West Coast / Highland Fiddle Style.

Evidence shows that 300 years ago fiddling was popular throughout the Gaidhealtachd. An Clarsair Dall (The blind harper and poet) approved of it to accompany dancing and his own father, John Morrison of Bragar, was well known as a fiddler. By 1703 Martin Martin reported 18 fiddlers on Lewis.

The popularity of the fiddle declined with the disapproval by the church of dancing after the Reformation. The old Highland style was primarily an incitement to dance and this may have led to the destruction of instruments and their individual style. Then there was the Clearances when many people left taking their traditions away from Scotland.

Though fiddle playing has again a strong place in today’s Highland music scene the fiddle tradition did suffer a decline from around 1900 till the 1980s. The advent of popular music hall style of entertainment at the beginning of the 20th century and increasing numbers of young people leaving the area to find work contributed to this decline. Another reason for the decline of local traditions was the educational policy of taking young people away from the more remote areas and the islands to educate them in larger schools away from their home communities. There was also the influence of the radio and later television.

The original Highland dances were reels and the music played by the fiddlers mostly related to the dances performed. According to Flett and Flett in Traditional Dancing in Scotland the reel is the only traditional dance in Scotland and consisted of a strathspey running into a reel. In the Gaelic speaking areas the tunes used for dancing were greatly influenced by the Gaelic language and song.

There are not many early Highland collections of dance music to give an idea of how the music was played in the past. There is Captain Simon Fraser’s Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland (1816) which contains many tunes and songs he learnt from his parents and grandparents but also some of his own compositions and it is known that he “smoothed out” tunes and added ornamentation. It is an excellent collection in many ways but it cannot show us how the Highland style was played. Patrick MacDonald’s Collection of Vocal Airs (1781) contains interesting material, as does Daniel Dow’s collection, but as with Fraser’s book the style cannot be conveyed from the written music. The style could only be conveyed from those fiddlers who have “passed it on”. It was an aural tradition and as such it is now impossible to trace as most of the present tradition bearers have been influenced by recordings, TV and past performances of fiddlers such as Scott Skinner who travelled extensively in the Highlands.

Puirt a Beul (dance music sung in Gaelic see p. 75) is probably the closest link to a lost Highland style - that and the fiddle music of Cape Breton. By the time collectors were researching it was too late to identify with certainty distincive local styles of Highland music. Angus Grant is considered the foremost exponent and the main features of his playing are contained in the list below. It is possible, but unlikely, that his style may have been a recent development. Much of his repertoire is very ancient. Other leading exponents were the late Farquhar McRae and Pibroch MacKenzie. Ian Kennedy from Fort William is another well respected West Coast player. Many Cape Breton fiddlers believe that their style of playing represents the old Highland style.

Nowadays the Highland style is often thought of as bagpipe music on the fiddle, but this was not always so. The bagpipe influence is very strong in Highland fiddle playing, due to that instrument’s use in the army. It would appear that if ever there was a native style of fiddle playing in the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland then it has largely been lost or superseded by the bagpipe influence.

The following characteristics of West Coast Highland fiddle music can be noted:

- The playing is generally smoother and less accented than the playing of fiddlers from the North East.

- The strathspeys are played with less double dotted spiky rhythm and many tunes relate to the rhythm of the language as sung in puirt a beul. - In airs and Gaelic song airs the timing is very free.

- There is use of drones and ornamentation in imitation of the bagpipe and Gaelic singing. The grace notes are played fast and in a fiddle imitation of bagpipe grace notes. Many of the tunes use only the notes of the bagpipe scale. A type of tune commonly associated with the Highland style is the 2/4 pipe march.

- There is slight stretching of the dotted quaver beat and cutting the semiquaver in the playing of 6/8 marches.

- Jigs are often written with equal quavers when the playing style of them is dotted quaver / semiquaver / quaver giving them a good “lift”. - Playing with the middle of the bow using a separate bow for each note and use birls and triplets. Many fiddlers will begin the strong beat at the beginning of a bar on an up bow.

- The structure of a strong beat meaning a down bow and a weak beat meaning an up bow is not significant for many Highland players. - Playing in octaves if there is more than one fiddler.

- Highland fiddle tunes in major keys often have the flattened seventh note which is related to the bagpipe scale.

These notes on styles of fiddle playing in Scotland are taken from the book Traditional Scottish Fiddling published by Taigh na Teud. In the 144 page book there are tune examples of all the styles and a Cd of good Scottish fiddlers to illustrate the points.