Output details

The big music

The Big Music is a novel inspired by High Modernism, and based on an extensive study of the traditions, musical forms and cultural context of the music of the Highland Bagpipes. This music serves as a formal model for the novel itself. The novel is presented to the reader in the form of a collection of found papers, appendices and notes connected to a composer of this music. The research elements of the novel therefore include both an investigation into the legacies and contemporary relevance of the modernist project, and a musical-literary-cultural investigation. The critical and scholarly work involved is thus closely integrated with the creative practice of its writing.

This novel, in the modernist tradition, is a culmination of critical and scholarly work – both in its making and in its effect – and so represents a work of art that bridges the creative and academic worlds. Its making required access to remote archives and areas of historical and musical interest, hitherto not explored in the contemporary culture – in particular, an exploration of Highland Bagpipe music and its contexts.