Anthony Baines

Bagpipes (Non-Uilleann)
1

I just finished reading Anthony Baines’ “Bagpipes” book, specifically the 1973 Revised Edition. There weren’t a lot of used copies available for the book so I didn’t have much to chose from. I thought I’d start a new thread to discuss the wide range of bagpipe content found in the book.

  1. How many editions of this book are there? I saw a wikipedia page that sighted a 1995 edition but I couldn’t an existence of a 1995 edition after searching for it.

  2. Is Mr. Baines still alive?

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  3. Now for more substantive discussion:
    Overall I thought the book was really interesting and informative. Baines’ writing style is a bit dry and he could have injected a bit more personality into it. In fact one of the only statements in the either book that shows any personalty or personal opinion is the last paragraph which interestingly states:

“Yet the days of the bagpipe as a purely musical instrument may be numbered; other things have been taking its place, leaving the bagpipe to flourish in a field where it cannot be rivaled: the deafening skirl of twenty Highland pipers above the hurricane of their drums, all set in the uniform of colourful and evocative pageantry. The art of individual piping is here lost, but the bagpipe is found one secure place in the modern world.”

The fact that this is one of the only statements of non-scientific opinion in the entire book makes me conclude that he has a real affinity for the instrument and secretly laments their general demise and the preemption of the remaining piping traditions by the Highland pipe.

In terms of the accuracy of Baines’ information on the various pipes, I am not enough of an expert to say whether his information correct except perhaps in the field of Italian pipes. I was pleased to see that he had a chapter dedicated to the Zampogna. And I was impressed with how much he was able to learn from the instrument based on just a couple museum examples and some field recordings. I would really have liked to hear Baines’ assessment of the Zampogna and its origins and organology had Baines had the proper data and information to work with. For instance, he seems to be completely unaware of single reed examples of the Zampogna. While he does make a few passing mentions of the a paro variety he doesnt have enough data to give them an in depth analysis. For instance, how would he explain the difference between the single and double reed variations etc. There are so many other variates of Zampogna that had Baines been aware of them, I think it would have provided for an interesting field of data for him to apply his musicological skills of categorization and evolutionary speculation.

Given how much information his Zampogna chapter is lacking I have to assume that he is missing critical data on other pipes as well. I don’t blame him for this as his book is impressive giving the spectrum of instruments he was attempting to analyze and the lack of internet which now makes things much easier for us to learn about different cultures and instruments.

What are other peoples’ thoughts on Baines? Are there any other modern bagpipe books that are more up to date that attempt to categorize and explain the origin of world bagpipes? (Sean when will YOU start writing a book like this!!??)

2

I had a heck of a time getting this Post to “Take” so see the redaction below,
for a more complete text, Yours S. F.

3

Yes David,
There have a number of “Strings” about Mr. Baines’ work here on Chiff and Fipple, Q.V. MAN !

  1. I believe there were 3 editions of “Bagpipes” the first in 1960, the last in 1995.
  2. Anthony Cuthbert Baines, was born in 1912, and died in 1997.
  3. Yes DRY…Mr. Baines was just sticking to the facts as he knew them, with the examples
    from the Canon Galpin Collection of Bagpipes (acquired by the Museum at Oxford
    founded by Pitt Rivers, a prolific Victorian Collector, similar to our Mr. Mercer in Pennsylvania).
    Anthony Baines was the first chair Oboe-IST with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and
    to my knowledge, played two different Bagpipes,
    the Gaita Galega, and the Northumbrian Small Pipes.
    He authored many different books on Musical Instrument History (q.v.) the lists “on line”.
    I think his statement about the Scottish Highland Pipes was an accurate observation in 1960,
    as our more recent European Folk Instrument Revival had not gained any headway,
    in those far-off days, of 49 years ago.
    (I was 10 years old for most of 1960,
    and I only knew about Scottish Bagpipes,
    from seeing the 6th Army Pipe Band at Oakland, Ca. in 1955)
    It could be argued that authentic Folk Musical Instruments and their Music,
    remains a very obscure subject, today. “Fake-Lore” has been around for a LONG while, and isn’t going away
    (and Oh, those Singer-Song Writers, Oh, the Synthesizers, Oh, those over-produced “Wall-of-Sound”
    arrangements, and OOOOh, those crazy Sound Effects).
    “Tony” didn’t know that many of the fine details on the Zampogna of course, as he was living in Britain.
    Mr. Baines did make the Classical Music connection in regard to Hadyn and his Xmas Oratorio theme being directly
    related to “Il Patorale di Natale”. etc. imparting some “Snob Appeal” for THOSE people who usually…
    JUST HATE BAGPIPES…
    A quick look at his Bibilography does alot to inform the reader on where he found his information,
    both in English, and in many other languages.
    I got the 1960 edition in 1972 when I only had One Bagpipe, I had heard about Irish and Northumbrian Pipes
    in 1969, and in 1970, I wrote to Classical Instruments in New Orleans, La. about a Spanish Gaita and was told
    that I could get one, made of Olive Wood, for $145, but I bought a German-made Balalaika from them
    (for $100) instead, as String Instruments were more “Cool” back then.
    Now, I have to say, Anthony Baines’ Catalogue was like the most Far-Out Catalog I had ever seen,
    BUT, unlike a Sears and Roebuck Catalog…it had no tear-out order form in the back of it.
    It took along time to collect the Pipes I have now, so I sure wished for an Order Form over all the years.
    As for me writing my own book on Bagpipes…I have been waiting for my mentor, Dennis Brooks,
    of Newmarket, Co. Cork, to come out with his “Mighty Work” !
    Dennis Brooks knows more than I’ll ever know, about the subject of “Bagpipes”.
    Sean Folsom
4

Baines was the first book ever I read on Pipes - and it literally blew me away! :smiley: I think, that was, what really started me collecting 'em (and the visit in the Moseo de la Gaita in Xixon, Asturies).

I have a 1960 and a 1995 Ed, and, unfortunately, I didn’t find much correction between them.
His work is groundbreaking and, considering the opportunities to get informations compared to ours today, already pretty accurate. And he was the very first to ever try writing a really scientific work (that’s what You call “dry” :wink: ) on bagpipes worldwide. And even today, we do have a lot of better books on regional pipes (e.g. French or Italians, cf. e.g. Gioielli), but none on pipes worldwide…

However - he is inaccurate sometimes, since he just didn’t have all the informations we can get. And also, some general systematics would make more sense to see differently (remember the “Hornpipe” - discussion), but still, Baines is the one to read first…

5

I think the Baines book still sets the standard in its culturally even approach. Nearly all English-language books about bagpipes are Scotocentric.

His brief discussion of the relationship between drone lengths and pitches in regards to Renaissance pipes depicted in various European paintings and Praetorius etc is priceless.

The only factual error I can think of is his notion that Bulgarian chanters have a cylindrical bore. This was pointed out to me by Hector Bezanis, the fine gaida player and maker. He told me that the higher-pitched gaidas have a conical bore not unlike that of the uilleann pipes, while the kaba gaida has a reverse-conical bore like that of the recorder. Had Baines had access to xray images of gaida chanters he would have known that. The angled bottom of kaba gaida and Macedonian gaida chanters prevents the normal sorts of measurements I suppose.

Also questionable is the term “hybrid Union pipe” which has now fallen out of favour. Hugh Cheape in his recent book Bagpipes shows from the physical evidence that Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and London were centres of Union pipe manufacture and has a lot of interesting information about the relationship between Pastoral pipes and Union pipes. In any case the notion that Union pipes originated in Ireland and subsequently travelled to Britain where they somehow fused with the Lowland pipe to create the “hybrid Union pipe” seems to be discredited.

6

I always thought, the term “Union-pipes” for Uilleannpipes was wrong anyway - being a certain (political?) mistranslation for the Irish word “Uilleann”, meaning “ellbow” and referring to the bellows used to blow them. This seems to make sense due to already Shakespeare’s mention of the “woollen”-pipes (picking up the Irish word without understanding it’s meaning - was it in the “Merchant of venice”?) - as mentioned in the Baines’ last Editition as well! :wink:

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About union pipes vs uilleann pipes, the origin of both terms seems to unknown and controversial.

“Union pipes” is attested earlier and more widely and it may be that “uilleann” is a back-formation of “union” rather than the other way round: because why would an instrument evidently developed in English-speaking places like London and Edinburgh have an Irish-language name?

Our scholarly friend Denis Brooks writes:
“Now generally known as Uilleann pipes, this name for the Irish pipes is a recently adpoted word of spurious origin. While Uilleann would seem to be an appropriate name for the instrument in the Irish launguage, the instrument’s first denomination was Union pipes…”

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Good memory, CP! Yes, I found it. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1, spoken by Shylock:

Some men there are love not a gaping pig;
Some, that are mad if they behold a cat;
And others, when the bagpipe sings i’ the nose,
Cannot contain their urine: for affection,
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood
Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer:
As there is no firm reason to be render’d,
Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;
Why he, a harmless necessary cat;
Why he, a woollen bagpipe; but of force
Must yield to such inevitable shame
As to offend, himself being offended;
So can I give no reason, nor I will not,

I don’t know about the woollen / uilleann connection, but I understand about not containing your urine when the bagpipe sings! :laughing:

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GUYS,GUYS,GUYS…Woolen=Uilleann…
Please look at the info on C&F (here), about Henry Gratten Flood
and his book " The Story of the Bagpipe" (1911), where the word “Uilleann” (angle, elbow, in Gaelic)
in reference to “The Irish Bagpipes”(from Dudley Colclough’s Tutor q,v.), first appeared.
“The Union Pipes” comes from the title of O’Farell’s Tutor (1799) why the word “Union” ?
Was it the union of the 2 Parllaments that occured at that time ? Was it from the “U” bend on the Bass Drone ?
We really don’t know…why is a Lexis Car a “Lexis” ? What does Lexis mean when refering to a Car ?
Is it merely a “Brand” name ? A “Marque” ? What kind of etiology could be “cooked” up to satisfy an academic
detailer, two centuries hence ?
Mr. Flood was an Organist, an Antiquarian in the style of the 19th Century, a Roman Catholic “Knight”,
and an ardent Irish nationalist, who wanted a native Gaelic word to “fit” this historically recent
Musical Instrument. Was he “Wrong” to make-up that appellation ?
Personally, I Don’t Care What It’s Called, It’s a Wonderful Bagpipe, and it has it’s place in the “Big Picture”.
Sean “the old “U” Bend” Folsom

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FWIW … The Riverside Shakespeare gives no annotation of the phrase “woollen pipes”. So the editors are under the impression that it means exactly what it says: presumably, the bag covered in woolen cloth. But the editors wouldn’t necessarily have thought of “uilleann”, or have even known the word - whether the connection is plausible or not.

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In regard to “Woolen Pipes” Anthony Baines had his part in the chain of transmission,
from Oral Folklore to Print, and back again, who knows how many times…
These Waters ARE Muddied so much, quite possibly by all those Angels,
dancing on the heads of Pins, and slipping through the Eyes of Needles…
Sean Folkloring Folsom

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“Union Pipes” just seems VERY inappropriate for an instrument usually despised by Unionists due to it’s “Irishness”…

13

The subject of bagpipe history is full of a lot of misinformation and guess work. Not too surprising since they were “common” instruments and therefore not mentioned much in the histories of the time (whatever time you choose). Given that, my feelings, after reading all of the books mentioned above, doing some original research (I play Bulgarian kaba and djura gajda, Croatian diple, Hungarian duda and Swedish sacpipa) is the following (subject to revision without notice :slight_smile: )

Flood is somewhere between questionable and laughable. He was a Victorian Scotophyle with an agenda, and modified his sources to fit his preconceptions.

Baines was a good scholar but limited in his resources (by the way, if you ever get the chance to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, do it, it is a totally amazing place). His work on Western European pipes is currently the best available.

Podnos (who has not been mentioned but wrote a good monograph called “Bagpipes and Tunings”) did a much better job of Central and Eastern European pipes, though still with some problems.

On to my own theories: It’s my feeling that a lot of the reason there is confusion about the development of bagpipes in Europe is that there are two kinds of unrelated bagpipes in Europe. The ones around the Mediterranean characterized by two chanters or a chanter and drone of the same length usually in the same stock (Croatian Diple, Greek island pipes, Moroccan pipes) and a different family with a separate chanter and drone(s) (Bulgarian gajda, French cabrette, Scottish highland, etc.). The former is endemic to Europe, deriving from the Greek Aulos, and the latter was probably brought to Europe in ~12th century along with the Roma (Gypsy) migration, ultimately deriving from Rajistan in north India.

Needless to say, if the above is even close to accurate, the efforts of Flood, Baines, and Podnos to fit them into a single tree of development are doomed. Podnos actually touches on this problem, but he doesn’t perceive the possible separate histories.

Some of these days, I really need to spend a few years in archives and museums, back my ideas up, and write a monograph, but at the moment I have a day job so take all of my comments with a grain (block?) of salt. I’m enough of an academic to admit I don’t really have all the details nailed down.

Jim

PS [quibble] Hector B is slightly wrong (or misquoted) on the Bulgarian djura gajda internal taper. It is not a true cone, it is an approximation made with drill bits, technically a step taper. I’ve measured a bunch of them, and never found one that truly had a smooth taper like an uilleann pipe.

14

“Union pipe” has nothing to do with Unionists. It has to do with the drones sharing the same stock. It’s a technical term used to distinguish that form of pipe from pipes like the Highland pipes where every drone has a separate stock. A Scottish small pipe is also a Union pipe, as is a Northumbrian.

15

Well, I can point out that at least the ~12th c. Gypsy theory is definitely off. The simple reason is that there are about 6 or 7 double pipes of th type surviving that are dated 7thc. All of them have been found in Hungary, and are from the Avar kingdom era. All but one have identical number of fingerholes on both pipes, just like the general N. African type, and one is the by far earliest known unequal-hole pipe, with 5 fingerholes on one, two on the other pipe. The reason they survived is because they are of bone. The Avars came from (surprise) the East, in fact from the area today (and a lot of researchers think then, and much earlier as well) occupied by the Chuvash, Cheremiss, Mari, Bashkir and other related peoples. Point is, all of these use a practically identical type of double-chantered pipes, with today always unequal fingerhole numbers. It is reasonable to suppose that they possessed these pipes at least as early as the Avars, since the latter came from just there. In fact, there are quite reasonable grounds for supposing that in the area there might have been pipes like this as early as the time of Herodotus. His “melanchii” have been identified as the Cheremiss. (Both names meaning “black-cloaked”) (I’m writing from memory, so the actual words might be not rigt, but the principle is)
Now, as to my own misgivings about the theory. I can’t see this type of double chanters as having derived from the aulos. Simply because the whole principle of playing them is alien to that of the aulos. What has a lot in common with the aulos is the Italian Zampogna and the Sicilian Launeddas. In fact the latter just about is the aulos, with a drone added. (By the way, as late as the 19th c. there still existed a type of launeddas without a drone.)(That info is from Bentzon’s book on the launeddas.) The difference is that the aulos could never have been played by the same fingering technique as the double pipes of the Mediterranean type (and the Ural pipes) It was always fingered separately, there are countless illustrations. The Mediterranean type is never fingered like that, but always by the fingers spanning both pipes.
My 5 cents’ worth.

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Yuri, I know you know this, but you misstated the Launeddas as Sicilian when they are in fact Sardegnian. Under your Aulos theory, when do you presume this instrument would have arrived on the shores of the Italian peninsula or its islands? (For instance Messina and Southern Calabria was founded by the Greeks, in the 8th century BC according to Wikipedia - would you say that the aulos came during this period and then evolved in to what is now the ‘a paro’ pipes? The Greeks also play North African type-pipes as well.


Also, do you think that divergent and convergent double reed pipes evolved from a similar instrument of do you think they were invented separately?

Lastly, I know you stated that the Zaqq and the “a paro” pipes of Sicily have “noting to do with each other”, but how do you reconcile the proximity of the two islands along with various linguistic, musical, and other cultural similarities and still maintain that the pipes have not influenced each other? - Malta was also colonized during magna grecia. Could they have brought over Aulos type reed pipes as well as their Greek-Island “north african style” convergent pipes concurrently?

AND - where did the drones come from? :confused:

Interested in hearing your speculations. :slight_smile:

17

There are different schemes of aulos, both equal and unequal length chanters. The earliest zampogne had no drone and looks to me like a natural progression to put a set of aulos into the utilitarian and readily available goat skin bag which would be easier to blow than a high pressure aulos which required a muzzle. The earlist drone is is ascribed to the launeddas. I saw the little statue from c.1000BCE while in Sardinia of a player with 3 pipes comming out of his mouth.

18

1000 BC??? :boggle: You’re kidding??? :confused:

19

I remember 500 BC. But I might be wrong there. (can look it up) In any case, it’s the Bronze Age.
Yeah, it is Sardinia of course, that was really just a slip of the keyboard.
As to the drone. The abovementioned little statuette indeed has 3 pipes, indisputably. Unless the Bronze Age Sardinians managed to grow three hands, you have to accept that at least one of the pipes was indeed a drone.
As to the aulos. It’s not a Greek invention, you kow.The silver pipes of Ur are a form of aulos. They have been made when the Greeks were still hunting dinosaurs. (OK, OK, I know, but you get the point.) There were a lot of aulos-type pipes being played all around the Mediterranean. Finds from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome are actual instruments existing, and pics of such are to be found in far more localities. So it’s a bit pointless to speculate about when the aulos arrived into Sicily, as it could heve been there already when the Greeks colonised it. (It very probably was, as the Phoenicians are also known to have played the double pipes, and they arrived much earlier.)
The Maltese speak an Arabic dialect, so linguistic similarities with Sicily are not really there. And the thing is, both the Maltese and the Greeks very easily could have gotten their double pipes from the Muslim invaders. The Maltese language after all makes it rather plausible, and Greece was under Turkish rule for half a millenium. The Dalmatian Diple is certainly a Turkish influence, by the way. What the Greeks play now is not really relevant to what they played a couple of millenia ago. The Anglo-Saxons play the squeezebox these days, not to mention the electric guitar, but you wouldn’t suppose that the ancient bards used to recite Beowulf to the accompaniment of the above. And that is a bit less than two millenia.
Now the trickiest of all. I think myself that the two types of double pipes evolved independently, from different premises. The double bone pipes from Hungary are mostly equal fingerholed. Which would be the most common arrangement across most of the areas where this type exists. (except for the Urals and Dalmatia, it is so eveywhere else. Now, thing is that in Turkey and Greece a quite common practice is to stop up some of the fingerholes with wax, so creating an unequal pipe. Apparently players do it on occasions, and the same players play more than one combination, at different times. This suggests (at least to me) that the type of unequal double pipes that is played like this evolved from equal double pipes. Just what is the reason for equal double pipes is beyond me, but they are played over a vast area, so there must be some.
At the same time the aulos and related types must have evolved from the beginning having an independent fingering pattern in mind. Basically some sort of proto-polyphony. Where that happened is anyone’s guess, apart from being certain that it was somewhere in the Mediterranean, or at least not far.
By the way, in all the stuff above I used the expression “unequal”. It is not in the same sense as Baines uses it, but to denote unequal fingerhole numbers on the two parallel pipes.

20

Yuri, yes I know they speak an Arabic dialect in Malta. What I meant by similarities was that Maltese has some Sicilian and Italian words and Sicilian has quite a few Arabic words.
Anyway, Interesting thoughts! Unfortunately we’ll never know the answers to some of these questions! :slight_smile: