Little fame and less fortuneDONALD MacDONALD

WE can imagine Donald MacDon-ald as a busy, rotund little man with a bagpipe making work-

shop in Castlehill, at the top of Edinburgh’s High Street, sharing his modest home in Carubbers Close with his family and his aged father who was a fluent story-teller, steeped in the lore of his native Skye.

Two centuries ago, in the early decades of the 19th century, Donald MacDonald was energetically helping to lay the foundations of what Highland piping was to become. His ef-forts produced some notable achievements but his contributions were overtaken by the work of others and never saw him prosper. And only recently has his work been seriously revisited.

Donald MacDonald learned his Highland piping in the MacArthur style, and served in Ireland as a piper with the 1,000-strong Caith-ness Highlanders. This was well before the days of pipe bands as we know them and, in the historically different role of a Napoleonic-era British military piper, playing for ceremonies, formal occasions and field maneuvers, he evi-dently came to the attention of his regiment’s Colonel in Chief, the highly influential finan-cier, economist and politician Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, president of the Highland Society of London.

Afterwards Pipe Major in the Argyllshire Militia, Donald MacDonald was 50 years old when in July 1817, on the hot, candle-lit stage of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, he won the coveted Prize Pipes in the annual Highland Society competition. He had placed third in 1801 and second in 1811.

“He served in two different regiments dur-ing the Napoleonic Wars and between whiles went back to his pipe-making,” said Roderick Cannon who, with Keith Sanger, has made a close study of Donald MacDonald.

“As a member of the volunteer militia and not liable for service ‘overseas’, Donald Mac-Donald soldiered in Ireland, Ireland then being considered part of the Great Britain’s home territories. So he was away from Scotland for some extended periods, serving mainly in the

LAMENT on the death of Patrick More McCruimmen (sic) as it appeared in Donald MacDonald’s Collection of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia, self-published in 1820. A note under the score (bottom left) reads ”A historical account of this Piobaireachd will be given inVol:2d.” Volume 2 has yet to be published.

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RODERICK CANNON … “Donald MacDonald’s work which has survived is distinctive, masterly and stands ready comparison with the best Highland pipe-making of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

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nine of them appearing his Collection of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia book. He followed that source fairly closely but not slav-ishly, and he changed the notation a little bit.

“Something that strikes me forcibly is that his settings very often seem to resemble the mu-sic of the Campbell canntaireachd manuscript,” said Roderick Cannon.

“Keith Sanger has pointed out that Donald MacDonald was closely associated with an-other piper, Duncan MacNab, who came from Netherlorn in Argyll and was Pipe Major of the first of the regiments Donald MacDonald served with. Although we don’t have his music in writing, I think it’s pretty clear that he would have played in an Argyllshire-Netherlorn style. Also, Donald MacDonald lived in the south of Argyllshire for quite a long time. After serving in his first regiment, he lived at Campbeltown. So, if there was such a thing as a regional style of playing in those days, Donald MacDonald would have tended towards influences from the west and southwest, the Argyllshire style.

“I also have a personal theory that the Han-nay-MacAuslan manuscript was written by one of the Netherlorn Campbells — but that’s a bit speculative and there’s no proof of it.”

When it came to writing down the music he collected, Donald MacDonald was not entirely without models to follow.

“There was Joseph MacDonald,” said Rod-erick Cannon, “and, as we compare Donald MacDonald’s book with Joseph MacDonald’s, we can see that Donald must have learned a certain amount from Joseph — including the basic decision to write pipe music on the stave the way we do, with the low A given as the note A on the treble clef. Not everybody else did that.

“But we can also see how Donald MacDon-ald had to solve various sorts of problems in setting up his notation. He also was a pioneer in teaching piping from the written notes.” It was Donald MacDonald who originated the notational convention by which the stems of melody notes all point down and the stems of grace notes all point upwards.

Although his Collection of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia ran to several later editions — a second edition was published by Alexander Robertson in Edinburgh, a larger business that published music of all sorts, to coincide with King George IV’s celebrated two-week visit to Edinburgh in 1822 — they produced few returns for him.

south of Ireland.“During those periods, he would apparently

have had home leave, not so much to go home and spend some time with his wife and family as to go back to Scotland as a recruiter. Recruiting parties in Scotland included a piper and Donald MacDonald was a piper for this purpose.”

At last he was able to settle in Edinburgh, and devote the rest of his life to instrument making and his other piping interests. He made Highland bagpipes, distinctive for the robust-ness of their tone, and taught Highland piping. He also made and gave tuition on Union and Northumberland pipes. And he collected tunes — piobaireachd and light music, both with enthusiasm.

At a time when piping knew no standard notational methodology, Donald MacDonald produced many painstakingly detailed and prescriptive scores of pipe tunes, in a form that could be performed on the piano as well as on the pipes. In 1806, he was awarded a special prize of five guineas by the Highland Society of London for producing the greatest number of “ancient pipe tunes set to music” and, in 1808, his son, John, was also awarded a “premium” for his settings of pipe tunes.

Two years later, he produced a “complete set of instructions for the Highland, Lowland and Northumbrian bagpipes” intended as the introduction to “a collection of piobaireachd or the ancient warlike music of Caledonia and Highland reels which will also soon be published as soon as sufficient numbers of subscribers come forward”.

In the end he published it himself: A Collec-tion of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia, 23 piobaireachds and 24 jigs, reels, strathspeys and airs from Uist and Skye. The Highland Society of London lent its support to the initia-tive to the extent of buying just six copies. It was a venture that Donald MacDonald was to say nearly ruined him.

Despite his financial setback, Donald Mac-Donald assiduously worked on and completed a second manuscript of 50 tunes, along with snippets of oral lore he had compiled about the tunes.

“One of his sources was the anonymously written Hannay-McAuslan manuscript,” said Roderick Cannon. “Compiled in about 1815, it is the oldest known manuscript of its kind and contains 10 tunes written out in staff notation. All of the tunes in this manuscript found their way into Donald MacDonald’s tune collections:

The Donald MacDonald

QuaichBy ALLAN BEATON

THE DONALD MacDonald Memorial Quaich competition was established in 1987 with the express purpose of promoting greater ap-preciation of the piobaireachd settings shown in his Collection of the Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia, self-published in 1820, and also in the manuscript he prepared for a further publication.

Under the expert guidance of Lieutenant Colonel David Murray, the organisation of the competition was undertaken by the Clan Donald Lands Trust and, with great encouragement from the late Vice Admiral Sir Roderick Macdonald, KBE, the event was staged in the Stables Restaurant at Armadale Castle.

Twenty-two years later, and now under the guidance of double gold medalist Dr Angus Mac-donald, the competition continues and four pipers are invited to play piobaireachd tunes in the style and following the settings of Donald Macdonald as shown in his manuscript.

It is always interesting to listen to pipers play in this competition and to hear how they have interpreted the music from the manuscript, in particular how the grace notes and cadences are played. Some pipers obviously devote a lot of time to working out what Donald Macdonald displayed in his manuscript while, in other cases, the more recent settings of the Piobaireachd Society publica-tions show through.

This is understandable as, in as many cases, the competitors already know the tunes and it can be time-consuming to learn alternative settings.

Thanks to the Quaich competition, though, and to the re-publication of a red-edited edition by Roderick Cannon and Keith Sanger of Donald Macdonald’s Volume 1 in 2006 by the Piobaireachd Society, the man and his musical settings are gradu-ally becoming better known.

The competitors and their tunes for this year’s event were Euan MacCrimmon playing The Rout of Glenfruin; Brian Donaldson playing The Groat; Innes Smith playing The Massacre of Glencoe; Stuart Lid-dell playing John Garbh Macleod of Raasay’ s Quill.

Brian Donaldson was awarded the Quaich.Previous winners have been: Hugh MacCallum

(1987), Iain MacFadyen (1988), Robert Wallace (1989), Roderick MacLeod (1990), William Mac-Callum (1991), Allan MacDonald (1992), William MacCallum (1993: Champion of Champions), Alfred p Morrison (1994), Dr Angus MacDonald (1995), Angus McColl (1996), William MacCallum (1997: Champion of Champions), William J. Morri-son (1998), James Murray (1999), Niall Mathieson, 2002), Robert Watt (2003), Ross Cowan (2004), Stuart Sheddon (2005), Niall Stewart (2006) and James Murray (2007).

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DONALD MacDONALD’s setting of The Sword’s Lament, edited by Roderick Cannon… “One of my favorites is a short tune you don’t hear often called The Sword’s Lament (or The Aged Warrior’s Sorrow). If you play the grace notes, I think you’re forced to give them proper melodic musical value — you can’t just whip through them at high speed. Donald MacDonald doesn’t tell you what speed to play them… he leaves it to you. But play every note and see what happens; it’s a remarkable piece, very beautiful.”

In 1823, Donald MacDonald was appointed pipe-maker to the Highland Society of London. As well as giving him the most prestigious en-dorsement of the day, this assured him of orders for the Prize Pipes that were awarded at the Society’s competitions but, following the 1826 event, these were held only every third year.

Dr Hugh Cheape, in his book Bagpipes: A National Collection of a National Instrument (National Museums of Scotland, 2008), credits Donald MacDonald, along with Hugh Robert-son and Malcolm MacGregor, with nothing less than the development of the great Highland bagpipe in the form and configuration we have come to know today.

“And,” says Hugh Cheape,” he may have

been the first to describe the great Highland bagpipe as Scotland’s ‘national instrument’.

“Donald MacDonald’s work which has sur-vived is distinctive, masterly and stands ready comparison with the best Highland pipe-mak-ing of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

In 1828, in a joint venture with his oldest son John, a printer as well as a piper, Donald MacDonald, published A Collection of 119 Quicksteps, Strathspeys Reels and Jigs. It remained more or less in print through the 19th century, eventually running to half a dozen editions but, again, the proceeds were of little benefit to Donald MacDonald or his family.

“It’s a very nice, handy little book,” said Roderick Cannon, “and, with it, Donald

MacDonald became the first person to publish collections of both ceol mor and ceol beag.”

But he was unable to find anyone to publish his second volume, and gave the manuscript to one of his pupils who preserved it for poster-ity.”

He died on 11 October 1840 at the age of 73. His three sons, John, Donald and James, all of whom had placed in the Highland Society of London competitions, had died before him.

Donald MacDonald was an enthusiast and a perfectionist but, although his work was esteemed, it was lightly rewarded and, when he died, his two widowed daughters and four grandchildren, whom he had been supporting, were left destitute.

Cumha a’ Chlaidheimh – The Sword’s LamentI Ùrlar.

II Variation

III Repeat the Ùrlar.

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He had lived in a period of flux and adjust-ment, of political reform and oppression, social upheaval, intellectual blossoming, imperial grandeur and industrial squalor. Piping was one small subplot in the greater and more compli-cated story that was to do with the emergence of modern Scotland.

In the preface of his book, he said he wasn’t going to go into the history of the Highland bagpipe, which “is fortunate for one on my habits,” presenting himself as a person inclined to leisure. “But I can’t see that having been the case,” said Roderick Cannon. “He was very much an all-rounder and his achievements were extraordinary.”

Following his death, however, the work of others soon overlaid his contributions to the extent that they became obscured and half-forgotten.

“Donald MacDonald was getting on in years by the time he published his book. He had a number of pupils, including his three sons,” said Roderick Cannon.

“They would have been the natural people to carry on his work but the tragic thing is that his sons all died before he did. If ever there was going to be a Donald MacDonald school of piobaireachd playing, it would have had to come from his leading pupils and his sons but they didn’t survive to do that.

“So there was no Donald MacDonald school of playing after himself.

“On the other hand, there very much was an Angus MacKay school,” he said. “Angus MacKay’s achievement was also enormous because he collected more tunes from more sources than anyone else of his day. He came onto the scene 10-25 years later than Donald MacDonald and benefited from that. Donald MacDonald was the pioneer; he had to invent the system for writing pipe music.

“But John Mackay of Raasay, Angus’ father, taught a number of pupils; Angus was much younger than Donald and had friends and pu-pils of his own and, by the late 1820s, people closely associated with him were going to the Highland Society of London competitions and taking the prizes: Angus MacKay’s broth-ers Donald and Roderick both won Highland Society of London Prize Pipes. The pipes won by Angus MacKay in 1835, like the instrument won by his brother Roderick in 1832, would have been made by Donald MacDonald. In 1835, Angus MacKay’s brother, John, placed fourth, and Ronald Mackay, yet another brother

was also a piper. John Ban McKenzie, Donald Cameron… all the great names of piping we re-vere were all young vigorous players like Angus MacKay and they swept the boards.

“And it’s not surprising that other pipers wanted to follow in their footsteps,” said Ro-derick Cannon. “A set of Prize Pipes in those days cost eight or ten guineas and that was a tremendous amount of money for a piper. The suggestion is being made that at around that time — 1800 give or take a decade or two — nearly all of the top quality bagpipes that were in circulation among the top quality pipers were Prize Pipes from the competitions.

“At that same time, jobs in piping were be-coming available again. The new generation of lairds, anglicised though they may have been, were wealthy and it was quite the fashion to have a piper. And the best way to find a piper for yourself was to offer the job to one of the prize winners, which is what happened to Angus MacKay. And it was also a way for the piper to avoid overseas service with the Army, service that, certainly in hotter climates, often meant death from disease.

“Compared with the depressed economic standards most pipers experienced, the compe-titions became a goldmine, and anything you could do to maximise your chances of winning a prize carried strong incentives.

“A while ago, Ruairidh MacLeod and Iain MacInnes made significant discoveries,” said Roderick Cannon. “They went through the old competition records and found that just when MacDonald’s book was being published, tunes from the book began to be offered by quite a few competitors, and the same thing happened again when Angus MacKay’s book came out.

“So a written book was very influential almost from the word ‘go’,” he said.

“It’s pretty clear that when these two books were in circulation, other tunes also circulated in manuscript form. So, at least in the inner circle of the top pipers, players were using hand-written music from an early stage. Pipers of the first generation to play at the competitions in the 1780s must have learned and played their tunes by ear. But, once written music got going, it took hold very quickly and deeply.

“And the competitions were very clearly determining the way piping was going.

“That Donald MacDonald’s work was set aside illustrates the fact that his music was quite distinctive — and, when they decided to support Angus MacKay’s book, in 1836-38,

the Highland Society of London gave as an official reason the need to secure a standard of uniformity in bagpipe music.

“I read this as meaning that pipers were turn-ing up at competitions and playing the same tunes in appreciably different styles,” said Rod-erick Cannon. “And the judges wanted a text in front of them so they could more authoritatively make their decisions. So it was about the diver-sity of performance being ironed out.

“The supporters of Angus MacKay were supporting him partly for that reason.

“But we do still have Donald MacDonald’s music, and there really is a distinctive Donald MacDonald style that you can piece together from his books. It contrasts in a number of ways with Angus MacKay’s style. I’m not someone who’d say one is better than the other. But they are different. It gives us a valid alternative approach.

“If you want to explore it, I can only suggest that you start with the published book. Pick a tune like Glengarry’s March and play it on the chanter. Play all of the notes, not just the ones we’re used to playing, especially in the first variation. Look at those interesting little runs of grace notes … and just try to play them.

“Different pipers today might come up with different interpretations but I don’t think they will be too different, and I suspect that most people will play it in the way I’ve tried to suggest in the edition. It’ll sound appreciably different from what you’d normally hear in competitive piping today.

“Tunes like Lamentation for the Duke of Hamilton, End of the Great Bridge, Lament for Samuel (The Stuart’s White Banner)… they all come to mind.

“One of my favorites is a short tune you don’t hear often called The Sword’s Lament (or The Aged Warrior’s Sorrow).

“If you play the grace notes, I think you’re forced to give them proper melodic musical value — you can’t just whip through them at high speed. Donald MacDonald doesn’t tell you what speed to play them… he leaves it to you.

“But play every note and see what happens; it’s a remarkable piece, very beautiful.” l

(In 2006, the Piobaireachd Society published Donald MacDonald’s Collection of Piobaireachd Volume 1 The Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia, a new edition of Donald MacDonald’s first publication, edited by Roderick Cannon with an introduction by Roderick Cannon and Keith Sanger. ISBN 1-898405-61-1. It is available from the College of Piping and the National Piping Centre.)

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