Most pipers get frazzled when the uneducated have the audacity to refer to a piece of bagpipe music as a "song." "They have no words, so they are not songs. They are tunes," I've heard many a piper correct. Be that as it may, it is somehow my joke to call tunes songs just to see what reaction I get. And the deeper point is that some of them are songs.
I have heard the uninspired attempts of so many pipers - including myself - who don't realize they are playing songs. Many of these works do have words, and even if they don't, they should be sung by those wanting to play them with any conviction. My instructor once told me over and over during a lesson... "Sing it... no, again. Sing it like it's a song... No! again... Again! Now PLAY the SONG."
All pipers who learn piobaireachd have to sing if they are to understand what they are playing. The bagpipe has its own language called cantaireachd - "that which is sung" - a musical language used to teach pipe music before there was staff notation. Singing internalizes the music and it comes out in the playing. The best pipers sing the song and then play it. And as if that weren't enough, the melody pipe is called a chanter - "the one that sings."
Even without its lyrics, "The Skye Boat Song" is still a song, as is "Amazing Grace." Even modern composers have written works with names such as "Song for the Smallpipe." This wonderfully melodic little piece has no lyrics, but it sings as if it could be nothing but a song. It's simple and somehow moving, the way the chanter "sings" it. And other pipe "songs" like "Shoshanna's Lullaby" and "The Dark Island" give the highland bagpipe a voice. And surely this "voice" is what prompted the naming of the melody pipe "chanter" back in the times when voice and language were considered an integral part of music, and isntruments were used to evoke and imitate the human voice.
For many pipers these songs are something more real and soulful than a nifty party tune, but even many "tunes" have driving melodic lines which demand expression, demand to be sung.
In the piping idiom there are definitely tunes, fun little works that make for a room full of tapping toes, but there are also songs, the likes of which one cannot hear sung anywhere else.
One of my pursuits in piping is making musically satisfying arrangements of tunes as well as writing some "songs" of my own. My current "collection" consists of several arrangements and a couple of original tunes some of which I hope to publish in a unique format which will be educational and appealing.
Listed below are the tunes I play on a regular basis. Any of these can be worked up for most any event.
My Tune Collection
Tune Arrangements
Original Tunes
My Repertoire
Marches
Retreats
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Strathspeys
Reels
jigs
6/8 Marches
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Hymns
Slow Airs
Christmas
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Copyright © Virginia R. Smith |