A Pipe Major preparing for 80 days of piping to commemorate the 80th anniversary of VE Day has urged people to “stop for a few minutes and reflect” on the human cost of war.
The pipe marathon will see 20 pipers taking it in turns to play at different locations around the country on each of the 80 days leading up to the anniversary.
It will culminate with a performance of Celebratum, which was specially written for the commemoration, by Pipe Major Lady Jane Macrae in St Paul’s Cathedral in London on May 7.
The performance will be part of a service to bless the lamp that will be used to light the first of more than 1,000 beacons that will be lit around the country to commemorate the end of the Second World War in Europe.
Lady Jane will also be one of two players leading off the event at noon on Tuesday, with a performance at Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire.
At the same time, Stuart Liddell, who wrote Celebratum, will be performing at the war memorial at Inveraray in Argyll and Bute.
Bruno Peek, pageant master of the VE Day commemoration, explained: “In tribute to the brave Scotsmen that paid the ultimate sacrifice during the Second World War, we decided to base the 80 Day Countdown to VE Day 80, May 8 2025, in Scotland.”
Lady Jane, a concert pianist turned maths teacher who first took up the bagpipes four-and-a-half years ago, described being invited to begin and end the tribute as a “phenomenal honour”.
She said: “It was a bit of a shock when I was asked, but I think I’m motivated enough to get through it.
“It is a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s quite an honour to be asked, of all the pipers.”
She said marking VE Day this year is especially important given the dwindling number of surviving veterans of the conflict.
“This was such an important conflict in that it meant the difference between freedom and oppression, and it would have been oppression,” she explained.
“The fact that there are very few (veterans) left means that we’ve got nothing left for the kids to learn from.
“I know for a fact that if you get some of the children from the school where I teach, St Machar Academy in Aberdeen, and they go to visit the old people and some of the veterans, they talk to them and they learn about the war.
“There aren’t going to be any, so there’s going to be nobody left to learn from.
“You can say ‘it’s bad’, but children are going to believe people who have actually been in it, rather than people who just talk about it.”
Lady Jane will also light the first beacon opposite the London Eye on May 8, exactly 80 years since the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s surrender in the Second World War.
She said remembering the sacrifices and devastation of the world wars is vital to ensuring nothing like it ever happens again.
“I think everybody needs to stop for a few minutes and reflect on what exactly it does mean, how many people died, how many young men lost their arms and their limbs, and to be perfectly honest, are still doing so,” she said.
“But I think it was the magnitude of the two wars and the number of people that died, and people need to stop and reflect upon that.
“When we get to these anniversaries I think everybody should be stopping and thinking, and reflecting on it, and the teachers saying something to the kids.
“And everybody stopping and thinking for a minute about all those people that died and never came home.”
Both Lady Jane and Mr Liddell have been involved in writing and playing music for a number of recent official events, including the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the King’s coronation, and the 80th anniversary of D-Day last year.
Lady Jane said the difference between the music Mr Liddell wrote for last year’s D-Day commemoration – called Audax – and Celebratum reflects the difference between the two events.
“For D-Day, he wrote Audax, which was a really moving piece of music, which in part of it was like the guns – the rat, tat, tat of the guns is part of the tune,” she said.
“Whereas Celebratum is a really gentle, nice tune which celebrates the fact that it’s all over.”
