Pio Braireachd

[BLHS209]

I have a question for the pipers and/or those in the know of pipe music: Is there only one version of the Pio Braireachd (or is it PioBraireachd?) or is it a song type?

There is a Pio Braireachd on the album by the Gordon Highlanders, "Pipes and Drums of Scotland", track 4. All it says for the author is "Traditional" (but then all the songs on the album say that ). I am asking as I would like to learn the tune, short of learning / playing by ear.

Chris Shepherd

[castledangerous]

The word is piobaireachd, and it means piping. There are many tunes of this genre, which is sometimes called the classical music of the pipes. Some of the tunes date back centuries, while others are modern compositions.

It is doubtful that you could learn it completely by ear, since there are many embellishments in piobaireachd that are not found in light music.

[Macman]

Chris, here is a primer on piobaireachd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%ACobaireachd

The wiki article is well-sourced, so it's not a bad read. As castledangerous says, it would be hard to learn a piobaireachd by ear. I would try to find out which piobaireachd it is on the album, and then you can purchase the music online. That will get you started on the piece.

[ohiopiper]

Others are correct, piob is a genre of pipe music. It consists of a "ground" and then several variations. Some piobs go back to the ground several times, others only at the beginning and end.

There are two major divisions in pipe music, Ceol Mhor and Ceol Baeg. The first being Piobaireachd (big music) and the second being everything else (little music).

I'm assuming you play the pipes since you want to learn a piob. Ask your intructor or pipe major to get you going in the right direction. There are several embellishments and at least one note fingering that are different than "everything else" we play.

Piob is also written differently. It has rhythm and meter, but like the pipe scale it falls outside the parameters of "standardized" music.

[EagleJCS]

Castledangerous and Macman hit the nail on the head. Piobaireachd ("pibroch" or "pee-brock") is the classical music of the pipes. There are several different types within this form: salutes, laments, marches and gatherings.

I have the same disc. The tune name is properly: "The Desperate Battle (of the Birds)", or "An Cath Gailbeach" (pronounced 'ahn cahv gale bokh' - aspirate the final 'h'). It's just one example of this form of pipe music.

The recording is just part of the full tune. There are 5 movements beyond what's recorded here. The full tune runs for nearly 11 minutes. A recording of the full tune can be found on John Burgess' "King of the Highland Pipers", track 13. I'm in the process of memorizing this one myself.

[BLHS209]

Thank you everyone for the information / corrections. I had read in Scottish Life (Autumn 2009, The Noble Instrument, pg. 12) that Piobaireachd meant "piping" but, as I mentioned, the album had it listed as Pio Baireachd, so I wasn't sure if it was an actual tune.

And thank you John for the complete title and recording information. Don't know if I would play for the full 11 minutes though

Chris Shepherd

[EagleJCS]

You're welcome.

Beyond the variations which are heard in your recording, the tune goes on to some fancier embellishments called tourluath (TOOR loo ah), tourluath a mach (-- a mah), crunluath (CRUN loo ah), and crunluath a mach, then it goes back to the beginning of the tune to finish it. Those embellishments add some aural interest, and can almost sound 'bubbly'. I know, TMI.

I agree that it could get tiresome to someone not familiar with the idiom and expecting to hear them, which is probably why they're not included on the band recording and it fades out during the third variation.

Some piobaireachd tunes are only 5-6 minutes, while others go on for 15 minutes or more. For another good example of piobaireachd, I suggest listening to the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band's Down Under CD. Track 4 is the piob "Andrew MacNeill of Colonsay". They start out singing it (in canntaireachd* - Gaelic for 'singing'), then they play what they just sang, then they sing part again while a piper plays the same part. The whole track's only 6:41, but then again, they're only doing part of the tune.


*Canntaireachd is a formalized style of using particular syllables (a.k.a. 'vocables') to indicate specific notes and embellishments in order for pipers to learn tunes. It's one of the ways pipers used to learn pipe music before standardized notation came about. That and simple observation/imitation and repetition.

[OC Richard]

I suppose all this Gaelic piping terminology can get confusing so here's a few terms:

piob: pipe, pronounced something like "peep" (due to the devoicing of medial and final stops in Gaelic)

piobaire: piper "peepiruh"

piobaireachd: piping, playing upon the bagpipes. "peepiruXt" (the X standing for a sound like in Scots loch, German mach, etc, a sound not found in standard English, and the final d becoming t due to devoicing.)

ceol: music "kyoll"

mor: big, great; so piob mhor ("peep vore") great pipe; ceol mor great music etc.

beag: small "beck" so ceol beag small music (but usually called "light music")

crun: crown "kroon"

luath: fast "loouh"

In any case piobaireachd is a theme-and-variation type of music, not dissimilar to the ostinato form of the European Baroque.

ostinato: a persistently repeated musical figure which may occur during a section of a composition or even throughout a whole piece. (From a music dictionary)

So, there is nothing uniquely Highland or Gaelic to the form of the piobaireachd, just as there is nothing unique about the scale of the Highland pipes, at least as they are now tuned, to the scale musicologists call Just Intonation, which is based on the harmonic series.

There is clear evidence that a music form like piobaireachd existed in Gaelic culture before bagpipes were introduced to Ireland and the Highlands. It was played on the harp. Traditional Gaelic harping died out so that today we must look to the way piobaireachd is played on the pipes to try to guess what the original harp music might have sounded like.

There are tantalising similarities between piobaireachd and the classical music of northern India (Sanskrit and Gaelic representing the Eastern and Western extent of the Indo-European language family save for extinct Tochrian).

[highland mafia]

I've been playing the pipes off and on for nearly 20 years. I did a priob course whelst in the army. So I really gave it a solid go. I can play it ok I guess. I would probally be able to play pretty well if I didn't dislike it! To me it sounds like elevator music for the bagpipes!! What can I say....It just dosen't it for me in the slightest LOL! That said it does have a neat history.

[kypnkilt]

"An Cath Gailbeach"- I like this tune very much. I basically learned this particular variation by ear from the same recording the OT mentioned above. Not that hard. I have played this tune in the hills where there is a good resonance echo. This tune was "made" to echo....pretty awesome.