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Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, around the Persian Gulf and northern parts of South Asia.
The pastoral bagpipe may have been the invention of an expert instrument maker who was aiming at the Romantic market. The pastoral pipes, and later union pipes, were certainly a favourite of the upper classes in Scotland, Ireland and the North-East of England and were fashionable for a time in formal social settings, where the term "union pipes ...
One of the earliest references to the Irish bagpipes comes from an account of the funeral of Donnchadh mac Ceallach, king of Osraige in 927 CE. [2] A likely first reference to bagpipes being played in war is found in a manuscript written between 1484 and 1487 containing an Irish Gaelic version of "Fierabras": the quote " sinnter adharca & píba agaibh do tionól bur sluaigh " translates as ...
The double-reed type is characteristically louder, and can over-blow a few notes in the upper register. The single-reed type plays only an octave. The bagpipes may be drone-less or furnished with drones (byrdwn) via the bag (cwdyn). The single-reed chanter is drilled with six small finger-holes and a thumb-hole giving a diatonic compass of an ...
From the 14th century onwards, bagpipes start to appear in the historical records of European countries, however half the mentions come from England suggesting Bagpipes were more common in England. Bagpipes are mentioned in English literature as early as The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer , written between the 1380s and 1390s.
The Scottish smallpipe is a bellows-blown bagpipe re-developed by Colin Ross and many others, adapted from an earlier design of the instrument. There are surviving bellows-blown examples of similar historical instruments as well as the mouth-blown Montgomery smallpipes, dated 1757, which are held in the National Museum of Scotland . [ 1 ]
The second full-page plate illustrates a more developed form of the musette, where a grand chalumeau with five keys is complemented by a petit chalumeau with six keys. Jacques Hotteterre 's Méthode (1738) illustrates the most usual final form of the instrument; the six-key petit chalumeau is the same as de Scellery's, but the grand chalumeau ...
The finger-holes include three for the left hand and four for the right, as well as one at the back for the left thumb. The chanter's tonic is played with the top six holes and the thumb hole covered by fingers. Starting at the bottom and (in the Galician fingering pattern) progressively opening holes creates the diatonic scale.