Piper’s Meeting – Tunes from the Campbell Canntaireachd

£15.00

Compiled and transcribed by Patick Molard and Dr Jack Taylor. Their blurb to the book reads: For 300 years piobaireachd was passed from teacher to pupil by singing and demonstration. When it was thought that the art was dying, it was written down. The first ever written collection of this music was compiled by Colin Campbell from Nether Lorn in Argyllshire in the late 1700s. He refined the piper’s singing, or canntaireachd (chanting), to produce a system where each note and embellishment has a syllable imitating its sung sound.

In 1816 Colin’s son John submitted the collection for a money prize for scientific writing of piobaireachd, but it was rejected in favour of staff notation. Two volumes, containing 168 tunes, were re-discovered in the house of John’s niece, Ann Campbell, in 1909, and deciphered by J P Grant of Rothiemurchus. A third volume was probably written, but is lost. Forty-five tunes from the collection appear here in staff notation, most for the first  time. One is called Pipers Meeting and gives its name to the book. It is perhaps a composition of Campbell himself. These tunes have been considered by some to be of little musical merit. We think otherwise, and now pipers can decide for themselves.

We believe that no staff notation can fully capture the character and mood of piobaireachd, and that the written score is a guide only. Good teaching is essential, and expression is often best understood through singing and demonstration. Recordings of all the tunes are on the PS Archive.