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The Big Music by Kirsty Gunn

faber and faber, 2013, 380 p, plus i p Table of Pipers at The Grey House, i p definition of piobaireachd, iv p Foreword, lxvii p Appendices, ii p Glossary, v p Bibliography, xix p List of Additional Materials and i p Index.

 The Big Music cover

This is a variation on the ‘found manuscript’ novel – or in this case manuscripts, being the papers left behind by bagpiper John Callum MacKay Sutherland in the little hut he had built for himself in the hills beyond the Grey House at Ailte vhor Alech (the End of the Road) in Rogart, Sutherland, (turn left somewhere between Golspie and Brora and keep going to the unmarked fork in the road then follow it to the right.) This is the house, expanded and extended over the years, where the Sutherland piping dynasty set up its school of bagpiping and later, in an attic room, also a proper school for children from the area, now all defunct. Other relics, transcripts of radio and TV broadcasts and illustrative extracts from monthly journals contribute to the overall mix.

The human story in the book concentrates on the latest Sutherlands to be brought up in the House, those from the twentieth century to now, the aforementioned John Callum MacKay Sutherland and his son Callum Innes MacKay Sutherland. Both had left this Highland home to pursue careers in London, both were/are drawn back to confront the imminent death of a parent, in John’s case his mother’s and in Callum’s his father’s.

The novel itself begins early one morning with John taking from her cot Katherine Anna, the grand-daughter of his housekeeper Margaret, and spiriting her away with him. He intends to take her to the little hut as inspiration for part of the final piobaireachd he is composing. This act of kidnapping persuades the household – Margaret, her husband Iain Cowie, and daughter Helen – that Callum must be summoned back from London.

It becomes obvious (though heavily foregrounded earlier in the footnotes by invocations to note the increasing intrusion of the word ‘I’ to the text) that the guiding hand in the assembly of the text is meant to be that of Helen. This is highlighted by the information that the title of her dissertation was, “The Use of Personal Papers, Journals and other Writings in the Creation of Modernist and Contemporary Fiction.”

The family dynamics are complicated. Margaret and John had had a long-standing affair that produced Helen. While John was away down south Margaret had married Iain who now looks on Helen as his own daughter and on John’s return to the house resolutely tried to avoid any knowledge of his wife’s past (and rekindled) affair with Helen’s true father. Helen and Callum had become lovers when she was seventeen – some time before they both moved away for further education. Thankfully Katherine Anna is not Callum’s child.

The narration is not straightforward. It often adopts that form of Highland speech heavily influenced by Gaelic (to which is not difficult to accommodate) but it is interspersed with passages on the history of the Sutherlands, the Grey House itself, and of bagpiping. And it has copious footnotes.

Now; I love a footnote. But there are footnotes and footnotes. In a novel they are ideally used sparingly but here they appear very frequently – almost, but not quite, on every page, sometimes three or more to contend with. There is such a thing as overkill. Moreover, many of these impart the same information as previous ones or recapitulate something that has already appeared in the text. In some of them, too, there are comments on the text, as if the author is telling us how to interpret it, what to look for, which smacks of hubris and reads as if the author does not respect us as readers.

However, The Big Music is a bold venture. It attempts to set out in novelistic form the characteristics of the apotheosis of the art of bagpiping, the piobaireachd (usually rendered in English as pibroch,) while also making the case that it is an extremely complicated and worthy musical form, requiring a large amount of training by previous pipers as its essence is not truly captured by any musical notation. To that end we have sections of the overall story relating to the structure of piobaireachd, the ground, Urlar, a variational development, Taorluath, more variation, Crunluath (the Crown,) and a conclusion, Crunluath A Mach, which returns to the Urlar and ideally fades away as the piper recedes over the horizon.

But therein lies its main flaw. The playing of piobaireachd necessarily entails repetition, of notes and phrases. While some recapitulation and some emphasis by repetition may be necessary in a novel, it ought not to be taken to extremes. “Running over the same old ground” is not generally desirable. Mirroring piobaireachd unfortunately obliges it. That tendency in this novel may not quite be ad nauseam but certainly leans towards ad irritatem.

Occasionally the footnotes contain snippets that read as comments on the text. In piobearachd “Like in a story, one may return to a central idea that is never quite resolved, as in a fable or a myth there may seem to be an ending but the ending is not there.” A piobeareachd has no formal conclusion and in its performance, “The two extremes to be avoided are dragging and hurrying. …. Steadiness is more important than speed.” This commenting is made explicit when we are told “the idea of music that sits behind the words, of entire lines and phrases that sound rather than represent … Is at the very heart of the project here in hand.”

We are told that at the heart of John McKay Sutherland’s attitude to the music of his forefathers is “A loneliness that some might describe as a quality of mind that won’t let anyone in, come close. A loneliness that may be described as a quality of heart that can’t admit love.” I read this as a reflection of the influence of Calvinism on the Scottish male’s soul. In this context the observation that “The history of women in these places is always a quiet story, it’s quietly told” holds a harsh mirror up to history.

As a novel The Big Music certainly has ambition – especially in its attempt to extend the limits of the form. In its execution, though, it strays too far from the reason why people engage with novels. Its concentration on its characters – well drawn as most of them are – is too episodic, too sparse, too smirred, to resonate as it might.

A note on the book’s title. Within the piping fraternity piobaireachd is known as the big music, Ceol Mor (as opposed to strathspeys, reels etc which are regarded as Ceol Beag, little music.)

Pedant’s corner:- missing commas before and at the end of a piece of direct speech embedded in a sentence, “post offices” (Post Offices,) fine’ness (why the apostrophe?) green’ness (again, that unnecessary apostrophe,) stubborn’ness (ditto,) clean’ness (ditto,) Arogocat (elsewhere Argocat,) “someone taking over on a bad corner” (someone overtaking on a bad corner,) scared’y (‘scaredy’ would be fine,) “Then Callum hears his father’s breath starts coming again” (hears his father’s breath start coming again,) “smirring of the tune” – a footnote says “the glossary defines smirring as a general smudging but it is often used in the Highlands as a metaphor for light rain” – (the dictionary definition of smir is ‘light rain’ not ‘smudging.’ Smir is in widespread use in Scotland as a description of rain so light it can hardly be seen but nevertheless soaks through to the skin. I suspect the word’s use in piping actually derives from that rather than the other way round. Aside: when I visited Bilbao I was delighted when a local said a particular similar weather condition there – now, with climate change, no longer so prevalent – and had been called ‘smirri-mirri’ and I told her of the Scottish equivalent.) “Slowly, year by year, in every country except one the bagpipe either disappeared completely or was left ‘to the lonely hill-men or the occasional crank’.” The text says this is because mediæval conditions lingered in the Highlands longer that elsewhere in the world. (Yet later parts of the book acknowledge that different bagpipe traditions than Scotland’s still exist. Off the top of my head I can think of the uillean pipes, the Northumbrian pipes not to mention Galician and Cornish versions,) “the general lay of it” (lie of it.) “The connection between piobaireachd and lyric ….. and come to bear” (comes to bear,) footed’ness (again; what’s with the apostrophe?) Eric Richards’ (Richards’s,) “and how you could call someone a wife who doesn’t look to the man she’s married?” (how could you is the usual word order in English.)
In the Appendices: “the boundary between the districts of Sutherland and Caithness were slightly redrawn” (the boundary …was slightly redrawn,) an extraneous apostrophe, “the area of grounds and land surrounding the Grey House amount to some 400 acres” (the area … amounts to,) “the earliest references to a MacCrimmon (who was also a piper) appears in Campbell lands” (the earliest reference,) “a good representation of the terms of tuition etc that is available” (of the terms .. that are available.)

Yet More of Lorient

On the way back to the ship the good lady said, “Can you hear bagpipes?”

Indeed I could.

It turned out there was a group doing traditional Breton dance on the quayside beside the ship and they were accompanied by Breton bagpipers. (Click on photo and get to video on my Flickr.) You can see SS Black Watch looming in the background there:-

Breton Bagpipes Dancers, Lorient

They were also taking the opportunity to ply us with traditional food; pancakes. I had one with abricot, jam as it turned out.

Steaming out of Lorient we had a good view of the main reason why Lorient was heavily bombed during World War 2, the German built submarine pens. Lorient’s position gave the U-Boats instant access to the Atlantic.

In background here:-
Submarine Pens Lorient 1

View from rear side:-
ubmarine Pens, Lorient 2

Side front:-

Submarine Pens, Lorient 3

Slightly further across:-
Submarine Pens, Lorient 4

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