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Colin Campbell’s Instrumental Book, 1797. Colin Mór Campbell was the leading member of a dynasty of pipers in Argyllshire in the 18th and early 19th centuries. He was piper to John Campbell, 4th Earl of Breadalbane on the latter’s western estates at Ardmaddy in Argyllshire, and compiled his extensive manuscript collection--often called “The Nether Lorn MS” (after the district in which he lived)—during the closing years of the 18th century. Colin Mór developed a highly systematised version of written canntaireachd or syllabic notation. Two volumes survive from what may originally have been three, and they contain 169 tunes, some 70 of these not recorded in other sources. Although staff notation as pioneered by Joseph and Donald MacDonald was shortly to carry all before it, Colin Campbell’s development of the vocalic notation to its highest point remains a uniquely valuable cultural document. Pipers often administered the estates on which they lived, and although we know little of Colin’s life and circumstances, we can infer a good deal from his written work. His stylish italic hand shows he was no stranger to the pen, and the fact that he was literate both in Gaelic and English--then a rare accomplishment--suggests that he was a man of education and culture. The tonally systematic approach to the organisation of the collection in which tunes are grouped according to their opening gestures in a sequence rising step by step up the chanter, married to the artistic excellence of his arrangements (although these are poorly represented in most modern staff notated versions) indicate the presence of an exceptional musical talent.
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