Judd, Bagpipes, Tartans, and Time
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judd, bagpipes, tartans, and time Sterry Butcher Judd’s appreciation for piping solemn. Pibroch – sometimes A wise friend the other day was talking ignited in the late 1960s, when written piobaireachd – is the clas- he was married to Julie Finch, a sical form of bagpipe music, a about time. There is the calibrated time dancer of Scottish heritage. He complex composition that begins heard pipers for the first time, with a melody and evolves into a of a steadily ticking clock and then other than at parades, during a series of variations before return- there is the flowy, non-calibrated time of trip to Nova Scotia with Finch, ing, at the end, to the original and she later bought him a tartan melody. Pipers of old played meditation, daydreaming, and spacing out. as a present. The couple began pibroch as a lament for the dead, picking up bagpipe recordings as a salute to a person or a His observations came up, oddly enough, and once, while planning an place, to call the clan to gather, event, Judd and Finch dropped or as music to row by. It is heavy during a conversation about Donald Judd’s by a New York store called Scot- and hypnotic, so much so that it’s love of bagpipe music and Scottish tartans. tish Products and asked the staff referred to at times as Ceòl Mòr, to recommend a piper for hire. or “big music,” to differentiate it It turns out, rather wondrously, that they They suggested a piper named from the lighter fare of dances, Joe Brady Sr. “That’s how it all military marches or reels. Judd are all wrapped up with one another: started,” Finch said this summer. loved it. “It was Joe Sr. who introduced The artist struck up a lasting time, Judd’s work, the music, the tartans, him to pibroch.” friendship with Joe Sr. and his this beautiful and austere landscape. The sound of bagpipes play- son, Joe Jr., who was still a teen- ing is at once familiar and ager when he began playing Give me a minute and I’ll explain. unearthly, resolute and terribly for Judd in the 1970s. Members 16 of the Piobaireachd Society met Marfans, for whom the keening Paz was awarded the Nobel “He was also collecting Afri- periodically at 101 Spring Street, of bagpipes was unfamiliar sonic Prize for literature, in 1990, can masks and Shaker furniture Judd’s New York residence, to territory. The concentrated weave Judd decided that a celebration and Native American blankets, play pibrochs for no other audi- of the music requires concentra- honoring the writer was in order. but bagpipes are a special case. ence but one another. tion from the listener. Judd was Paz gently declined an invita- I have lots of good memories “Pibroch is demanding,” said adamant about silence during a tion to Marfa, but Judd opted to listening to it on the reel-to-reel. Joe Brady Jr. “It’s complicated bagpipe performance and could celebrate the author anyway, in It sounded good in all of Don’s and melodic. It requires time. get testy about chatter among the Ojinaga, Chihuahua, sixty miles spaces. It is the music of my child- Don liked that drone sound in the audience. For Judd, the music south of Marfa. hood.” back and that it was marked by demanded attention. Ojinaga’s mayor was eager It doesn’t appear that Judd simplified rhythm and pattern. “When you were listening to to participate and the event un- ever wrote about bagpipes, He understood pattern more than music, it was not a background folded in the city’s central plaza though he mentions his inter- other people. It’s a minimalistic thing, just as art was not a back- one evening. Judd and local dig- est in them in an October 1993 type of music – the rhythms are drop to other activities,” said nitaries sat on the bandstand for interview with Regina Wyrwoll. simple, but it’s amazing that you Flavin Judd, the artist’s son. “He speeches and readings of Paz’s According to Caitlin Murray, can do so much with just a few had the same respect for music as work. Then came Joe Brady Jr. archivist at the Judd Founda- notes.” he did for art.” and his bagpipes. He marched tion, ten books on bagpipes are One or both of the Bradys trav- At the close of his Open around the plaza, playing tune included in his library at the eled to Canada, New York, and House performances, Joe Jr. slow- after tune. Block, along with 40 references across Europe to play pibrochs ly marched outside, leading the Judd did listen to other types to Scotland, ranging from whis- at Judd’s openings. They were in crowd into the starry night and of music. He liked classical mu- key to historical texts on ancient Marfa every October, playing to a bonfire nearby. He paced sic, bluegrass, and some country, Scotland. A chart of scales hangs in the Arena during the Chinati deliberately around the flames, and he admitted to his son that he in a kitchen at the Block, though Foundation’s Open House. The playing poignant laments. It was thought the early Beatles songs no one recollects him trying to crowd at Chinati was always a magical. were “okay.” He was, as Flavin learn to play. Judd tended to mix of out-of-towners with sophis- Judd liked bringing the music said, an omnivorous collector of wear tartan-plaid shirts and oc- ticated cultural backgrounds and to others. Shortly after Octavio cultures. casionally donned a kilt. He was , 1990. HIHUAHUA , C OJINAGA , ALPERN O H SARI RO AND UDD J NALD DO ITH Z W A O P OCTAVI R O F N O ELEBRATI 1: C 17 not, however, of Scottish descent, collection an indication of how deepening shadows. How much but that didn’t hold Judd back. much he valued the music. With- time do we have? How long is Brady came back year after year in the same building, in his win- long? to play the Open House, where ter bedroom, are arranged his The Scots lived in a similarly Judd plied Brady with discussions collections of Native American wild place, unforgiving in its about piping and Brady plumbed weavings and ceramics, old tur- climate and beautiful in its rocky Judd about art. One October, quoise jewelry, and locally-made sparseness. They wove textiles Judd was rankled that the piper’s leather crafts and gear. Stacks that were many-colored, like music wasn’t more of a forefront of tartan blankets are piled on their landscape, and perhaps in the event. “He asked if I could the bed. They are deeply hued, the fields and intersecting lines come back for President’s Day with intersecting color fields and of their tartans were, in a sense, weekend and for three or four stripes lovely and vivid. Elements a reflection of their rolling moors years, we got pipers and drum- of both the music and the tartans and hardscrabble hillsides, mers to go down for four days informed Judd’s work. putting order to what is funda- and entertain,” said Brady. Sometimes this is pretty obvi- mentally not able to be ordered. In the early 1990s, Judd lightly ous, such as in the tartan-like im- There is rhythm in the hills and explored creating a bagpipe ages Judd produced toward the a pattern to the seasons; those and pibroch museum in Marfa end of his career. Judd worked ancient weavers may have ac- at a building called Bingham with master printmaker Robert knowledged those natural and Hall, sometimes referred to as the Arber on a suite of twenty such inescapable rhythms and patterns Rushton House, located between prints. Though this 1993 suite in the very cloth they wore. Chinati’s office and the Arena. A never went into production, bon And what of time? A ticking few rooms in the building were a tier prints of all twenty hang on clock is one marker of time, but drywalled in preparation for the the wall of Arber’s Marfa print my wise friend posits that music museum, but although Joe Jr. studio. They are rather magnifi- is another language that marks remembers Judd talking with his cent. The blocks of color and the time’s existence. While some father about building a collec- grids of thick and thin lines mes- music is more readily clock-like, tion, the plans never passed the merize: viridian, cadmium red, with a measured, reliable time idea stage. orange and yellow, ultramarine signature or beat, the music One of the rooms in the Block blue, cerulean, cobalt, perma- of pibroch is decidedly more is beautifully and simply installed nent green, black. They are not abstract. A pibroch’s variations with Judd pieces. There is a bed illusionary or spectral, like the of melody are played above a in the corner and a Shaker changing reflections that are sobering, continuous drone that bench. Against one wall is created by, say, Judd’s mill alu- is the bedrock of the piece. The a glassed case. Inside minum boxes at Chinati. Instead, melody unfurls, drifts into shifting it: bagpipes, these are flat, non-reflective and variants, and repeats; the drone their inclu- non-glossy. Their surprise comes can’t be escaped. Judd’s favor- sion in this from their power as a group – all ite pibrochs were “Desperate room’s those interacting bold lines – and Battle of the Birds” and “Flame the unexpected turns of color of Wrath,” where the viciousness when lines intersect.