Score and parts in preparation

One afternoon, guitarist Sean Shibe visited my apartment and sang along to the music of Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul. I recorded his singing, and layered his voice many times on itself – he then sang along to his own recorded voice again and again, reclining on the sofa, until he was somewhere between sleep and song: sleep-chanting. 

The chanter is the part of the bagpipes on which one plays the melody. The smallpipes chanter is played with many evocative and heartbreaking ornaments – my favourite is the finger vibrato: waving the finger in the air to make what we might call a ‘timbral trill’, drawing attention (as moth-wings to light) to that moment (or flight-path) of the melodic line.

I’ve taken the sleep-recording of Sean, and I accurately transcribed his sighing to form the skeletal architecture for the guitar part of this concerto. I returned also to the recorded performance of Brìghde, stealing the original ornaments, and exploring how these could inspire the guitar to warble-ripple in its own resonance. 

I give immense gratitude to Brìghde for her music, and for the permission for me to work in this way. Specifically, the source melody is Brìghde’s live performance of O Chiadain an Lo, as recorded in Sligachan on the Isle of Skye. Although this tune (a North Highland Air) is found in the Patrick McDonald collection of 1784, Brìghde arranged it for the small-pipes and transposed it into the Dorian mode – and in her hands, the melody is breathtaking. This concerto, Chanter, is quite far from her melody, having been transformed into something new – but without her work, nothing of this concerto would exist. In honour of this fact, small truth-window moments of her melody can be heard in the string ensemble, as occasional shafts of richly-coloured light. 

The result of all this is a warbling, folk-like, sighing mantra, repeated by the guitar until we reach a dreamlike landscape – all the while carried by the string ensemble’s rippling, lulling, rocking – in four verses and coda, played continuously:

            Verse 1: Rippling Sea

            Verse 2: Bellowing 

            Verse 3: Sleep-chanting 

            Verse 4: Slowing Air 

            Coda: Skye-dreaming