The Remembrance Ceremony Behind Emma Brown’s “Amazing Grace” in Amiens
One of the quietest moments of the United Pipers for Peace gathering came when Emma Brown stood in Amiens Cathedral and began to sing. The musicians had come to northern France to commemorate the First World War. For the opening of “Amazing Grace,” the people gathered inside the cathedral heard a single voice.
The July 2018 service took place in the centenary year of the armistice. Local band Samarobriva Pipes and Drums organized the gathering, which included music beyond the cathedral itself. Brown’s account puts the number of pipers who came to Amiens for the weekend at around 400.
Amiens had hosted a similar gathering two years earlier to mark the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. Returning in 2018 gave musicians another occasion to remember people lost in the war. Part of the weekend happened inside the cathedral, while bands also played in the city’s squares and streets.
The hymn made room for both the singer and the people assembled behind her. Brown sang first. Pipe Major Tom Jamieson picked up the melody, and the massed bands followed under Drum Major Derek Dean. Each entrance takes only a moment, but the distance from the lone voice to the full ensemble is what gives the recording its shape.
That gradual entrance suits the occasion. Brown’s first lines leave listeners with the words. When the musicians take over, the melody carries the moment without them. The pipes keep the tune moving through the building and the drums add a pace the whole ensemble can share.
Brown posted the recording after the event. Watching it now preserves the order in which the ceremony audience experienced it. The moment to listen for comes after her last sung phrase, when a single pipe takes the hymn into its next verse.
The pipers in Amiens in 2016
Footage from the 2016 gathering shows an earlier part of the story. Pipe bands were already using the city’s public spaces as well as the cathedral for music tied to remembrance. It gives a sense of how the gathering could be experienced by people who heard the players out in Amiens.
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards play “Amazing Grace”
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards give the same hymn a different beginning by letting the pipes carry it from the start. Played after Brown’s version, the recording brings out how much the opening voice in Amiens shaped the way the rest of the arrangement arrived.
