appear to partake less of music, cultivated as an art, than of that primitive music, which is a natural language, in relation to the climate and the physiognomy of the country which gave birth to it. In the most ancient airs of the Lowlands,we again find the Gaelic music entire, that music which is as ancient even as the people of the Highlands, and which, by its wild and plaintive melody, is in harmony with the steep rocks, the howling of the winds, and the monotony of the rolling of floods, or solitary rivers, which it seems to resemble.” Necker goes on to describe the
distinguishing marks of Gaelic music (1821, p.94-95): “The characteristic trait . . . is the almost continual absence of two of the notes which constitute our gamut, viz. the fourth and the seventh . . . These five [remaining] notes, and their octaves, give rise to many different combinations, and serve to form particular airs, which have all a resemblance at bottom. It seems as if they wish to compensate, by the diversity of rhythm, the poverty of the music; and, in fact, it has been rendered necessary in order to indicate the time of the measure, to employ signs much more varied than in our music. I shall now confine myself in remarking, that the absence of two notes, so important in our musical system, renders our rules of accompaniment, and fundamental bass, totally inapplicable to Gaelic music, since, without the seventh, or sensible note, we can never, with certitude, determine the tune.” Necker, surprisingly, claims that
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this (the pentatonic scale) is similar to Chinese music. While Necker was aware of pentatonic tunes (think Mull of Kintyre), he seemed to be unaware of the true nature of the pipe scale with its flattened seventh. He talks again about the relation
between tunes and songs (1821, p. 95- 96).“The greater part of the Scottish tunes are destined to accompany small poems, or pastoral ballads, in which the music and the words are so much in harmony, that they lend, reciprocally, a new charm . . . Frequently one of the most touching of these airs, Lochaber no more, has produced effects on the Scots, at a distance from their homes, similar to those of the Ranz des vaches on the Swiss peasantry.” Again, Lochaber no More is not a purely pentatonic tune – it is a pipe tune, and most versions use the whole scale. Necker goes on to praise Scottish
education and the benefits of Calvinism, and to discuss English attitudes to the Scots (1821, p. 110) “Among the faults with which they [the English] reproached Lord Bute, in his administration, they have particularly insisted on the pretended wrong which he did to the nation in placing Scotsmen in the various branches of the Government. ‘Poor England is lost’ said one of the wits of the time, ‘but what chagrins me the most is, to see that the Scots have found it.’” These sentiments seem apposite in recent times! Snipes at pipers continue to
pepper his Journey to the Hebrides (1822). He wrote (1822, p.16) “I stayed the night at St. Catherine’s, a small inn, situated on the banks of