The patronage of elite Highland pipers collapsed after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745.

Worried that the classical music of the Gaels would fade away, the English-speaking gentry offered prize money for scientific notations.

By 1797, Colin Campbell had written 377 pages in a unique notation based on the vocables of Hebridean ‘mouth music’, but – unintelligible to the judges in Edinburgh – Campbell’s extraordinary work of preservation has remained overlooked or misunderstood until now. Barnaby Brown’s realisations bring the musical craftsmanship of a remote culture vividly to life, giving a voice back to some of Europe’s most illustrious ancient instruments and refocusing attention on a type of music whose trance-inducing long spans and elaborate formal patterning echo the knots and spells of Celtic culture.