Our Member, John Bottomley, has struck gold again!
This is an incredibly thoughtful 3-part series of broadcasts on Elizabeth Ross and her manuscripts, hosted by Peter Cooke.
Elizabeth lived at Raasay House while John MacKay (father of Angus MacKay) was piper there. The collection contains 150 tunes from before 1812, all written by her for the piano-forte.
There are six pibrochs, two of which are partial. They provide valuable insight into how John MacKay may have performed them.
Dr. Cooke takes us through this extremely valuable and routinely overlooked manuscript.
Enjoy!
I only recently discovered the AltPibroch website and soon found my way to these recordings. I really enjoyed these broadcasts, and a few things stood out to me. First, Peter Cooke’s piano interpretations of the Ross manuscript pibrochs were absolutely beautiful, in spite of the recording quality. Second, I very much liked the unusual tripling variation that appears to be unique to Ross’s manuscript. I like to think there is something to the idea that John MacKay and his contemporaries played something similar. Also, the subtle differences heard in Ross’s version of Mackintosh’s Lament from the current popular version make a big difference, and I like the tune even more in this earlier setting.
It’s definitely worth the 1.5 hours of listening!