Episode 45 – Since his early youth in Argyll, Dugald B. MacNeill, held an interest in piping. His family moved to Glasgow allowing him to witness to birth of the College of Piping when it formed in Pitt Street, Glasgow. In a fascinating account he leads us through the years and premises to the present day. It is interesting to note that the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band (Now Police Scotland) practice in the Assembly Hall of Pitt Street Headquarters in the Exact Spot where the basement flat would have been as narrated by Dugald. Piping ghosts indeed!
Meticulous in business, he is also almost forensic in his examination of March and Pibroch playing and throws insight into the stalwarts who pushed their vision of learning through the decades. This is yet another facet of the history of the great highland bagpipe. Further reading into the views held here can be traced at:-
Monograph on The Competition Pipe March
By Dugald B. MacNeill, B.Sc., F.R.S.C.
(This is based on the lecture given at the College of Piping Lecture/Recital at Birnam House Hotel, Dunkeld, on 17th March, 2006.)
Proceedings of the Piobaireachd Society Conference
Held at The Royal Hotel, Bridge of Allan, April 1993.
Contents
A Piping Watershed – The Tradition 1780 – 1840, by Iain MacInnes
The History of the College of Piping, by Dugald MacNeill
Joseph MacDonald’s ‘Compleat Theory’, by Roderick Cannon
A Seminar on Judging
The New Piping Trust, by Alan R Forbes
Neither documents say where they are published, but it is presumed that copies of same are held at the College of Piping and by Dugald MacNeill.