compiler.

Angus MacKay's manuscripts are a major source for subsequent published collections of piobaireachd. And yet his later editors have, while invoking his name, frequently compromised his text, by using notational procedures which obscured his clearly expressed musical intention, thereby creating widespread uncertainty about timing and expression among modern performers.

MacKay had to give up his royal appointment in 1854. He became violently insane, probably as a result of tertiary syphilis, and was confined in the Crichton Royal Hospital, near Dumfries. On 21 March 1859, he was drowned in the River Nith while attempting to escape. The body was never recovered.

It is impossible to overstate MacKay's influence on the culture of the highland bagpipe. The story of his reputation in the century and a half which followed his death is virtually synonymous with the history of piping itself.

William Donaldson 

Sources  W. Donaldson, The highland pipe and Scottish society, 1750-1950 (2000) + W. Donaldson, Pipers: a guide to the players and music of the highland bagpipe (2005) + A. Mackay, A collection of ancient piobaireachd or highland pipe music (1838) + N. T. McKay, 'Angus Mackay (1812-1859) and his contribution to highland music', Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 55 (1986-8), 203-16 + P. Cooke, 'Changing styles in pibroch playing', International Piper, 1/2 (1978), 12-14 + J. A. Maclellan, 'Angus Mackay of Raasay', Piping Times, 18/6 (1965-6), 10-14 + W. Donaldson, 'Change and invariance in the traditional performing arts', Northern Scotland, 17 (1997), 33-54 + D. MacDonald, A collection of the ancient martial music of Caledonia (c.1819) + J. MacDonald, A compleat theory of the Scots highland bagpipe (1803) + Oban Times (1861-1950) + R. D. Cannon, A bibliography of bagpipe music (1980) + R. D. Cannon, The highland bagpipe and its music (1988) + clinical notes on patient 'no. 738 Angus Mackay', Crichton Royal Hospital + d. cert.
Archives NL Scot.
Likenesses  W. Wyld, watercolour, c.1852, Royal Collection [see illus.] · portrait, oils, Caledonian Club, London




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