Lindsay Davidson 
Driving 'piping forward

Historical Pipe Music Library

Many years ago a number of people gave me their collections of books with the specific request that I use them and make the contents somehow available to other people, either directly or indirectly. This was before the advent of the significant internet and the matter has waited a number of years and growth of competence to bring this material to the public domain.

Indeed public domain is key here. There is no intention to violate any copyright in this act of sharing - only the intention to bring valuable archive material to a greater public audience. If there is any violation here that you know about, please tell me so that I can remove the offending material or petition for the relevant agreements.

As the intention here is on several levels a decision was taken to scan the book 'as is', complete with comments and annotations, both as evidence of the original source and to allow the reader to interpret what they see for themselves. I believe this complies with best historical practice today.

For display the images have been set to be viewed at 900 pixels wide. The original images are bigger and can be viewed at the original size or downloaded as a jpg.

It will be seen that some of the embellishments are written in a different form and that some embellishments may be unknown to pipers today. This is an historical document and reflects the ways ways of doing things a hundred years ago (in some cxases two hundred years and more ago), including giving us clues about the way of playing.

The collection which is to be scanned and made available is quite substantial and in time may require a completely separate site. It could take several years to scan everything as there are many thousands of pages which I believe are largely or completely unavailable in any way.

 McPhedran's Collection

This is a collection published by Donald McPhedran  around about the beginning of the twentieth century. It can be noted there may be some unexpected titles and attributions to composers, and some of the remarks in the text are worth noting for understanding what pipers were playing at the time and how they were thinking about the role of music publications.

The book was scanned by my daughter Izabella.

The Kilberry Book of Ceol Meadhonach

'Ceol Meadonach' is a type of music that lies in between 'light music' (jigs and reels etc) and 'big music' (commonly called 'piobaireachd' or 'pibroch'). This  is not a categorisation that is often discussed. The book seems to date from around 1910 or a little earlier. Some unusual embellishments can be found as well as the historical way of notating a taorluath (from which we could also assert that there was such a way of playing the taorluath).

The book was scanned by my daughter Izabella.





Idea
 McPhedrans Collection
Kilberry Book of Ceol Meadonach

Contact details:
skype: lindsay.davidson1973
lindsaydavidson@lindsaydavidson.co.uk