‘We are making bagpipes sexy again’: inside the late Queen’s beloved Scottish music school

In an oak-panelled hall in the Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming (ASBM&HD) in Edinburgh, Capt Ross McCrindle, the school’s second-in-command, and Senior Pipe Major WO1 Colin Simpson manage not to visibly wince as I attempt to play the bagpipes for the very first time. It is a lot harder than it looks – and it looks like quite a lot of effort. All I can manage is to inflate the bag and let out a brief, discordant screech. 

It is in this room that the future Pipe Majors of the British Army will sit their exams. New piping and drumming recruits who undergo a basic Class 3 qualification here at the ASBM&HD take part in six months of intensive training, after which they return to their regiments, ready to be dispatched to represent the UK at Remembrance events, military tattoos and embassy dinners around the world. Some students who trained at the school in 2022 had never previously played an instrument and were on parade for the late Queen Elizabeth’s funeral two weeks after graduating. 

High-profile appearances at that event and the King’s Coronation have put Army piping and drumming back on the map, says Major Gordon Rowan of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, director of Army bagpipe music and Officer Commanding of the ASBM&HD. Rowan played round the late Queen’s dinner table on many occasions and had the honour, through the school, of organising the pipers and drummers for her funeral. He received messages from around the globe saying they had “done the United Kingdom proud, and her Majesty proud.”

Not only was the late Queen proud of her bagpipers, but she is credited with saving Army bands from government budget cuts. Last week, former chancellor George Osborne revealed on his current affairs podcast, Political Currency, which he co-hosts with Ed Balls, that the only time Queen Elizabeth had “directly interfered in politics” was when she had become aware of potential cuts to Army bands. “You are not going to close, are you, the Highland bagpipe school of the British Army?” he quoted the Queen as asking. “The next day I got into the Treasury and I said, ‘Is there a bagpipe school, and for God’s sake tell me we are not closing it down’,” he continued. 

“That story is 100 per cent true… We’re quite privileged in the Pipes and Drums that we get to be quite close to the Royal Family at state banquets, at Balmoral.” There was no suggestion the school would close and, in reality, it would not have been affected by cuts to Army music. But the story is testament to the late Queen’s “passion” for Scottish music. 

The last conversation Rowan had with the late Queen was at Balmoral in 2021. A group of pipers were due to play for the Royal family at dinner. “We got told, ‘you’re going up on to the estate, her Majesty is having a barbecue’,” he says. “We played down a dark track with torchbearers on either side… Her Majesty came out, we played a few tunes, got eaten alive by midges… She always took a keen interest in it. And she always asked [me] whether I was looking after the pipers and drummers.”

The Sovereign Piper, Paul Burns, played for Elizabeth II every day at breakfast time. And many will remember that it was the skirl of the pipes – Salute to Willie, the Royal Fendersmith, played by Burns – that accompanied Queen Elizabeth as she was laid to rest. The year before, her husband the Duke of Edinburgh’s coffin was lowered as the Pipe Major played the traditional lament, Flowers of the Forest.

McCrindle started playing the bagpipes aged eight and first played for the Royal family 23 years ago. “Who wouldn’t be nervous?” he says. “[It is] an immense privilege… but you’re walking round the table where you have your commander in chief, your Sovereign, the Prime Minister, the entire cabinet, a foreign head of state.

“I’m from a little fishing town in the south west of Scotland. The places we’ve been able to travel to because of what we do in the Army is just mind-blowing,” he says. “That a young lad [from] a fairly small town with limited opportunity has travelled all round the world, rubbed shoulders with presidents… and represented the UK abroad, is an unbelievable opportunity.”

Both Rowan and McCrindle express their disappointment that lessons in piping are not always available in state schools. “You could learn to play a keyboard or the trumpet, no problem at all,” says McCrindle. “It’s mind-blowing to me that [the Scottish] national instrument isn’t funded for countrywide instruction. Kids who want to do it have to pay for it, and that can be quite expensive [so] takes people who would have some quite serious potential out of the picture.” 

This means the Army school has an even more important role in securing the future of piping for the next generation. “Excuse the term,” says Rowan, “[but] we made piping and drumming sexy again.” And demand remains high – so high, in fact, that “sometimes we can’t get enough [accommodation].” 

On a crisp, clear November morning, the ASBM&HD is a hive of activity, with lessons taking place before the ambitious crop of young pipers and drummers are deployed across Scotland and the UK to mark Remembrance Day. The school occupies a grand sandstone house in the corner of Redford Barracks that used to be a family home.

“The Army is full of these little oddities,” says McCrindle. “It’s not what somebody would imagine… you walk into a military barracks, you’re going to see soldiers training, you’re going to see weapons used, and then you have this grand old house where we teach bagpiping. It’s quite bizarre, isn’t it?” 

Last year, 171 students, taught by five instructors and taken from any regiment that has pipes and drums, passed out of the school. Every student is a combat soldier first and foremost, so they intersperse musical training with their regimental duties. It is still somewhat surprising that so many young men (and a smaller number of young women) would sign up for an intensive six-month bagpipe or drumming course. What draws them to it? 

In a second-floor classroom, two soldiers seven weeks into the course are practising on chanters, which look a little like a recorder but – as I will discover later – are much harder to play. For many of the students, tradition and family heritage loom large. For 19-year-old Piper Elvis Mowatt, the motivation to learn to be a piper was simply “family history – my Grandad was the Pipe Major, and my Dad was in the Scots Guards,” he says. 

Piper Peter Rosie, 34, was formerly a music teacher before joining the Army specifically to train at ASBM&HD. He planned to join the Royal Corps of Army Music, but had this “harebrained idea to transfer into the infantry and become a Piper,” he says. “My grandfather was a Pipe Major [his picture hangs in the corridor next door] and he did his course here in 1964… I wanted to follow in his footsteps.”

He has progressed from the practice chanter, which he describes as “a bit of a beast, actually” – and is playing “elementary” tunes on the pipes. “It’s a fast-track syllabus – you’re surrounded by it all the time, [so] you pick it up more quickly,” he says. Others have never even picked up a musical instrument, such as Piper Kieron Bremner, 20, who was tired of his previous role and just wanted to “try something new.” 

The school itself began in 1910 following the formation of the Piobaireachd Society, which aimed to protect the history of Highland music and secure its future. An arrangement was made with the then War Office that the Army would supply facilities for military piping instruction if the Piobaireachd Society supplied the instructor. The Army School of Piping was officially formed in 1959, and it came about to “keep piping going in Scotland,” says McCrindle. “We take it seriously that that’s just part of our remit… it’s not just about the Army; it’s about the instrument and the tradition.”

Both Rowan and McCrindle benefited personally from the wealth of opportunity Army piping and drumming offers. Rowan grew up on the Isle of Tiree, which had a population of just 653 recorded in the 2011 census. “At that time, you either did fishing, farming… or something else,” he says. He didn’t plan to join the Army, but took up piping because “it was in the family” and something to do to pass the “very dark winters… There was no Xbox,” he says. “There were power cuts and the fire was on and the practice chanter would be out. I think for me and for all the young pipers nowadays, it’s the opportunities it brings. [I’ve] been all round the world, playing for high-profile people.” 

Pipers were first employed by the Royal family in the reign of Queen Victoria, after she first visited Scotland in 1842. A Sovereign’s Piper has been in post ever since. Rowan and the Senior Pipe Major have already played for King Charles at the Ghillies Ball in Balmoral. The continuation of this tradition is “music to our ears, because it just shows that moving forward, the King is taking a keen interest… in the Pipes and Drums,” says Rowan. “As a change though, we used to meet her Majesty when she came out of the dining room, but this time, after the reeling had finished and before the King retired, he asked for us all to come in personally to the dining room, where he and the Queen met us all and had a nightcap to say thank you very much.” 

The school also had a visit from the Princess Royal last year. Rowan describes Princess Anne as “really knowledgeable. The outgoing Senior Pipe Major at that time wrote her a nice pipe tune, so I’m sure that was a discussion point round the dinner table afterwards, because they’re all passionate about it in some shape or form. I’m sure as the younger generation comes along behind, they will continue the legacy the late Queen left.” 

The progress students make in six months is astounding, given the bagpipes are a notoriously difficult instrument to learn. I just about manage Mary Had a Little Lamb on a practice chanter, but the idea of being parade-ready in less than a year – even with immersive teaching and hours of practice per day – is unfathomable. For soldiers, lessons begin daily at 8am and include practical teaching as well as music theory and the history of piping or drumming. Weekly highland dancing lessons are a mandatory part of training, as are exercise sessions to maintain physical fitness.

“It’s a serious business. Pipers and drummers are representing the United Kingdom in these areas where the UK wishes to have influence,” says Rowan. “It’s a competitive market and British military piping and drumming is and always has been at the top of that. [But] you’ve got to sustain that – it does not sustain itself.”

Today, however, lessons are suspended for a short Remembrance service by the memorial outside. As a young piper launches into Flowers of the Forest, it is clear the future of this rich tradition is in safe hands.

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