The Highland bagpipe has long been a central strand of Scottish identity, but what happened to the Highland bagpipe in the two centuries following Culloden? How was its music transmitted and received? This study presents contemporary evidence and uses a range of methods to recreate the changing world of the pipers as they influenced and were influenced by the transformation in Scottish society. This book is intended for pipers exploring the achievements and musical concerns of their predecessors; for the general reader interested in a music whose history is akin to that of Scotland’s poetry and song; and for all students of the process of tradition.
Combining newspaper and manuscript evidence from the pipers themselves with a wide range of historical sources, the author harnesses the insights of the practical player to those of the historian and provides a fresh account of the players and their musical traditions, which have previously been the subject of much myth-making. This is the first history of the musical culture of the worldwide piping community.
William Donaldson is a Scottish social historian and piper. Two of his earlier books, The Jacobite Song and Popular Literature in Victorian Scotland, received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Thomas Blackwell Memorial Prize.
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