Well said, Chris.
I'd add that, even without the traditional examples, the instrument
itself is a good teacher. All musical instruments have their peculiar
abilities and constraints and this is particularly true of NSPs. Our
pipes alone, among other bagpipes, have the capability of producing
truly detached notes and few people have studied this as closely and
productively as you and Adrian. Whatever may happen in the evolution
of tradition and style, that unique capability of the instrument
(whether with keys or not) has remained constant. The evidence of both
the past and the present seem to indicate that 'good piping' is
actually what shows the instrument to its best and unique advantage.
You mentioned George Atkinson as a good exponent of that style. I have
heard only the three tracks on the Wild Hills O'Wannie LP. I like them
a lot. Are there other recordings of him?
Francis
On 16 Sep 2008, at 12:05, Ormston, Chris wrote:
I understand what you're saying, Matt, but I don't think comparison
with the GHB tradition is directly relevant. The system of gracing
for GHB may have been imposed by the army for the last hundred years
or so and become accepted as truth by civilian pipers, but from what
I understand, there was always some form of systematic approach to
gracing. This may have varied from region to region, and evolved
over time, but was not an every-man-for-himself free-for-all.
Whatever the approach adopted, the GHB with its open chanter
requires grace notes to separate notes of the same pitch, and all
systematic approaches to gracing utilise the strength of different
grace notes to aid articulation and rhythm.
However, as Adrian has already stated, the NSP chanter is a closed
cylindrical tube and therefore does not require open gracings. If
we attempt to use open gracings they all come out at about the same
volume, so their utility for rhythmic purposes is lost and they
merely interfere with the melody. Using open gracings to separate
notes of the same pitch stands out like a sore thumb amongst
otherwise-detached fingering and I can't for the life of me
understand how that might be aesthetically pleasing. Six
generations of the Clough family seemed to grasp this concept
without difficulty, and their peers over the generations - Thomas
Hare, George Nicholson, Thomas Todd, and more recently Will Cocks
and GG Armstrong - all subscribed to this approach. It lived on in
the playing of George Atkinson and Joe Hutton. This is not, then,
fundamentalism but rather the evidence that, over the generations,
consensus was reached on what constituted good piping - not by
academic analysis, but by pipers finding out what worked best
through their experience of playing. This defines our tradition.
Forster Charlton's notes in the Billy Pigg Border Minstrel album
stated that learning the NSP was once taken as seriously as any
classical instrument, and this would concur with the suggestion made
by Francis that NSP are a parlour instrument rather than a folk
instrument. The perception of NSP as a folk instrument has not been
helpful as it leads to the notion that the music is unsophisticated
and that there are few rules to be observed when playing. People
use the 'folk' argument to justify a range of freestyle approaches,
but in doing so they do a disservice to the previous generations
who, in the absence of the internet, CDs, MP3s or whatever, explored
in depth the possibilities of their instrument without dilution from
other traditions.
So, I believe that the 'right' way of playing is that developed over
the last two hundred years or so - it wasn't arrived at by
accident! The aesthetics are all to do with how each player works
WITHIN the tradition to develop their own subleties and nuances.
Tom Clough, George Atkinson and Joe Hutton all played from the same
rule book, yet each had an individual style.
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Seattle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 16 September 2008 09:49
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu
Subject: [NSP] Re: Etymology of the 'C' word - 2
Thanks for these Richard. None of them are really close, which IMO
indicates that this was an onomatopoeic(?) word used by a small
circle, maybe a very small circle.
The issue behind the word is whether to-choyte-or-not-to-choyte is an
aesthetic or a moral choice. We have the right to defend our own
aesthetic values, but when we talk of them as 'right' I think we're on
shaky ground. The kind of fundamentalism which I'm aware of as a
feature of a neighbouring piping tradition rings alarm bells. A tricky
one, eh?
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