This website reports on a "work in progress". and will be updated from time to time as we move towards formal publication of a new collection of piobaireachd.
Piobaireachd or Ceol Mor, often thought of as the classical music of the Scots Highland Bagpipe, was for centuries passed from master to pupil by chanting the tunes to one another. From about 1800 attempts were made to find suitable variations on conventional staff notation to record the music for posterity. One of the more highly regarded of these attempts was published in the 1960s under the title "Binneas is Boreraig", by Dr Roderick Ross, of Edinburgh. By not adhering to fixed time signatures, a major aim of Dr Ross was to try to capture very closely the nuances of performance by Malcolm Ross Macpherson, one of the top piobaireachd players of his day. Recordings of extracts of the tunes performed by Malcolm Macpherson were also published - these can be found on the Piobaireachd Society website.
Binneas is Boreraig employed notational devices that pipers familiar with the notation found in many other collections of pipe tunes might find strange. In 2022, Chris Terry (pupil of John MacFadyen and Braemar Gold Medal winner in 1985) set out to transcribe the 112 "BiB" scores into a more familiar form. It soon became apparent that it would be worth taking the opportunity to clarify and annotate the scores, compare them with the available recordings, correct a plethora of simple mistakes, and point out the differences between the Ross/Macpherson settings and those found in other collections. In this revision, entitled " BiB-T" for short, Chris was aided by his brother Pat (pupil of James Campbell of Kilberry), and also gratefully acknowledges the help of Malcolm McRae in resolving various issues of settings and timings.
The outcome has been a collection of some 214 pages of annotated scores for 113 piobaireachds, each tune written on a five line stave and expanded so as to avoid the awkward abbreviations in BiB. In addition there is an explanatory introduction, and close on 300 individual footnotes to the scores.
By way of illustration, consider the well-known Lament for MacSwan of Roaig, one of the set tunes for competition in 2024. This appears on page 84 of the second edition of BiB, on page 39 of the first book in the Piobaireachd Society collection, and in similar fashion in the Kilberry Book on page 6.
Click on the first link below to see the setting as transcribed from Binneas is Boreraig (you will need to have a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat to do this):
Attention is drawn to the footnotes pointing out errors and features of the setting that differ from the PS and BiB settings.
By comparison, part of the setting in the original Binneas is Boreraig book can be seen by clicking on the next link:
Finally, the recording of Malcolm Macpherson playing part of the tune can be found here:
Note that the BiB (and BiB-T) scores make it clear that there is no hint of a "Donald Mor rundown" in the Urlar, and that the Crunluath doubling is to be "played up". The PS setting has it played "even" as many pipers do and, in fact, as is indicated in most of the other breabach settings in BiB.
Having introduced this project to the piobaireachd community, we would be grateful if you could give us your reaction - perhaps by brief comments on the questions below. This would help us as we negotiate with possible publishers, printers and distributors.
BiB-T will turn out to be a book about twice the length of the Kilberry Book. We hope to produce it for under twice the cost! To this end we foresee possibly producing it in two forms: a less expensive version, probably B4 size, spiral bound, with a thick card cover, and a connoisseur's version, case bound, with possibly a cloth cover (like the Kilberry Book). Spiral binding uses a continuous spiral. While it looks much like wire binding, there is no gap, so pages won't fall out.
Please take a few minutes of your time and e-mail enquiries, suggestions and
comments to
Chris Terry ( christerry@mweb.co.za ) .
Please report broken links, or difficulty with this website
https:/www.cs.ru.ac.za/compilerbook/Bib-T
to Pat Terry (p.terry@ru.ac.za )
Grahamstown, South Africa, 14 November 2023