The Big Music, By Kirsty Gunn

 

Boyd Tonkin
Thursday 06 June 2013 08:13 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

It sounds a tallish order and (for some readers) a big ask: a fragmentary, overlapping novel of themes-and-variations, woven around the modes of traditional Highland bagpipe music (the piobaireachd) and finished with a 100-page coda of appendices.

The posher prize juries shunned Gunn. Such a pity. For this is a work to cherish, dazzling in its artistry but very moving too – beyond all folklore and musicology – in its core motif of a lone, ageing piper and his fissured family.

Gunn's tunes tell of fathers and children, lost and apart: an achingly lovely elegy for a people, and an art, adrift in modernity.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in