  |
|
THE
PIPES &
DRUMS OF THE 1ST ROYAL ENGINEERS |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
(This text has also been published in the Winter 2001-2002 issue of the
Voice, quarterly magazine of The Eastern United States' Pipe Band
Association.)
50 years of piping and drumming in Scandinavia By Ulf Schönberg Emigration and the Empire spread Scots and bagpipes all over the globe. One place they didn’t reach was Scandinavia. Well, the Swedes and the Danes brought home piping themselves. And the music seems to flourish - the 2001 World Champions in grade 3a are Sweden’s Pipes & Drums of the 1st Royal Engineers. Ulf Schönberg, one of the band’s pipers, tells the story of pipe bands in the Scandinavian countries: When a grade 2 band emerges this is the result of many years of devoted work by hundreds of people around this part of the world. Actually piping in Scandinavia began just after the war when Danish artist Mogens Zieler (illustrator of many of Karen Blixen’s [Karen Dinesen’s] books) started learning the pipes and playing together with friends. Eventually in 1968 two bands were started in Copenhagen, one of them by Mogens’ friend Bob Miller, a Scottish sculptor and piper. This would soon become The Heather Pipes & Drums. The first Swede who played the pipes was probably the gifted singer and multi-instrumentalist Oscar Rundqvist, when in 1954 he performed as a Scot in a show of Povel Ramel’s, a legendary artist in Swedish show-biz. You could hardly call Rundqvist a piper, but he took a serious interest and was a member of an early Swedish Eagle Pipers’ Society which preceded the first band, The 1st Rl. Engineers, started by Per Colliander in 1968. It was then known as The Thistle Pipe Band, but was later made an honorary band of the (now disbanded) regiment. After only two years of bandbuilding the first Scandinavian Championships were organised in 1970. These are now held every Whitsun weekend either in Sweden or in Denmark with band events on the Saturday and solos on the Sunday. In 1973 another annual venue was established, The Copenhagen Winter Competition, held indoors every February with solo contests for pipers and drummers on different levels as well as quintet and drum salute competitions. For many years Scotsmen from the regiments based in West Germany as well as many players from German, Belgian and Dutch groups and bands took part in the Winter Competition but now it seems to have reverted to a solely Scandinavian affair, which is a pity on an excellent event that should be able to attract players from all of Europe. The piping scene in Copenhagen has always been vital with many groups and many good players. However Heathers soon established their excellence and has over time proved the most stable band in our part of the world. The most brilliant solo piper in Scandinavia must be Tom Harboe, who is also the man behind Heathers’ rise to grade 2 a few years ago. The enthusiasm of a handful pioneers has been extremely important for the rise of our pipe bands, but we have also had immense help and support from Scotland. Our competitions have always been judged by prominent Scottish pipers and drummers (plus the occasional Canadian), now often assisted by domestic judges. People like Iain MacLellan, Tom Speirs, Andrew Wright and Ian Duncan, Tom Brown, Jim Kilpatrick and Alex Duthart have come over time and again to judge, teach and play, nowadays often at the annual Scandinavian Summer School in Denmark. Some of them stayed too. Ex-Scots Guards P/M Robert Kilgour, M.B.E. settled in Copenhagen in 1979 and is a Nestor of Danish piping, having taught in most Danish bands. P/M Peter Wood Elder, B.E.M. left the 4th Royal Tank Regiment in 1982 and moved to Slagelse in Denmark where he started The Clan Rose Pipes & Drums. Members of that band some years later started Holbaek Pipe Band which is now in grade 3. In southern Sweden bands for many years had generous and stern tuition from the now late P/M Jimmy Kirkpatrick of Bonhill, who promoted a thorough technique and a traditional style of playing, giving me and many others the true bread-and-butter of marches, strathspeys and reels. One of Jimmy’s students was Mats d Hermansson, yet another piping pioneer in Sweden. He is still pipe major of the band he started in 1976, The Murray Pipes & Drums of Gothenburg. Too often on the verge of extinction, this band has promoted a lot of co-operation between bands in Scandinavia, for competition and concert purposes. Besides a taste for the heavyweight traditional repertoire the band has also been notorious for an experimental attitude, introducing traditional Swedish and Breton music as well as "non-piping" music. One of the foremost piobaireachd players in Scandinavia, Mats is also closing in on his Ph.D. in musicology - on how and why piping evolved in Scandinavia -I don’t think there is one simple reason for the introduction of piping here, says Mats. But along with what Iain MacInnes has written, I think you must see it in the light of the bagpipe as a means of displaying power and the immense first impression it makes on people. It is interesting to note that already in the 1850s bagpipes were mentioned in a Swedish book on music as a national instrument which roused the Scots and put them "in a lyrical mood, like the alphorn does the Swiss". In 1923 a Scottish military pipe band visited Sweden and, especially during the wars, pipers were seen on newsreels. The bagpipe as a romantic icon for Scotland was already firmly established, Mats concludes. During the folk music revival of the 1960s Scandinavians also took to practising foreign traditions. Old and "genuine" culture rose as a counterpoise to modern society. The pipes represented an old-fashioned spectacular, military splendour, but yet with a folky touch. If you look at regions where Scottish piping has flourished without obvious links to Scotland - Scandinavia, Belgium and The Netherlands - they are modern and open societies where people have had the money to travel abroad and meet new influences and the time to pursue new hobbies. And not least, a good knowledge of the English language. Not to forget, there was also a traditional Swedish bagpipe, a quiet one- droned type akin to the bagpipes of eastern Europe. Introduced in the middle ages it lost popularity towards the end of the 1800s, when the accordion could provide better accompaniment for dancing. The last piper of inherited tradition, Gudmunds Nils Larsson in Dalecarlia died in 1949. But these traditional pipes have since enjoyed a 20-year renaissance and are now widely played by Swedish folk musicians. But before that folk music interest had already turned to Highland pipes and during the 1970s over a dozen pipe bands were started in Sweden and Denmark. For many years bands split up time and again but lately amalgamation has been the trend, creating fewer but stronger groups, showing that there is still a limit to the number of possible bands here. But new ground was also broken in the 1990s when bands were started in Norway and Finland. There are now around 20 groups in Scandinavia: two bands in grade 2, one in grade 3 and another five or six full bands in grade 4. Perhaps some 500 people in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland play or have played Highland pipes or pipe band drums. The world of piping and drumming in Scandinavia is of course very small and marginal, but also stable and well established. And it means the world to those involved. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
© 2008 The Pipes & Drums of the 1st Royal Engineers |