Doug wrote this out for me and since I tend to cry easily I will just post it as he wrote it.
Bells
of Dunblane
It
has been said that a bagpiper has a tune for every occasion.
Andrew
was the Pipe Major of the City of Denver Pipe Band. In his day job, he taught French at the
Boulder Valley School District. He lived
nearby in Littleton, Colorado where his daughter, Stephanie, was a student at
Columbine High School. Stephanie was a
highland dancer with the band and was well-known to other band members, of
which there were nearly a hundred.
In
1998 a friend of Andrew’s visited Scotland.
While there, this friend attended a pipe concert where he
surreptitiously used a pocket tape recorder to record the event. He thought Andrew might be interested in
hearing it, so he made a copy and sent the tape to him, but inadvertently
forgot to include the names of the tunes.
Andrew played the tape and found several tunes he liked. One in particular caught his attention so he
wrote manuscript copies of it and shared it with members of the band. The band included the tune in its repertoire as
“The Nameless Tune.” They played it at
concerts that fall and into the next spring.
Then
came the Columbine shootings. Fifteen
people, including the two shooters, were killed and 20 others wounded. Stephanie and a friend had the good fortune
to choose that day to go home for lunch and raid Andrew’s refrigerator (and skip returning to school that day). They missed the whole thing. Through her connection with the pipe band,
Stephanie was asked if the City of Denver Pipe Band would perform at the
memorial. The band agrees and “The
Nameless Tune” was included in the services.
In
the summer of 1999 the City of Denver Pipe Band toured Scotland, performing at
several locales well-known to pipers, including Oban. After the performance at Oban a man came out
of the crowd and said he recognized “The Nameless Tune.” It was the “Bells of Dunblane.”
You
do remember Dunblane? On March 13, 1996
a gunman entered Dunblane Primary School and killed a teacher and sixteen
children. A piper, Robert (Bob) Mathieson ,
visited Dunblane at the time of the funerals and heard the bells tolling. This inspired him to write the tune. Without knowing its history, Andrew chose
this tune to commemorate the students of Columbine High School.
The
Bells of Dunblane has become the tune of choice when pipers perform for
memorials to the victims of school shootings.
It
has been said that a piper has a tune for every occasion. Sadly, that is true.
Doug
Stevenson,
Former
member of the City of Denver Pipe Band
You can listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3I8H6TsQaQ
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre).
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html is a list from February 2, 1996 until October 1, 2015
--Cyn
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