Piping Grades

The Piping grades are novice juvenile, juvenile, Grade 4B, Grade 4A, Grade 3B, Grade 3A, Grade 2 and Grade 1. Novice Juvenile and Juvenile are U18 competitions and then it is in ascending order with Grade 1 being the highest and considered the World champions.

Piobaireachd

Ceol Mor and Ceol Beag.

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Structure

Urlar, Variations: thumb variation, Siubhal, Dithis, Taorluath, Crunluath etc.

Sources

Canntainreachd, Donald MacDonald, Angus MacKay, General Thomason, Kilberry, Piobaireachd Society, MacArthur-MacGregor

Piping Competitions

Silver Chanter

Northern Meeting

Argyllshire Gathering

Lochaber

London

Invitational competitions; competitions in Canada, US, Brittany etc.

Pipers

Hereditary pipers; MacCrimmons, MacKays, MacIntyres, MacArthur

Doubling of Leumluath, Taorluath, and Crunluath

Very often each of these variations has a singling and a doubling. The structure is the same in each case. In the singling, at the end of one or more phrases and at the end of each line, a melody note with its embellishment is left out and a cadential phrase put in instead. In the doubling, the cadential phrase disappeafrs, and the missing melody notes are replaced with the appropriate gracenotes.

Taorluath Fosgailte

This literally means "open taorluath". Instead of the taorluath figure described above, each melody note is preceded by three low As, each of which in turn is preceeded, in turn, by a high G, D, and E grace-note, and the melody note follows preceeded by a high G grace-note.

This is sometimes included as a separate variation, known as a tripling, in addition to a normal taorluath.

The Glenfiddich Piping Championship

This invitational competition was founded in 1974 by William Grant & Son Ltd, the distillers. It is held each year on the last Saturday of October. Ten of the leading pipers in the world, all of whom will have won important awards since the previous October, are invited. Each of them submits a list of eight piobaireachd, and is required to play one of them.

They also submit lists of six each of marches, strathspeys and reels, and play two of each, or one of each twice through. There are prizes in each discipline, and an overall championship prize.

Culloden Ceol Mor

This is a new invitational competition that took place for the first time on April 14, 2007, during the week-end of celebrations of the rededication of the battlefield at Culloden Moor. The battle took place on 16th April 1746. Four leading pipers were invited, and each played a piobaireachd associated with the 'Forty-five or with the Jacobite movement.

It is intended that this should continue as an annual event.

There are other competitions, for both ceol mor and ceol beag, both open and invitational, in other parts of Scotland, in Canada, in England, in the US, and some other countries.

Sources of Piobaireachd

Canntaireachd

Canntaireachd (pronounced cownterochk) is a king of sung language consisting of vocables, with no intelligible words. The vowels represent the melody notes and the consonants, or combinations of consonants, the grace-notes. The purpose of canntaireachd is to assist in the teaching and memorising of ceol mor, as well as being a memorised record.

There are two principal sets of canntaireachd which work on the same principle but are not identical: the Gesto Canntaireachd, and the Nether Lorne Canntaireachd, otherwise known as the Campbell Canntaireachd. Many of the pipers of the 19th century and earlier, and some in the 20th century, have evolved their own forms of canntaireachd.

Although not the original intention that canntaireachd should be written, both the Gesto and the Campbell Canntaireachd have been reduced to writing.

The Gesto Canntaireachd dates from the early 18th century, and the Campbell from a little later in the same century. The Campbell Canntaireachd is now the best known. It was rediscovered at the end of the 19th century when a large sheaf of papers came to light with a set of pipes bought in Easdale, Argyll. To cut a long story short, Sheriff J. P. Grant of Rothiemurchus succeeded in translating this newly found written canntaireachd by reference to known tunes and to the Gesto Canntaireachd. A large number of tunes which were recorded nowhere else were discovered. There are still some teachers who use the Nether Lorne canntaireachd for teaching. It is a particularly good system, on the whole superior to learning from tapes.

The Donald MacDonald Collection

This was the first published collection of ceol mor in staff notation. It was commissioned by the Highland Society of London, and published in 1820. It contains 30 tunes.

Angus MacKay

Angus MacKay, son of John MacKay, of Gairloch, was born in 1812. He was a brilliant piper and won the Highland Society's competition in Edinburgh in 1825, in his 14th year. In 1838 he published a collectioon of 61 tunes, in staff notation. This collection was also commissioned by the Highland Society of London.

It was written in a form of notation which was clearer and more readily understood than that of Donald MacDonald and differs from modern notation only in that there are no, or virtually no, abbreviations.

Angus MacKay's book, and his manuscript, which contains tunes not in the book, quickly superseded Donald MacDonald's form of notation. Angus MacKay was the first sovereign's piper and was also piper to the Highland Society of London. Unhappily, he became insane, and died in 1859.

Ceol Beag

Ceol beag, the light music, consists of marches, strathspeys, reels, hornpipes and jigs. Slow airs are also within this category, though some refer to them as ceol meadhonach, the middling music.

There exists a large body of ceol beag. Some of it, particularly music for dancing, is derived from fiddle music or from harp music. But an increasing proportion of it has been composed by very well known pipers over the course of the past 200 years or so.