The Bagpipes long history and mixed origins
The bagpipe is a musical reed wind instrument of unknown origin, but it’s existence can be traced before the Christian era, and at different times used in nearly every European country.
The bagpipes was known in Britain and Ireland from the early 12th century, and currently most used in the Scottish Highlands. The most familiar forms of the instrument are the Scottish or Highland, Irish, and Border of Northumbrian. In each the pipes are in connection with the wind-bag.
In the Scottish form the wind is supplied from the lungs of the player, but the others have bellows. The pipe upon which the melody is performed is called the chanter, is fitted with a double reed.
The other pipes called ‘drones’ which sound simultaneously with the chanter, have a single reed. and produce only one note each; but these pipes can be tuned to certain intervals, thus producing a continuous and unvarying accompaniment to the melody.
The highland bagpipe has a compass of nine notes from G on the second line of the treble stave to A, the ninth above; but the notes do not diatonic scale, some of the intervals being less than whole and more than half tones. The Irish bagpipe has a compass of from ten to twelve notes; the Northumbrian has fifteen, including two chromatic intervals. The Scottish and Irish – the latter having longer tubes and softer reeds than the former – have three drones, the two smaller being often tuned in the low A of the chanter, and the larger pipe to the octave below; but other methods of tuning are often used.
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The bagpipe used in the British Army is the Highland; but the Northumbrian, which has a fourth drone, is the sweetest toned, and the smallest instrument of the three. Pipers when playing, constantly embroider the notes of the melody with a kind of ornamentation called the ‘warbler’. Five or seven of these short notes are in frequent use, but as many as eleven may be introduced between two consecutive notes of a melody,
Music for the bagpipes is very abundant, and consists of laments, pibrochs, marches, strathspeys, and reels.
