Tim MacDonald: fiddler and dancer

Tim Macdonald, a musician who also dances, is a past Chairman of the Chicago Branch. He is a regular performer, scholar, composer, and teacher of early Scottish fiddle music. He has competed at the Glenfiddich Fiddle Championship and plays for Scottish country dancing. He is currently in Edinburgh for a year, studying for an MScR in the School of Scottish Studies of Edinburgh University. Tim gave a talk at Winter School in Pitlochry in February

Before telling us about your music, what is your connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie?

I am the five-times great grandson of Flora MacDonald from South Uist, who helped Charles Edward Stuart evade Government troops after the defeat at Culloden in 1746. She married Allan MacDonald, moved to North Carolina, then to Nova Scotia, before returning to Skye. My four-times great-grandfather was their son John. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army and is buried in Exeter Cathedral. His son James was my three-times great-grandfather. He was also in the army, died young in India, but not before fathering Augustus who was born in India but moved to New Zealand where my great-grandfather, Major Reginald Macdonald OBE was born. He also served in India, where he fell in love with a married Englishwoman, and they moved to the US. He was keen on genealogy and convinced the Lord Lyon that he was the rightful chieftain of the Macdonalds of Kingsburgh and Castle Camus. His first child was my grandfather, Somerled Donald St Maur Macdonald, a Pittsburgh chemical engineer, whose second son is my father John, the 17th and current chieftain of Kingsburgh, thus making me a direct descendant of Flora MacDonald!

When did you start playing the fiddle?

I have lived equal thirds of my life in Honduras, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. I started playing the classical violin when I was four. When my family moved to Pittsburgh, we started going to Highland Games – in the US many of the Games have fiddle competitions. On hearing everyone play I realised that they played the violin and seemed to be having fun. I too played the violin, but I wasn’t having fun! So surely there must be a solution! My mother miraculously found an excellent teacher on the other side of town – Colyn Fischer. Colyn had studied with Ian Powrie and Alasdair Hardie and would go on to win the American National Championships in Scottish Fiddling several times. So, every two weeks we would drive a great distance so that I could get a lesson from him and learn the alchemy of turning simple tunes into complex and enjoyable music. I remember an early comment from him, “Vivaldi would be proud! That’s not a good thing.” Colyn also taught at a summer camp – The Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling in North Carolina – and eventually I was pronounced old enough and a good enough player to attend. A full week of non-stop fiddling away from home – Heaven! An important part of ‘Jink’ pedagogy was the idea that you couldn’t really understand how to play dance music unless you understood the dancing, so every day there was a 90-minute country dance class and at the end of the week a 12-dance beginner’s ball with the largest dance band you’ll ever see: several dozen fiddlers of all levels! Through the very patient efforts of camp co-founder and RSCDS teacher, Moira Turner of Richmond, I muddled through skip change and right shoulder reels for a few years and slowly realised that, despite my teenage protestations, it really was fun and deserved my proper attention. James Murray, grandson of Flora MacDonald, great-great-greatgrandfather of Tim Macdonald.

How did you get involved with the RSCDS?

I had moved to the Chicago area to study for a degree in computer science. In my first term I gave a talk about playing Scottish fiddle music. My lecturer stopped the class to ask if I knew about the Chicago Branch of the RSCDS – which I didn’t. He then invited me to dinner and to the weekly dance class afterwards. At the Silk and Thistle class, as it’s called, I both refined my dancing in all the countless ways I couldn’t at the annual beginner-level camp classes, and also cut my teeth leading The Silk and Thistle Players for a few dances each night. Later on, I got even more involved, joining the demonstration team, serving a term as chairman, and starting to do teacher training before everything was cut short by the pandemic.

What other influences did you have?

As a fiddler I had been becoming more and more interested in how our music had developed. Through the tunes and dances I’d get little snippets of the history from various teachers, but they weren’t always clear or consistent with each other. And sometimes I’d want to play a tune in a way that sounded good to me, but I’d be told it wasn’t ‘traditional’ and to play it this other way instead. Increasingly, I started reading academic material on Scottish music history. Scottish Fiddle Music of the 18th Century by the late David Johnson is still essential reading for anyone interested in traditional fiddle music. I began to correspond with real experts, who generously spent time sharing information with this young fiddling computer scientist – in particular, Dr John Purser on Skye, and Dr David McGuinness of Glasgow University. I was also very kindly offered lessons from one of the world’s great concert violinists, Rachel Barton Pine, who, between trips all over the globe to play concertos with various orchestras, would make time to give me lessons – often at short notice and at strange hours! She fixed many technical problems I’d been struggling with on the instrument, but she was also very helpful as a real expert in performing historical music, pushing me to use 18th-century sources to play more evocative music today. It was through this historical connection that I found a sound-world I still live in.

Where have you performed?

Together with cello player Jeremy Ward, I started playing concert tours around the US. We made two trips to Scotland together where we played at Blair Castle for the Glenfiddich Fiddle Competition, taught workshops at the Plockton Music School, Scotland’s National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music, and made many wonderful musical friends. We have also played for many dances, doing local events with the Chicago Branch, first to figure out how to make an 18th-century sound work for modern dancers and eventually playing for balls throughout the Midwest and East Coast and for Pinewoods dance camp.

So your band is just two people?

Yes, it is just myself and Jeremy. I think the size of a band can make you play like a cornered animal! In a large band the cello’s job would be to give some shape to the harmony and the fiddler would deliver the melody, leaving plenty of space for the rest of the band to play. However, with just the two of us, we both work overtime to fill in the chords and rhythm normally provided by a piano or accordion by playing two or three strings at once, wildly ornamenting the melody, and treating the cello as much like a percussion instrument as anything else. Rather than think of the fiddle and cello lines as melody and harmony, we think of them as melody and countermelody, with harmony a shared job between them.

What is unique about your music?

I had thought that I’d go through a historical phase and then get back to normal life once I’d gotten to the bottom of it, but instead I’ve discovered a musical style that encourages endless creativity, where the acts of composition and performance are so intertwined that each new performance of the same tune should feel like a new re-composition of it. Several friends have told me they won’t learn tunes from me by ear anymore because I play them differently each time! And the tune variety has been much more than I bargained for: apart from the expected strathspeys, hornpipes, jigs, and reels, 18th-century Scottish fiddlers played Spanish fandangos and Italian sonatas and Highland airs and wonderfully cheesy show music for the theatre and equestrian circus (opened in Edinburgh in 1790) and tunes considered ‘antient’ that defy modern categorisation. After eight years playing hundreds of tunes out of dozens of books together, we’re still finding exciting new music that’s centuries old!

Why have you come to study in Edinburgh?

While exploring the history of the music, I’ve always been constrained by needing to earn a living – at various points by playing music, doing software engineering, or both. I thought it would be helpful to have some dedicated time to do the academic side properly, so I was delighted to be invited to apply for Edinburgh University’s new master’s degree in Traditional Arts Performance, which, depending on how you look at it, is for research-based performance or performance-based research. The pandemic has delayed the launch of the programme, but I decided to come to Edinburgh anyway and get a conventional research degree (MScR in Scottish Ethnology).

What is the subject of your research?

My research focuses on the performance practice of violinists/ fiddlers in Edinburgh at the end of the 18th century. Most scholarship so far has focused on who the musicians were and what, in general terms, they did, but my interest is on how they did it. How does one play with a 1790s Edinburgh accent, so to speak? Dance manuals and other accounts describing social dancing 150 years before the foundation of the Scottish Country Dance Society illustrate some key differences: faster strathspeys, much longer dances (sometimes two hours for one country dance!), and only one tune used for the whole dance. There is also some rather abstruse writing on aesthetics by Scottish Enlightenment greats such as Adam Smith and Francis Hutcheson that I’m working on applying to concert music. It’s a very satisfying puzzle to take various descriptions of performances, sheet music, and historical instruments, and figure out how to make it all work together. I think there’s a temptation to trivialise players like the Gows and Mackintosh as charmingly quaint but perhaps not very sophisticated, but the more time I spend with the historical sources the more I admire them as educated, highly capable people working at the height of their professional powers to deliver captivating music to the dancers and concert-goers of Edinburgh. I look forward to learning more!

Tim has produced a CD of his music with Jeremy Ward – The Wilds – available from Spotify or buy a downloadable copy at www.tsmacdonald.bandcamp.com

Tim Macdonald playing his fiddle at Winter School 2022 in Pitlochry

Photo: Gordon Porter

James Murray, grandson of Flora MacDonald, great-great-great grandfather of Tim Macdonald.