Contemporary Scottish Lute Music
It was my aim to produce a new repertoire for the various lutes I play, especially the 12 course lute and the fretless oud. I did not believe that instruments need a contemporary repertoire in order to survive (why need they survive at all?), but do believe that musicians need contemporary music in order to survive. My performance of the following works was as important and relevant to me as playing the old stuff. I have never actively studied composition, but I make an effort. Thankfully there are major, first rank, composers in Scotland who have taken an interest in what I am trying to acheive: the revival of one of Scotland's oldest instruments.
The following pieces were commissioned by Rob MacKillop. Click on the title to hear MP3 files of the first performance, at Boarhills Church, Fife, Scotland, 2002.
1. The Oud Player of Rosslyn (Prelude 20 for Oud) ~ Edward McGuire 1st performance Boarhills Church, Boarhills, Fife, Scotland 1st February, 2002. Commission financed by the Scottish Arts Council and The Hope Scott Trust.
From the programme note by Eddie McGuire: "While working towards my aim of writing a short characteristic piece for every instrument, one of the great benefits is the process of working with a performer and learning about the instrument. This has been one of the best examples, gaining knowledge through Rob MacKillop and his own study of the oud - combined with memories of meeting the oud player, Moustafa el Kurd in East Jerusalem in 1987. This piece gains a lot of its energy from the interaction of some Scots pipe gestures and rhythms with Turkish dance rhythms and Arabic scales."
Eddie McGuire lives in Glasgow. Regarded as one of Scotland's finest classical composers, Eddie is also flute player with the ground breaking folk group, The Whistlebinkies.
2. The Old Composer Remembers (for 12c lute) ~ John Purser 1st performance Boarhills Church, Boarhills, Fife, Scotland 1st February, 2002. Commission financed by the Scottish Arts Council and The Hope Scott Trust.
a) The Day of Fanfares b) A Day with a Colleague c) A Day Fishing d) The Day of the Daft Dance
From the programme note by John Purser: "The Old Composer Remembers is dedicated to Mnemosyne and imagines the composer reminiscing on his lute. First he recalls The Day of Fanfares. He no longer has commissions for fanfares, but he no longer needs trumpets to recall the sounds. I have included a fanfare passage from Robert Carver's Six Part Mass. Next he remembers A Day With A Colleague. This is a tribute to my father-in-law, Elliot Forbes, who was professor of music at Harvard University. His initials form the start of the upper line of a strict but affectionate two-part canon on EFBEs - Elliot Forbes = E F Bflat Eflat. The third movement recalls A Day Fishing. The water flows by and the day is full of daydreams and nothing is caught. Finally he recalls The Day of the Daft Dance. The idea came from nowhere and composed itself in ten minutes, the way daft dances do."
John Purser lives on Skye, and besides being a composer is also a poet, playwright, archaeological musicologist and writer. His most influential book is Scotland's Music (Mainstream Publishing), a history of Scotland's classical and traditional music.
3. The Rosslyn Oud (for 12c lute) ~ John Maxwell Geddes 1st performance Boarhills Church, Boarhills, Fife, Scotland 1st February, 2002. Commission financed by the Scottish Arts Council and The Hope Scott Trust.
From the programme note by John Maxwell Geddes: "The title refers to the carving of the oud in Rosslyn Chapel (c.1450), and symbolises the influx of Middle-Eastern influence on Scottish culture at that turbulent time in our history. This single movement piece combines Scottish and Moorish elements in alternating fast and slow sections. The work is dedicated to Rob MacKillop."
John Maxwell Geddes lives in Glasgow. His major works include Symphony No 1, Voyager, and several works commissioned by the conductor Bryden Thomson: Lacuna, Ombre and a second Symphony (1993), and his solo instrumental works include the much performed Callanish sequence.
Full biographies of the composers can be found on the Scottish Music Information Centre website: http://web.archive.org/web/20030411002709/http://www.smic.org.uk/
The following pieces were composed by Rob MacKillop:
1. The Healing (for 12c lute). Written on the evening of the 11 September 2001, after a day of tragic events. I was in Casablanca trying to find connections between our, at times, seemingly disparate cultures. It forms the title track of my Greentrax album (CDTRAX 227). I created a drone accompaniment by playing a three octave unison chord of D, cut the beginning and end of the sound file, overdubbed it four times, slightly apart, and then copied it for around nine minutes. Over that I recorded various percussion tracks created by hitting the lute either with my hands or Japanese chop sticks. The percussion symbolises the violence of that day, September 11th. Later, the percussion stops and out of the drone appears a pibroch (piobaireachd) for lute, symbolising the beginning of a healing process. I performed this live by playing a CD through a PA system. The CD I used for this has the solo lute pibroch removed.
2. Nine ~ poem by James Robertson, music by Rob MacKillop. Four years ago the Nigerian government hanged the poet, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other anti-Government activists. On the evening of that tragic event I happened to be performing a concert in Edinburgh. The poet, James Robertson, was in the audience. The poem is recited by James Robertson, to which I improvise an oud part. My initial improvisations seem to be working towards a composed part, the more we perform the piece. The performance on the Greentrax CD, The Healing, is half improvised, half composed. James Robertson lives in Kettle Bridge in Fife. He is a novelist, poet, publisher, critic and editor. He has edited the short story collection A Tongue in Yer Heid (1994) and Selected Poems of Robert Fergusson (2000), co-edited the Dictionary of Scottish Quotations (1996), and his novel The Fanatic (2000) has been a Scottish best seller.
3. Lament for the Lutars (for 5c mandour). Recorded on Flowers of the Forest (Greentrax CDTRAX 155).
The following pieces were arranged by Rob MacKillop:
1. Port Joan Morrison ~ by Matt Seattle ~ originally for Border Pipes but influenced by the Ports from the Straloch lute ms.
2. MacKillop's Rant ~ by Matt Seattle ~ a tune for any instrument. I recorded this on The Healing, along with Port Joan Morrison.