Saturday, July 5, 2008

" Piping Legends "

I found this great picture, while looking on the net.
P/M Willie Ross
P/M G S McLennan
P/M John McDonald
I'm hoping both Angus's can fill us all in with some of their legendary tunes, and inform our younger Pipers who they are.

Andy T

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a classic picture of three of the all-time greats of the piping world.

Willie Ross (Scots Guards) ran the famous Pipe Majors course in Edinburgh Castle for the Highland Regiments for many years. He was a composer of significance, but will ultimately be remembered for his mentoring ability and for arranging and publishing six volumes of pipe music, still highly prized, which contain virtually all the classic light music which is played worldwide today. It is far and away my favourite collection.

As an aside, he took the famous John Burgess, when he was a young boy, under his wing - and the rest, as they say, is history.

G.S. MacLennan (Gordon Highlanders) was allegedly the best set of fingers in the piping world of his day. He was also a prolific and gifted composer and bagpipe maker. Our own modest Band repertoire contains a couple of his tunes - "Major MacLennan", and "P.M. Donald Stewart".

P.M. John Macdonald (Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders), I will leave for Sue (as Secretary of the R.U. Brown Piobaireachd Society) to comment on, because R.U. Brown himself was one of his many brilliant pupils.

Each of these men would require an individual book on their abilities and achievements, and a brief comment somehow feels unworthy.

Anonymous said...

Andy thanks for putting this pic up, and Angus thanks for the background. How good is this 'Blog' I'm learning so much with the amount of info the goes on this Blog.....I can't get enough. Everyday I log on for a look. I only hope I can still get on for look whilst I'm in th Desert.

Cheers,

Andrew S

Anonymous said...

I've gotta say I agree with Andy S, so much background on our chosen field of music, explains why the feeling runs so deep with pipers/drummers and this particular musical discipline. I'm very passionate about my Scottish heritage and all this information goes a long way to explain why I feel so strongly even though it's a generation removed - there's just so much history there!!

This has also been a great way for me to stay in touch with everyone within the band circles from this distance. Away here in the far north-east, the weather isn't quite so European and the band world isn't nearly as active but it's wonderful to be able to stay up to date with events in the piping world. The only down side is that it makes me realise how much I am missing the band and it's activities.