An Exercise in Ground, Practise & Performance: Lament for the Viscount of Dundee by eiannettamackay

Studies in Contemporary Architectural Theory “Clouds of Architecture” and Other Stories Ella Chmielewska Eireann Iannetta-Mackay s1434417

AN EXERCISE IN GROUND, PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE

This paper exercises an attempt to draw relationships between writing and classical bagpipe music through practices in language, composition, structure, rhythm and interpretation. Drawing upon Mark Dorrian’s explorations in “Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying,” the paper ties links between Medusa as a monster of sight and sound and bagpipes, in sound and musical composition, that translates Dorrian’s thoughts to frame an understanding of the wail of the bagpipes in ‘lamenting’ as an exercise in mimicry. Informed by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities, the paper explores the instrumental practices of bagpiping whilst building up through Dorrian’s investigations into movement, multiplicity and ambiguity to expose inherent modes of exercise and motion within piobaireachd, expressing the haunting poetic rhythms held in tension between score and performance.

the next perfomer is

“Lament for the Viscount of Dundee” - commonly referred to as ‘the Viscount’ - is a tune I have performed in competition and recital for almost 10 years. I was taught to play The word “piobaireachd” is it by my tutor Anne Spalding (originally Anne Stewart) who had been taught it a literal translation to pipe playing or pipe music, but by her mother. 1 Most bagpipe tunes are passed down through family lines and for 150 years, at least, it has for piobaireachd, are taught and interpreted through voice rather than solely been used as the name for a reading music. Singing the tune in the traditional “Canntaireachd” (Gaelic for piece of traditional music. chanting) is common practice to strengthen the interpretation. This allows it to become a more passionate presentation through the unpredictable nature of voice and speech determining the phrasing rather than meticulously following written notation to depict the weight of each note and embellishment - more to follow as we restructure our investigation.

w t h ro

oa At w lo

n cru

lua

rl u a

James Campbell, son of Archibald Campbell - composer of the Kilberry - performs The Kilberry is a published collection the tune to his interpretation. This version is learnt from his father, who, presumably, of

piobaireachd’s composed by multiple authors but compiled taught him the tune through Canntaireachd. The Campbell’s interpretation of in one book that becomes like a the tune became the prominent style of the tune as it was materialised as a written ‘’bible’ to pipers who play the classical composition for studying score in the Kilberry, however, and learning.

“At no time did Campbell consider that this was the “only” way, just one way”.2

All piobaireachd’s open with what is called a ‘Ground’ or ‘Urlar’, in Gaelic. The ‘Urlar’ forms the base theme of a classical bagpipe composition, laying out the motif of the tune and providing a ‘ground’ to build the rest of the arrangement upon and forming a basis for action. The passage is setting the scene in a poetic gesture and, with the interplay of the two terms, we can understand the opening sequence as a base theme from which to go from, to act upon and move off.3 The tune is called a ‘lament’ in honour of John Graham of Claverhouse, who was dignified as Viscount of Dundee, and was believed to be killed at Killiecrankie by a ‘silver bullet’.4 The tune holds an image of his death, confirmed in the use of the term ‘lament’ in the name of the composition to express sorrow and a notion of mourning and weeping. Thus, the tune can be imagined to be expressive and evocative of deep pain and loss of those mourning the death of the Viscount. This notion of lamentation alongside the stories of the Viscount provokes an image in the mind of the performer as they are trying to emulate this expression. Reflecting on Ella Chmielewska’s writing on Pawel Pawlikowski’s film Ida, similarities can be drawn to ‘afterimage’. The tune becomes a memory of the death of the Viscount, an afterimage that “summons imaginaries” in a similar manner of Pawlikowski, creating “an afterimage of a place left behind” that is “stilled in memories of spaces, rhythms of language…”5 Akin to this, the mourning of death is instilled in an afterimage materialised as a tune, to be performed on an instrument that might “wail” in the same manner of those mourning death, and evoking sorrow in the listeners of the performance. Ties between Medusa and bagpipes surface through these analogies, provoked by Mark Dorrian’s speculation on Greek mythology in “Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying”. Medusa is infamous as a creature of monstrous vision but she was also a monster of sound. It is believed that “some terrible noise was the originating force behind the Gorgon” depicted as an “animal-like howl” reminiscent of the wind movement from the back of the throat to the elongated mouth, as it does in pipes. In the wake of this, there could be multiple understandings of the howl as an image of pain in both the struggle to play the instrument but also the pain of death being portrayed, such that Marsyas’s playing of the flute is “part of a chain of mimicry that leads back to the Gorgon Medusa”. Perhaps this rendering of sorrow expressed in all laments, is spoken through the bagpipes as a mimicry of the wailing of the loss of a loved one that can only be rendered through the unique sound of pipes.6

D va r

C va r

ian

E va r

ant

ian

va r

ian

va r

ian

The difference from ground to variation is marginal in terms of motif, with only two notes changed. It is however a powerful shift, particularly with the surrounding rhythms altering the atmospheric condition by delivering either lamenting ebbs in musical rhythm (the voice of the singling) or a continuous driven tempo (the voice of the doubling).

SINGLING Medusa ultimately discards the pipes at the sight of how they “hideously distorted and disfigured her face” and it seems the notion of distortion and disfigurement is also translated into the piobaireachd composition, when it moves through the passages, transitioning from ground to variation, variation 1 The first passage after the singling to variation 1 doubling, etc. This new passage feels like a destruction of the ground, which has the em- urlar, extracting a key theme note and expressing the altered formation as a new bellishments and poetic flourishing stripped away entity that bares a resemblance to the ground, but moves away from its flourished to reveal a raw motif with expression. This adopts a motion of disfigurement in the motif, which still exists simple grace notes and connecting notes to transition as what it was in the ground, but is now visually (and musically) unrecognisable between the themal notes. as the contextual elements have been altered. A similar gesture of destruction is captured by Chmielewska as she utilised poems in the text “Warsaw Afterimages”, depicting them to “sketch miniature portraits from which the city is configured in fragments that seem to alight on the moments in which destruction is registered.” This imagistic rendering of the poems relates to Warsaw in 1939, during wartime, as method of creating the sketches through such imagery is translatable as piobaireachd is also a register of death and sorrow emulated in the destruction of a motif. The poetic mutability inherent in both written and piobaireachd compositions denotes movement between the ground and variation by actively removing pieces of information, drawing out the key notes and fragmenting them from their context to reinterpret as a new entity, thus “destruction is registered” as fragmentation is informed by key moments of destruction.7

Var. 1 Singling ends (on an elongated C)

Transition to Variation 1 Doubling

Var 1 is expressed as a ‘singling’ where the weight moves through the tune as a single note phrasing, To extend a note holding on the themal notes and lamenting off them as a poetic gesture. Creating a thinning slightly, giving it greater significance out of the presented motif, the ‘doubling’ expresses its theme with added notational weighting, and weight. resulting in lighter oscillations from themal notes and joining notes to create a fluidity of

almost equal note value, but still conveyed as a collection of phrases. Playing a repetition with (roughly) twice as much [movement]. The tension created between singling and doubling remains constant in motif but the speed and weight drive the new passage, creating contrast. Dorrian describes the projects presented in Metis: Urban Cartographies to be worked through with “repetition as a reperformance which produces sequences of different effects”. This ultimately describes the relationship between variation 1 and 2, with 2 enacting a mimicking of the 1st but altered to become a new entry and exploration. Reperformance captures the transition from each passage of the tune but delivers a complicated relation between passage and tune. As it is performed as a single performance, the restructuring occurs within the single performance but as a re-performance of the prior passage. Thus the performance becomes a composition containing eight re-performances of the initial performance the ground - that is delivered as one whole performance. 8

End of 1st Variation.

Thoughts on re-performance are not only evocative of the types of investigation within the composition and its structure, but also exists within the methods of practisce and exercise in piping. This is interlinks with understanding of concepts within Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where each city attempts to gain a closer understanding of the perfect city. The cities are an attempt to get closer to something that is difficult to explain and express, switching between exercises of structure in the book and exercises in description, trying to exhaust all the outcomes and grasp the elusive ‘invisible’ city. Calvino’s attempt to achieve an ultimate desire by gaining an understanding or materialisation of something that is perhaps impossible, because desire could be perceived as a concept of nostalgia, existing purely in an immaterial, internalised condition. Piping practice adopts this mindset where each exercise and rehearsal acts as an attempt to gain perfection, constantly trying to refine and diminish any possibility of error. 9

A set of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;critsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (written feedback from solo competitions) fragments that critique my performnces playing the tune.

VAR / Could pick this up. A bit lacking in continuity between phrases VAR 1 / Could show the phrases more

Var 1 - Good playing here Var 1 doubling - nice tempo increase and confident playing

Var 1 - slightly spare impact in 1st line - much better in 2nd + 3rd lines Doubling - could establish a little more contrast with singling

Walter Benjamin also exercises the idea of practice in writing, but in relation to book-space and literary composition. His use of thought-image in his book One Way Street expresses a solidification that is happening around an idea, as highlighted by Adorno. 10 Adorno talks about Benjamin’s writing style as short direct fragments that alight new flames, similar to Schwartz’s description of his writing as “verbal jolts of urban commerce” in Blind Spots. 11 This renders his writing as short, crisp, finely crafted pieces of heavy writing that grasp the attention of the street walkers through imagistic renderings. Writing of this nature is reminiscent of the practice of an instrument, where the tune can become so second nature that the performer becomes less passionate and engaged and consequently movements become dulled and lose definition. When the movements are played alone as condensed fragments they are given meticulous attention, but when they are within the composition they are often glazed over. They need to be considered second nature but exercised with intensity; without the focused intensity, the movements lose their crisp delivery. These thought-images can also be seen in a competition judge’s commentary on the tunes, highlighting the emotive response they are seeking from the performance and where the delivery may have edged away from its full expression. This may include reference to the tune going ‘square’, this term refers to the emotion of the tune being lost and the fluidity drying up. Tempo alterations and contrast in transitions act as a strong method of combating this, allowing the tune to build as you move through the passages, transitioning in tempo and rhythm.

oa At w lo

rl u a

Embellishment and name of a phrase, typically following the final Variation and before the Crunluath.

The presence of condensed finely crafted fragments is resonant with Calvino’s writing in “Exactitude” about practise and exercise. His memo expresses the idea of literature as a “school boy’s exercise book” holding a “series of tryouts” for working with, to test words and writings. Bagpiping also requires this, when we practice the embellishments and meticulously go over the movements extracted from the music we refine and develop their quality just as a school child practices writing in an exercise book. Therefore when the rehearsed movements are reapplied to the tune as a whole, their quality is increased in aid of the performance as a whole. Within the written score, too, there is a presence of practice and exercise as the motif is reiterated and embellished around it which reconfigured the motif so that it “starts from things and returns to us changed”. 12

Benjamin’s One Way Street features a notion of numbness, with his writing acting as observations on a walk. You can see the shifting attention and connection between context and body as the fragments play out, driven home in “Caution: Steps” as Benjamin grabs the reader’s attention with a warning sign, ensuring it is not overlooked. 13 It seems that the need for exercises is partially due to distraction and, in the way that he recaptures the attention of the wanderer through thought-images of intensity, exercises are designed to do just this by taking control of the attention and focusing it on short pieces of information that are clear and concise. This is present throughout the composition where transitions from variations to variation doublings, ground to variation, toarluath doubling to crunluath singling, etc., change the rhythm and tempo, pulling the listeners attention back into focus, having drifted away in the rhythmic lamenting of the motif of each passage. Transitions are the verbal jolts that writing delivers. As “Caution Steps” in calls your attention through the image of a warning sign, piobaireachd marks the transition with an elongated note. 14 A single note, rhythmically differentiated.

n cru

lua

Embellishment and name of a phrase, typically the final passage in the tune that follows the Toarluath before circling back to the Ground. Calvino’s grasp of the oscillation between exercise and performance is captured in “Exactitude” as the movement between crystal and flame. The crystal is representative of precision - demonstrated through written score as a form of measure and instruction - whereas the flame is fluid and ambiguous, which is illustrative of the tension held between the exercising of embellishment and score of the tune and the fluid and emotive performance.

Dorrian also practices ambiguity within Urban Cartographies. His framing of Vernant and Detienne expresses the field of application of metis’s work to exist within a “world of movement, multiplicity and ambiguity,” highlighting the intentions and methods of working the practice implements. He captures

this analogy of the Greek culture ‘metis’ to be something that “progresses by hunch and anticipation” by “feeling its way and guessing”. 16 This could be interpreted to be a similar mode of representation as the delivery of a piobaireachd, in so much that it is moving fluidly and shifting based on intuition of the performer rather than through a consistent, rhythmic beat. The lack of consistency and measure in the performance means the tune must be led by the feeling of the performer rather than a rigid form, allowing body, not beat, to lead musical expression in defining musical rhythm and poetic movement. This is also where we can understand the essence of existing outside the music. Calvino’s memo “Exactitude” addresses Leonardo da Vinci’s battle with expression of thought, stating his “battle with language to capture something that evaded his powers of

Most other pieces of music performed on bagpipes are measured by beating the foot as you move through the tune to keep a consistent tempo, whereas piobaireachd is a ‘wandering’ tune. Critique can often describe tunes in reference to the movement of the feet, such as ‘the tune must be led by the beat of the foot’, or advising you to ‘follow your feet’. Other critiques may scorn you for this.

expression”, that there are some things that the words perhaps cannot express. 17 A piobaireachd, although learned through this very meticulous measured medium, is performed and learnt in such a fluid manner, rendering the score as secondary. Similarly, Calvino analyses his own writing, with reference to his book Invisible Cities, in an effort to understand the relationship of the flame and crystal, emphasising that “language is revealed as defective and fragmentary, always saying something less with respect to the sum of what can be experienced.” 18 This is highly relevant in piping where the score of a tune, the written instruction, is the crystal and the performance is the flame. The score can always reveal something less than the sum of what can be experienced through the performance; the flame will always be more powerful due to its illusive and ambiguous nature. This lack of formality is, however, warmly welcomed as it allows the tune to be opened up to interpretation. 24

Within this discussion and field of research, it seems to me that the most prominent connection between Benjamin and Calvino is their use of ‘wandering’. Benjamin writes as he watches the wanderers on the streets of New York, perhaps wandering himself. 19 Calvino’s connection to wandering opens through the lens of Leopardi’s speculations on ‘vago’ - an Italian term for vague which starts from the meaning of “wandering” but also “carries an idea of movement and mutability”. 20 Dorrian also features in this investigation when he talks through Vernant and Detienne on “movement multiplicity and ambiguity” the use of terms ‘ambiguous’ and ‘mutability’ ground the concept of movement and lack of grounding, subject to change, rendering the wandering nature at hand as expressions of wandering implying a lack of anything stable; something that is uncertain - the lack of anything concrete. 21 This offers up a freedom

to the movement, something that is adopted in piobaireachd. Although the ground defines a motif, as the player transitions from passage to passage, the motif is subject to change and becomes destabilised, being rendered ambiguous and unpredictable. Leopardi describes vago to be “associated both with uncertainty and indefiniteness and with gracefulness and pleasure,” embedding a notion of beauty and ambiguity as a harmonious condition. The vagueness of this flame-like form of piping seems to be what makes the tune so beautiful - the illusive and haunting nature of a tune which cannot be predicted, resonates bodily gesture through music and emulates a wandering that is ‘lovely’ and resonant of the initial bodily gesture of learning the tune through voice and bodily gesture. 22 Evocative of the speculation of Vernant and Detienne’s discussions, Dorrian frames the practice of metis to be “always immersed in practical operations”, as its “pretexts are only ever postscripts”. 23 He is exercising this methodology through the studio as “a site of exploration and speculation” that becomes the key site of architectural production, highlighted in his text Architectural Forensics. 24 By introducing a space that holds traces of previous movements and marks creates a surface of understanding through which work is created in order to develop beyond the initial understanding whilst working within the current thresholds in play. Thus, as the tune opens up throughout the performance, it becomes destabilised, as repetition, iteration and movement re-perform from within. As it builds up through the passages to reach the final gesture, immersed in the re-performances, the tune jolts back to the opening passage - the ground - and restarts. However, it now carries the marks and bleeds from each of the passages it has passed through and the music sounds different - it is interpreted with a different voice and has become a new gesture as something that has “started from things and returned to us changed.” 25 28

“At no time did Campbell consider that this was the “only” way, just one way”. 26 All piobaireachd’s open - and close - with what is called a ‘Ground’ or ‘Urlar.’

[silence]

the wail stops as the chanter and drones cut out the bag lays deflated under arm the body still

- end of performance -

NOTES

1. Anne’s mother would never have competed in solo piping as she was female, becoming a learning of another nature; a desire to be a good player for yourself and for the sake of teaching and enjoying the music rather than to win a prize.

11. Frederic J. Schwartz, ‘Distraction: Walter Benjamin and the Avant Garde’ in Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in TwentiethCentury Germany (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005), 51.

2. Based on a recording of James Campbell, expressing his interpretation and thoughts on the tune. Piobaireachd Society, “Viscount of Dundee, Lament for,” last accessed April 20, 2019. https://www.piobaireachd.co.uk/library/tunesindex?r=tz&tune=viscount-of-dundee-lament-for

12. Italo Calvino, “Exactitude” in Six Memo’s for the Next Millenium (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988) 76.

3. To ‘move off ’ means to give the tune a sense of life, as though it has bounce and character. Often you would sway as you play allowing the body to lead the tune.

13. Walter Benjamin, One Way Street, trans. by Edmunt Jephcott (London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), 41. 14. Schwartz, Blind Spots, 51. 15. Calvino, “Exactitude,” 70-71.

4. Piobaireachd Society, “Viscount of Dundee, Lament for the,” last accessed April 20, 2019, https://www.piobaireachd.co.uk/library/tunesindex?r=tz&tune=lament-for-the-the-viscount-ofdundee

16. Dorrian, Urban Cartographies, 8.

5. Ella Chmielewska, “Warsaw afterimage: of walls and memories” in Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces, edited by Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm (New York: Routledge, 2019), 120.

19. Schwartz, Blind Spots, 37-38.

17.Calvino, “Exactitude,” 77. 18. Ibid, 75.

20. Calvino, “Exactitude,” 57. 21. Dorrian, Urban Cartographies, 8. 22. Calvino, “Exactitude,” 57.

6. Mark Dorrian, ‘Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying: Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas as a Silent Soundwork,’ Architectural Theory Review 17(1) (Special issue Emergence: 2012), 97. 7. Chmielewska, “Warsaw afterimage,” 126-127. 8. Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker. Metis: Urban Cartographies (London: Black Dog, 2002), 8. 9. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (Houghton, New York: Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1974), 121. 10. Ella Chmielewska, Afterword: ‘Postscript as Pretext,’ in Mark Dorrian, Writing in the Image: Architecture, the City and the Politics of Representation (London: IB Tauris, 2015) 194, referencing Adorno.

23. Urban Cartographies, 8. 24. Dorrian, Mark, Architectural Forensics, 7, found in Ella Chmielewska’s “Afterword: Postscript as Pretext” in Mark Dorrian’s Writing on the Image: architecture, the city and the politics of representation, (London: I.B. Tauris & Co, 2015), 190. 25. Calvino, “Exactitude,” 76. 26. James Campbell, Piobaireachd Society, “Viscount of Dundee, Lament for.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benjamin, Walter. One Way Street, trans. by Edmunt Jephcott. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. Calvino, Italo. “Exactitude.” In Six Memo’s for the Next Millenium. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988. 55-80. Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Houghton, New York: Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1974. Chmielewska, Ella. Afterword: ‘Postscript as Pretext.’ In Mark Dorrian, Writing in the Image: Architecture, the City and the Politics of Representation. London: IB Tauris, 2015. 186-203. Chmielewska, Ella. “Warsaw afterimage: of walls and memories” in Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces. Edited by Andrea Mubi Brighenti and Mattias Kärrholm. New York: Routledge, 2019. 119-143. Dorrian, Mark and Adrian Hawker. Metis: Urban Cartographies. London: Black Dog, 2002. Dorrian, Mark and Adrian Hawker. ‘The tortoise, scorpion and the horse – partial notes on architectural research/ teaching/ practice.’ The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 8, Summer 2003. 181-190. Dorrian, Mark. ’Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying: Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas as a Silent Soundwork.’ Architectural Theory Review 17(1) (Special issue Emergence: 2012). 93-104. Gass, William H. “Invisible Cities.” In Tests of Time. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. 37-67. Schwartz, Frederic J. ‘Distraction: Walter Benjamin and the Avant Garde’ in Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005. 37-100. Piobaireachd Society “Viscount of Dundee, Lament for.” Last accessed April 20, 2019. https://www. piobaireachd.co.uk/library/tunes-index?r=tz&tune=viscount-of-dundee-lament-for Piobaireachd Society. “Viscount of Dundee, Lament for the.” Last accessed April 20, 2019. https://www. piobaireachd.co.uk/library/tunes-index?r=tz&tune=lament-for-the-the-viscount-of-dundee

IMAGE REFERENCE 1. Campbell, Archibald. ‘Lament for the Viscount of Dundee.’ The Kilberry book of Coel Mor. 1969. 2, 3, 4. Selection of my crits from solo competitions in 2017-19 when I performed Lament for the Viscount of Dundee.

salute the judges - exit stage -