The Pipes and the Edinburgh Tattoo

You will be paying the Edinburgh Military Tattoo's pipers a fine compliment when you go home if you tell nobody you have enjoyed 'the skirl of the pipes'; for properly, to a piper, a skirl is a squeal or a wrong note and there are few if any of those on the Castle esplanade.

There are usually five or six pipe bands massed in the Edinburgh Tattoo. The infantry battalions of the Scottish Division are always well represented and the regular services will provide at least one other band -perhaps from the Guards, the Cavalry, the Gurkhas or the Royal Air Force. The musicians in these bands are all fighting servicemen for whom combat must take priority over piping and drumming. In the infantry, for example, the pipe band usually has the official role of battalion machine gun platoon.

Unlike civilian pipe bands, the Army musicians have no choice but to perform a wide and varied repertoire of tunes and to fulfill an equal diversity of engagements. They do not have the luxury of existing only to compete in championships and of choosing their commitments and their tunes. Their musicianship is nonetheless superb, for which we may thank the Army School of Piping. Virtually all senior British military pipers have attended the School as have many pipers from overseas contingents at the Tattoo. That so many musicians have attained such high standards here is all the more impressive when one appreciates that the School has only two staff. Its Director is also Director of Army Bagpipe Music; his only colleague at the School is its Pipe Major and Chief Instructor.

The School was founded in 1910 on the initiative of the Piobaireachd Society. Among its regular courses are a seven month Pipe Majors' Course and a three week Class One Pipers' Course. Since 1981 the Army School of Piping has been formally tasked with assisting the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, helping to select some of the pipe bands from outwith the British services, putting together the programme of pipe music and directing the overall performance.

So spectacular and polished is this performance that one can scarcely credit the Army's Director of Bagpipe Music when he says 'We knock the show together in about three hours'. Such, however, is the case. The music has been sent to all the bands -military, civilian and overseas - some six months in advance so they all know the tunes thoroughly. When the bands meet for the first time, less than a week before the show opens, it should be necessary only to demonstrate that they have done their homework. This job, known as 'proving the music, involves playing through all the tunes and takes about half an hour. The Director can immediately gauge the feel of the music and of the bands; he knows at once whether things will go smoothly. Almost invariably they do, nothing more being needed than to weld the different bands' personalities into a uniform whole.