A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Bagpipe
BAGPIPE (Fr. Cornemuse; Ital. Cornamusa; Germ. Sackpfeife). An instrument, in one or other of its forms, of very great antiquity. By the Greeks it was named άσκανλοs or σνμφώνεια; by the Romans Tibia utricularis. Mersennus calls it Surdeline, and Bonani Piva or Ciaramella. In Lower Brittany it is termed Bignou, from a Breton word bigno—'se renfler beaucoup.' It has been named Musette (possibly after Colin Muset, an officer of Thibaut do Champagne, king of Navarre). Corruptions of these names, such as Samponia or Samphoneja, and Zampugna, are also common.
It appears on a coin of Nero, who, according to Suetonius, was himself a performer upon it. It is mentioned by Procopius as the instrument of war of the Roman infantry. In the crozier given by William of Wykeham to New College, Oxford, in 1403, there is the figure of an angel playing it. Chaucer's miller performed on it—
'A bagpipe well couth he blowe and sowne.'
Shakespeare often alludes to it. He speaks of 'the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe,' of the antipathy some people have to its sound, and of some who laugh like parrots at a bagpiper. At the close of the 15th century the bagpipe seems to have come into general favour in Scotland.
Until recently music for the bagpipe was not written according to the usual system of notation, but was taught by a language of its own, the notes having each names, such as hodroho, hananin, hiechin, hachin, etc. A collection of piobaireachd (pibrochs) in this form was published by Capt. Niel Macleod at Edinburgh in 1828.
In Louis XIV's time the bagpipe formed one of the instruments included in the band of the 'Grande Ecurie,' and was played at court concerts.
Its essential characteristics have always been, first, a combination of fixed notes or 'drones,' with a melody or 'chaunter'; secondly, the presence of a wind-chest or bag. From these peculiarities, the Greek, and from the second of them the Latin names clearly come. Although it has no doubt been reinvented in various times and places, it seems to be connected with the Keltic race, whether in Ireland, Scotland, or Brittany.
The wind has been variously supplied, either from the breath of the player, or from a small pair of bellows placed under one arm, the sac or bag being under the other. In the latter form it contains all the essentials of the organ. It is somewhat remarkable that the use of the lungs themselves as the wind-chest to reed instruments should have been adopted later and less universally.
At the present time there are four principal forms of the instrument used in this country—two Scotch (Highland and Lowland), the Irish, and the Northumbrian. The Scotch Highland pipe is blown from the chest, the others from bellows. The Irish bagpipe is perhaps the most powerful and elaborate instrument, keys producing the third and fifth to the note of the chaunter having been added to the drones. The Northumbrian is small and sweeter in tone; but the Scotch pipe is probably the oldest and certainly the most characteristic form: it will therefore be considered first, and at the greatest length.
In this instrument a valved tube leads from the mouth to a leather air-tight bag, which has four other orifices; three large enough to contain the base of three fixed long tubes termed drones, and another smaller, to which is fitted the chaunter. The former are thrown on the shoulder; the latter is held in the hands. All four pipes are fitted with reeds, but of different kinds. The drone reeds are made by splitting a round length of 'cane' or reed backwards towards a joint or knot from a cross cut near the open end; they thus somewhat resemble the reed in organ pipes, the loose flap of cane replacing the tongue, the uncut part the tube or reed proper. These are then set downwards in a chamber at the base of the drone, so that the current of air issuing from the bag tends to close the fissure in the cane caused by the springing outwards of the cut flap, thus setting it in vibration. The drone reeds are only intended to produce a single note, which can be tuned by a slider on the pipe itself, varying the length of the consonating air-column.
The chaunter reed is different in form, being made of two approximated edges of cane tied together, and is thus essentially a double reed, like that of the oboe or bassoon, while the drone reed roughly represents the single beating reed of the organ or clarinet. The drone reed is an exact reproduction of the 'squeaker' which children in the fields fashion out of joints of tall grass, probably the oldest form of the reed in existence.
The drone tubes are in length proportional to their note, the longest being about three feet high. The chaunter is a conical wooden tube, about fourteen inches long, pierced with eight sounding holes, seven in front for the fingers, and one at the top behind for the thumb of the right hand. Two additional holes bored across the tube below the lowest of these merely regulate the pitch, and are never stopped.
The compass is only of nine notes, from G to A inclusive
In the tuning of the drones there seems to be difference of practice. Glen's 'Tutor for the Great Highland Bagpipe' states that the drones are all tuned to A; the two smaller in unison with the lower A of the chaunter, the largest to the octave below; whereas from other works it appears that the sequence G, D, G, as well as D, A, D, are both admissible. But the Northumbrian or border pipe, a far more accurate instrument according to modern musical notions than the Scotch, provides for a possible change of key by the addition of a fourth supplementary drone; probably the three notes G, D, and A, might be tolerated, in alternate pairs, according to the predominant key of G or A in the melody. There is good ground, however, for believing that any attempt to accommodate the bagpipe to modern scale-notation would only result in a total loss of its archaic, semi-barbarous, and stimulating character.
Some confirmation of the view here taken as to the scale of the bagpipe may be derived from an examination of the music written for it. It is known to all musicians that a fairly passable imitation of Scotch and Irish tunes may be obtained by playing exclusively on the 'black keys.' This amounts simply to omission of semitones; and in semitones lies the special character of a scale, whether major or minor. The minor effect may indeed be obtained; and is usually remarkable in all tunes of the Keltic family, but it is done by chord rather than by scale. None of the oldest and most characteristic Scotch melodies contain scales; all proceed more or less by leaps, especially that of a sixth, with abundant use of heterogeneous passing notes. If the airs of the pibrochs be read with a view to map out the resting or sustained notes in the melody, it will be found, in the most characteristic and original tunes, that the scale is A, B, D, E, F♯ and high A. This is equivalent to the black-key scale, beginning on D♭. 'Mackrimmon's lament' is a good example. The minor effect named above is gained through the major sixth, with the help of the drone notes; a fact which, though rather startling, is easily demonstrable.
This use of ornamental notes has in course of time developed into a new and prominent character in bagpipe music. Such a development is only natural in an instrument possessing no real diatonic scale, and therefore relying for tolerance of jarring intervals on perpetual suspension, or on constant discord and resolution; with a 'drone bass' in the strictest sense of the term. The ornamental notes thus introduced are termed 'warblers,' very appropriately, after the birds, who, until trained and civilised, sometimes by the splitting of their tongues, entirely disregard the diatonic scale, whether natural or tempered. First-rate pipers succeed in introducing a 'warbler' of eleven notes between the last up-beat and the first down-beat of a bar. Warblers of seven notes are common, and of five usual.
The Irish bagpipe differs from the Scotch in being played by means of bellows, in having a softer reed and longer tubes, with a chaunter giving ten or even twelve notes. The scale is said to be more accurate than the Scotch. The Northumbrian, of which a beautiful specimen has been lent to the writer by Mr. Charles S. Keene, is a much smaller and feebler instrument. The ivory chaunter has, besides the seven holes in front, and one behind, five silver keys producing additional notes. It is moreover stopped at the bottom, so that when all holes are closed no sound issues. The long wail with which a Scotch pipe begins and ends is thus obviated. Each hole is opened singly by the finger, the others remaining closed, contrary to the practice of other reeds. The gamut of the Northumbrian or Border pipes is given as fifteen notes, including two chromatic intervals, C and C♯, D and D♯. The drones can be tuned to G, D, G, or to D, A, D, as above stated.
Considering the small compass of the bagpipe, the music written for it appears singularly abundant. 'Tutors' for the instrument have been published by Donald MacDonald and Angus Mackay. Glen's collection of music for the great Highland bagpipe contains instructions for the management of the reeds, etc., with 213 tunes. Ulleam Ross, the present Queen's Piper, published a collection of pipe music in 1869 consisting of 243 marches, piobaireachds, or pibrochs, strathspeys, and reels, selected from a thousand airs, amassed during thirty years from old pipers and other local sources. The chief collection of Northumbrian music is known as Peacock's; a book which is now so scarce as to be almost unprocurable.
Many composers have imitated the tone of the bagpipe by the orchestra; the most familiar cases occur in the 'Dame Blanche' of Boieldieu and the 'Dinorah' of Meyerbeer.