> I wonder if there any known cases of musicians encoding messages in > the fine details of how they play? This is done with song lyrics all > the time, of course, mostly by using metaphor. But I don't think I've > read of it being done with the music itself.
There are some stories of this in the piobaireachd tradition: one is of a piper who was being held hostage on the ship of a force that was about to attack his home village. Being asked to play something innocuous as they neared land, he instead launched into the clan's alarm call. The attackers killed him on the spot but the warning was enough to beat off the raid. (I don't think any of these stories are verifiable, but there are quite a few of them). But coding a bunch of set prearranged signals is easy. I seem to remember something closer to what you want in a story about a woman singing a lullaby to her child in such a way as to warn her lover that her husband was around; she emphasized certain words in the lullaby so as to spell out a message meaning "go away". This tune has a cleverly encoded piece of symbolism, albeit of rather limited application: X:1 T:Old Nick's Lumber Room, or the Pawnbroker's Warehouse S:Edinburgh Public Library "Musical Scraps" v2 p116 Z:Jack Campin 1998 N:press cutting in 19th century style N:anybody know where it comes from? M:6/8 L:1/8 K:A A3 (cAc)|eae cAc|E3 (GEG)|B^dB GEG|A3 cAc|eae cAc|faf ^dBd|e3- [e3E3] :| E3 GEG |B^dB GEG|A3 cAc |eae cAc|faf ^dBd|eae cAc|B^dB GEG|A3 [A3A,3]:| =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
