Posts Tagged ‘Bagpipe’
The music of the Highland pipes
Posted in music instrument
I think of Celtic music as having four main branches: the dance tunes played on the fiddle, whistle, accordion, and other melody instruments, the harping tradition, songs, and the music of the Highland pipes. Although fingerstyle guitarists have drawn extensively from these first three categories in creating arrangements, the ancient and powerful bagpipes have been largely overlooked as a source for fresh music. In the course of adapting over 250 Celtic tunes for solo guitar, I’ve come across a way to make the six-string actually sound like a set of pipes. So for this issue’s solo, I’d like to offer you a bagpipe arrangement, tell you how I worked it out, and briefly describe the Highland pipe tradition itself. Read the rest of this entry »
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“Bagpipes”
Posted in music instrument
Going home after the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s sold-out all-Haydn programme at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London last night, I heard the unmistakable drone and skirl of a bagpiper busking at the bottom of the escalator on the way to the Northern Line in Waterloo. An elderly woman flurried past me in a purple headscarf and a lot of makeup, quickening her pace as she tried to get out of earshot of the pipes. “That’s the last thing I want to hear,” she said to me, “I’ve just been to a Haydn concert”, as if Haydn symphonies and bagpipes belonged to different worlds of human experience, the one rowdy and folkloric, the other rarefied and refined. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Age, age of enlightenment, all, Bagpipe, bagpiper, Bagpipes, bottom, busking, comparison, Concert, conducting, contemplation, Croatian, different worlds, drone, earshot, elderly woman, Enlightenment, escalator, experience, fact, family, finale, folk melody, hand, Haydn, haydn symphonies, headscarf, home, human experience, iconoclast, lady, lot, makeup, member, musette, Music, Nézet, night, Nothing, OAE, opposite, Orchestra, orchestra of the age of enlightenment, pace, passion, performance, pibroch, piece, piper, programme, queen elizabeth, queen elizabeth hall, realise, Séguin, skirl, sleights of hand, sphere, Symphonies, symphony, thing, traditionalist, tube, tune, universe, virtuosity, Waterloo, way, woman, world, Yannick
Frightening off rats?, Join the Bagpipes
Posted in music instrument
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.”
Tags: austrian capital, Bagpipe, bagpipe player, Bagpipes, boss, capital, capital vienna, catacombs, city, cover, cult, cult film, drains, film, Frightening, health, health and safety, Join, Man, orson welles, piper, player, rat, rat bites, rats, risk, safety, safety chiefs, Scottish, scottish bagpipes, sewers, squeal, Third, third man, Tour, tunnel, way
Music from Scotland
Posted in Scotland
“You know what they say about the pipers…tuning half the time and the other half out of tune…” So says Allan Macdonald as he warms up his pipes for a Friends of Highland Music lecture at Eden Court, Inverness. He is tuning small pipes – “a bit more friendly in your ear, probably” – fastened with straps round his chest and arm. This instrument has become increasingly popular in the last 10-20 years; it can be played with other instruments and gives the player the opportunity to sing whilst piping. Allan, a natural orator and gifted musician, has carried out detailed research into the history and culture of Scottish piping.
Allan has been playing bagpipes since he was a child, and in early adulthood started to question what he saw as the conformist nature of pipe playing in Scotland. This led to a lifelong interest in the traditional roots of bagpipe music and the changes that have occurred as piping moved from an oral to notated tradition.
It seems likely that bagpipes arrived in Scotland via Ireland or England. Early references are sparse, but it seems probable that bagpipes arrived in Scotland in the thirteenth century. There is a record around 1362 of James I giving payment to pipers. Rosslyn Chapel has an early carving of an angel playing a one-drone bagpipe. Read the rest of this entry »
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Kind of Bagpipes in Europe
Posted in music instrument
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 »
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