1560! That’s seriously old! Who dated the set? Id love to go down one day.
Along with clan tartans, highland dress, & the lays of Ossian, I suppose.
I just took a look at Cheape’s chapter on pastoral pipes. If I’m reading it correctly, he seems to be saying that the pastoral pipe and the Uilleann pipe are the same instrument at different points in evolution – that it started out being the pastoral pipe and as time went on the name changed first to union and then finally uillean (in Ireland).
In the “Coda” section of the book he says (paraphrasing) the fact that the GHB is a fairly recent invention and doesn’t come from the highlands doesn’t mean that there wasn’t highland piping (nor bagpipes in the highlands) prior to it’s invention. I guess you could think about it in exactly the same terms as the modern kilt.
The kilt analogy isn’t far off the mark. What Cheape probably means is the standardization of the GHB was cemented in the Victorian era. There are varying accounts of pipes with and without bass drones up into the early 19th c. There was certainly piping in the Highlands and Islands before but the instruments were not quite the same as they have been for the last 200 years. There is just not much material evidence to tell us what those earlier pipes were like. Interestingly the early manufacturers of the new GHB were also making union pipes and some noted Highland pipers of the time are documented as having played the union pipe as well (as Ross Anderson demonstrated, they could be played with essentially Highland technique).
I think it’s more than just a lack of standardization – what we call today a highland pipe sounds better than anything that came before 1800. It took the skills learned from the baroque oboe makers to create the sounds we appreciate today. Probably the reason there are no early historical examples is because they sounded like crap. Exactly the same thing happened with violin bows. It’s almost impossible to find a violin bow that predates Tourte. They were all crap and no one felt like holding onto them. And there are (and always have been) way more violin players than GHB players.
I quoted your whole post for the last bit. I’ve just been reading Glen’s “Collection for the GHB”. I don’t know when it was published, but someone wrote May 27, 1882 on the cover. Glen said that (referring to Highland, Lowland, and historic Northumbrian) “the three instruments so distinguished are essentially the same. The scale is all alike. The only difference between them is in the size… It does not materially alter the character of the instruments that the Highland is inflated by a blow-pipe, and the two others (as also the Irish) by bellows)… The disparity in size, teh position of the drones, and the two methods of inflation have no doubt led the superficial observer to consider them as three different instruments.”
Thus sayeth one of the most highly regarded experts of 130 or so years ago.
Perhaps an over simplification regarding quality. The older pipes probably weren’t crap, they just weren’t viable anymore in a piping economy driven by the competitions where the standardized GHBs were given to the best players. The older style pipes were essentially banned. The 2-drone instruments actually were banned. The pressures of economy, war and social change didn’t leave many resources for sentimentalism outside of the privileged classes. If you weren’t using it there was no sense in keeping it [the old style pipes]. I haven’t read enough about the influence of the oboe makers to comment on that topic. My hunch is that their influence is not as substantial as it seems, at least in terms of the GHB. Just based on reed design alone their influence on the pastoral pipe seems rather more substantial.
I would imagine you posted the Glen quote tongue-in-cheek.
I don’t think he wrote it that way, no. As far as I can tell, that’s the way he felt about it – to him, bagpipes were bagpipes and you played the ones that made sense for the occasion.
Since there are very few bagpipes from before the late 1700’s, it’s impossible to know what bagpipes from the 1600’s would have sounded like. But take a look at this guy, from 1714:
http://www.clangrant-us.org/grant-piper2.htm
This is a lifesize painting, and it’s very detailed. There are no tuning slides. Hmmm.
I disagree with your premise regarding competition. There wern’t that many pipers involved in the competition in the first place, and it only happened once a year, but even so, pipes don’t take up that much room. If you had a good sounding whistle would you toss it out just becasue you couldn’t compete with it? Why toss out a good sounding set of pipes?
Going back to the Piper to the Laird of Grant (the painting) – at some point GHB makers figured out that drones sound a lot better with tuning chambers. It could well be that when the oboe makers were inventing pastoral pipes they also invented tuning chambers. No matter who invented tuning chambers, someone did, and once they did, all prior bagpipes would sound like crap, and there’d be no reason to keep them.
What do you mean by tuning chambers? You mean tuning pins and slides? I wouldn’t go by that painting to prove that drones couldn’t be tuned in 1714. He also has a blowpipe the diameter of a toothpick and a huge flag tied to his drone that is only the diameter of his pinky finger.
For certain. Both plaid and piping were banned in Scotland during the penal laws (Act of Proscription 1746) passed by the English after the battle of Culloden ended the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Banned, that is, for anyone not in a highland regiment of the (british) army. This tells us that tartans and bagpipes were already a major part of highland culture, because no one passes laws banning something that isn’t happening. The fact that for a generation or so the only legal kilts and legal piping were in the army is also the likeliest explanation for the fact that once the penal laws were repealed making it legal for civilians again, both had become much more highly regulated than before.
Piping was never actually banned. Those disarming acts meant actual weapons and the great kilt but no scholarly investigation has been able to substantiate that the pipes were banned (there is documentation of piping before the act was repealed). There was one instance of a conviction of a piper for stirring Jacobite sentiment but the instrument and its art was never banned. And there was tartan before of course but not to the extent and distinction as there was in the Victorian era.
I’m with Nate on this. I am always skeptical of artistic depictions of bagpipes. While it is very detailed it isn’t necessarily accurate or at least not precise. There are too many proportional oddities. We don’t know either way but I’m not convinced by that painting that the old Highland bagpipe drastically differed organologically from other types of bagpipes that it wouldn’t have had tuning slides. There are documented rules stating that pipers were not to tune on the platform suggesting some level of tunability or at least a sense of tuning by the pipers. The old pipes may not have been refined but I’m not convinced they were “crap” to use your word.
The Edinburgh competition wasn’t the only one, and granted there weren’t many, but it was major. Even if many pipers weren’t playing in it, many would have tried. Benefactors had standing to gain by having the best piper so they would have interest in getting their piper to the competition and pipers that didn’t earn there living from piping would have a chance to gain such employment by playing. They timed the competition to make it accessible to pipers who still made their living from agriculture (even pipers with a benefactor still often worked the land) and they had trials or auditions so even if most pipers didn’t play in the competition, they had the opportunity to try.
The old pipes may not have been kept because of lack of value but that doesn’t necessarily equate lack of quality.
True enough, but that’s 1821, right? That’s 107 years later. It took much less time for the Italian violin to completely displace the native fiddle.
The old pipes may not have been kept because of lack of value but that doesn’t necessarily equate lack of quality.
How can a quality musical instrument have no value? I can’t think of any examples of hand made instruments that sound good that aren’t valuable. The only way it makes sense to me that “This new bagpipe” (Quoting Donnchadh Ban Macintyre in 1784) could so completely displace the previous instruments is if it sounded dramatically superior. My Scottish Small Pipes aren’t suitable for playing in competition, but that doesn’t mean they have no value.
I have read most of Barry Shears book (referenced previously in the thread) and I don’t really see anything that furthers the discussion at hand (The development of the bagpipe). Except that it documents the value that 19th c. gaelic culture placed on bagpipes (and pipers).
The origin of the pastoral pipes is something I have been mulling over in my head for years. For what its worth, this is pretty much the scenario inside my head as of this moment - and sorry, I really don’t have time to lay out all the evidence, you’ll have to wait for me to write this up in one of the journals! In any case, its all too provisional at the moment…but FWIW…
I think the “pastoral” instrument came about more by evolution than sudden invention, as people playing “Border” type instruments experimented to increase their range and keep up with the new violin. Some people found that lowering the pitch and narrowing and lengthening the bore was one way forward, and by the late 17th century a distinctive “flat” pitch overblowing bagpipe had taken shape in northwest England, distinctive enough to be given a regional identity as the “Lancashire” bagpipe. In the early 18th century this instrument was refined and standardized by urban professional woodwind makers, certainly in London and probably Dublin, and was named the “Pastoral or New Bagpipe” in Geoghegan’s tutor of 1745.
By the end of the 18th century this had evolved into the “Union pipes” with their with regulators, wider range, cleaner accidentals/high notes, as ideas and techniques travelled between the pipe makers of Edinburgh, Tyneside, London, Dublin, and probably elsewhere. However, from around the mid-18th century the instrument gradually starts to get a particular association with Ireland, and by the early 19th century - though still made played in both England and Scotland - this national identity has begun to supplant the older pan-islands identity. Which leads me to think that Dublin probably played the major role in the development of the Union from the Pastorals, though this narrowing of identity would be helped by the decline of all bagpipes in England and the rise to exclusive prominence as a national symbol of the GHB in Scotland.
You can now buy Pastoral and early Union re-creations from various makers. But if you want the Lancashire bagpipe, I’m inclined to see John Swayne’s border pipes - key of low D with 1.5 octaves - as an accidental reinvention…
Highland piper, it was the examples Barry has photographed of old pipes that I thought related to this discussion. Hope you dont feel I sent you off on a wild goose chase!
Well, I have a pastoral chanter on order to fit my UP drones so in a year or so I hope to have a better understanding of the whole subject!
As for the pipes being banned after ‘45, well its clear that under the British Law of Precedence that the pipes were’’ in the eyes of the law a weapon of war’’ and so the Disarming acts effectively proscribed pipes as well as all articles of highland dress.
The Disarming Act has been widely ovverated considering its influence on the bagpipe.
Actually, only ONE piper is reported to EVER have been condemned in its consequence - and that was, because he was directly involved into fighting. You may read all of this in Gibson’s “Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping”, a book I usually dislike for the generally very unscientific tone in which it is written in, but I can’t help but agree in certain facts such as these…
POh , yes I have the book, Thought it was interesting, I just disagree with his conclusions in this regard! . It seems to me to be a very academic book somewhat distant from realities of life. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of Military or Police heavy handedness will have an understanding of the behavior of an occupying, brutal,quasi military force with little in the way of constraint who were actually actually encouraged to lay waste to the region! British law is clear. A precedent was set. From that moment on, under British law, the pipes were classed as a weapon of war. Do the records actually state which particular weapon of war a 45’er was prosecuted for? History is write by the winners, but our own oral records are quite clear.
Yes at some point the Crown forces were restrained and a trooper or two censured for their excesses, but up untill then creating a climate of fear, oppression, was the Aim. To break the spirit of the common people , whos tacit support is essential to maintaining an insurgency.
There was an article written some years ago in a Na Piobairi Uilleann publication that linked in the development of oboes with teh development of pipes. I can’t remember who wrote it but it firmly put the pastoral/uilleann development into a context with orchestral woodwind development.
Like others who have contributed to this thread I have been aware of the multiple centres in the evolution of uilleann pipes from pastoral pipes with Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle all involved. For a long time I didn’t see an obvious way that these cities connected. However I read a book called “How The Scots Invented The Modern World” a few years back which examined “the Scottish renaissance”. It mentioned how young gentlemen would study not just at one university but that they would travel between Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities and on to Queen’s in Belfast and Trinity in Dublin. It struck me that if some of these fashionable young men were playing the new types of pipes they would likely be visiting makers in the university cities to get suppplies and have repairs done. All the makers of worth that I know will measure up an instrument that comes in for repair and copy (and improve upon) new ideas. Perhaps this is the way the makers in different cities evolved the instruments we now know.
Ian
That does seem to be the case. The Baroque Oboe, when placed next to a pastoral pipe can hardly be distinguished from each other. It was suggested that a maker/repairer put a baroque oboe into a set of Border pipes and the Pastoral pipes were born.Thanks for that piece of the puzzle Ian.
Perhaps you’re thinking of Ken McLeod’s article in Volume I of the Seán Reid Society Journal: From Hotteterre to Union Pipes. Lots of food for thought there.
Bill
Bates, in his book, “The Oboe”, states that the oboe is a descendant of a french bagpipe, which overblew into the second octave, not from some shawm. The Hotteterre family, credited with the invention of the oboe, were bagpipe makers and made the musette de cour. The early oboe reeds certainly look very much like modern UP reeds, sans collar. There was plenty of exchange between continental and British Isles musicians and instrument makers. No need to imagine a separate evolution of the pastoral pipe in the Isles. Even a version of the regulators were in use in Italy in the surdulina. Swayne may not be too far off by developing his “lowland pipes” based on french chanters. The distinctive closed chanter, sans foot joint, and additional regulators could be the Irish modifications to the instrument. The bellows was certainly in use on the continent earlier than the pastoral pipes.
My 2c: (a few random responses to stuff in this thread)
The highland bagpipe chanter and the oboe (C18/19/20 examples) have little in common besides being conical bored , double reed instruments. While similar skills are required to make them and I don’t doubt that several makers (myself included) have learned their trade on one instrument then shifted to another, I don’t see any oboe genes in the GHB.
Jon swayne makes a pastoral pipe based on an instrument in a museum in (Brussels?), while demonstrating it he removed the foot joint, it played horribly out of tune…until he put the open end on his knee and played it closed fingered.
All of the uilleann pipe reeds that I have seen were much bigger (in every way) than any oboe reed (ancient or modern).
I haven’t seen an original pastoral pipe reed , but I’m told that they are a different shape to the uilleann.
Bare in mind when comparing uilleann and pastoral pipes that the modern “post Taylor” wide bore chanter has taken a further evolutionary step.I understand from talking to a uilleann maker that the throat of the chanter is wider, this generaly requires a bigger reed.It would be better to look more closly at earlier narrow bores chanters.
Jon Swayne’s chanters are not based on French instruments and are in fact his own designs. While he has borrowed ideas such as a second thumb hole for a flat third any similarity is down to the laws of physics. His low D chanter is distinctly different in bore , tone , reed and fingering to it’s french counterpart.