Traditional Irish Instrument

Archive for the ‘music instrument’ Category

Tour bosses have come up with a way of frightening off rats on their trips round the historic drains of the Austrian capital Vienna – bagpipes.
The Third Man tours – which walk the sewers made famous in Orson Welles’ cult film – were closed down after health and safety chiefs said the risk of rat bites was too great.
Now they’re back on after organisers proved how the squeal of Scottish bagpipes from a kilted piper send the rats scurrying for cover.
Tour boss Peter Ryborz explained: “We get rid of the rats by taking a bagpipe player down with us, and they sound really great in the catacombs that tunnel all under the city.
“You can hear them coming out of drains as the tours walk around under the city.”

There are many varieties of instruments known as bagpipes throughout Europe and in parts of Asia, but in the Celtic world of the British Isles, there are two main types, The Irish (Uillean or Elbow) and the Scottish (Great Highland or Small Border). How do we distinguish between them?
The Great Highland (Bagpipe) is probably the most prolific bagpipe worldwide today, due in no small part to the vast extent of the British Empire in the 19th century. The English military appropriated the ancient Scots use of the bagpipe as a tool of intimidation and inspiration in war, and developed military marching bands which accompanied their troops throughout ‘the colonies’. Hence, the playing of the Highland Pipes is very widespread today from New Zealand and Australia, India and Pakistan, through to Canada and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »

bagpipe musical instrument whose ancient origin was probably in Mesopotamia from which it was carried east and west by Celtic migrations. It was used in ancient Greece and Rome and has been long known in India. Some form of bagpipe was later used in nearly every European country; it was particularly fashionable in 18th-century France, where it was called the musette. Its widest use and greatest development was in the British Isles, particularly Northumberland, Ireland, and Scotland. The island of Skye was the home of a school for pipers. The Highland pipe of Scotland, the most well-known type, was a martial instrument and from it comes the modern great pipe; but at least six other types were once used in the British Isles. The basic construction of a bagpipe consists of a bag, usually leather, which is inflated either by mouth through a tube or by a bellows worked by the arm; one or two chanters (or chaunters), melody pipes having finger holes and fitted usually with double reeds; and one or more drones, which produce one sustained tone each and usually have single reeds, though the musette drones have double reeds (see reed instrument ). Associated with folk and military music, it has been neglected by composers, possibly because of its short range.