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Brown's Around: Sowing the Seeds
AS I WRITE this article, it’s the end of that season in which we celebrate the life and works of Mr Burns from Ayrshire. All over Scotland - and far beyond - supermarket sales of haggis will have plummeted, kilt hire shops will have reverted to early closing afternoons and librarians will have taken back into stock well-thumbed copies of the Poems & Songs.
Thoughts of warlocks and witches, red, red roses and cowrin’, tim’rous beasties will have gone for another year and whilst I feel a disappointment in having to limit the universal truths of the man to just one calendar month (with a bonus late licence on the last day of the year), I suppose Santa Claus and St Andrew might feel equally hard done by.
We could look to our elders and betters to help promote the reading of the bard all year round by copying that puppy advert - how about, say, A Haggis Isn’t Just For January? - but these things take time to organise, and, after all, we’ve only been celebrating the man for some two hundred years.
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Now that St Valentine has taken his bow and shuffled off also, what can we celebrate here in Highland Perthshire? Well, given Scotland’s well-meaning organisational ineptitude - remember the 1996 Burns celebration fiasco? - may I suggest the following action. Why don’t we concentrate very hard, as befits the best small nation in . er, Scotland, and make the opening moves to mark a significant anniversary concerning one of this county’s, and this country’s, finest musical sons?
March 2007 will see the 200th anniversary of the death of Niel Gow, the Strathbraan-born fiddler, composer and collector, who, along with his four sons helped to develop the popularity of Scottish fiddle music in the 18th and 19th centuries and is largely responsible for turning folk-fiddle playing into a professional art.
His life is well documented and there is some excellent background material available at the Dunkeld Cathedral website on www.dunkeldcathedral.org.uk. As well as being a renowned folk-fiddler (sometimes mistakenly regarded as a derogatory term), his playing was much admired by the aristocracy and he was in demand for society balls and dances. He spent all his life, however, in or around Inver.
In 1798, an English traveller named Dr Garnett gave us this description of Gow’s playing. “We were favoured by a visit of Niel Gow, a singular and well known character, and a celebrated performer on the violin. His only music is that of his native country, which he has acquired solely by ear, being entirely self-taught, but he plays the Scotch airs with a spirit and enthusiasm peculiar to himself. He is now in his 72nd year and has played publicly at Assemblies on his instrument for more than half a century. He favoured us with several pieces of Scotch music. He excels most in the Strathspeys but he executes the laments with a great deal of pathos.”
Then there was the famous visit from Robert Burns in 1787. What a session that would have been! Burns was on his Highland tour at the time and recorded the visit thus: “Breakfast with Dr Stewart - Niel Gow plays. A short stout-built figure, with greyish hair shed on his honest social brow, an interesting face marking strong sense, kind open-heartedness mixed with unmistrusting simplicity.”
But what’s so special or relevant about Gow in the 21st century? Pete Clark is a local fiddler and fiddle tutor who is internationally renowned for his recordings of Gow tunes. “When Gow was alive, he provided both entertainment and inspiration to all those he encountered,” says Pete. “His music continues to entertain and inspire on an international stage two hundred years after his death.”
There is already an annual Niel Gow Festival but perhaps a step beyond this might be taken. Why not make this geographical area the centre of attraction which it deserves to be by taking a hint from Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s very successful Winter Words event and staging, say, a Spring Notes Festival to attract not only fiddle enthusiasts but also book lovers, wildlife enthusiasts, walkers, good food enthusiasts and others?
This year’s Niel Gow Festival will be held in Dunkeld and Birnam over the weekend of 17-19 March and will include recitals, concerts, workshops and sessions. There are more details on www.musicinscotland.com/Niel_Gow/.
Artistes confirmed so far include Alistair McCulloch, Anna-Wendy Stevenson, Aonghais Grant Sen, The Blackford Fiddlers, Celine Donoghue, Christine Kydd & Singin’ Birnam, The Dunkeld & District Strathspey & Reel Society, Gavin Marwick & Bob Turner, Gordon Gunn & Brian McAlpine, Iain Fraser, Jenna Reid, Jimmy Johansson & Tuva Modeer, Marie Fielding, Paul Anderson, Pete Clark, Pupils of Plockton School, Ross Thomson, Sandie Forbes, Simon & Daniel Moran, Wendy Weatherby and Stevie Lawrence and there’s also a display of fiddles, violas and ‘cellos by Joseph I Ross at the Taybank during the Festival
By my calculations, the calendar will reveal space for only some twelve monthly meetings of the Spring Notes 2007 Festival Committee. It could be a pipe dream or an event to remember!
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