Musical Instruments, Historic, Rare and UniqueHipkins, Alfred J. (Alfred James)
History
Musical Instruments, Historic, Rare and Unique
Hipkins, Alfred J. (Alfred James)
Musical instruments
In continuation of the Bagpipes, this Plate shows, in the instrument
with a crimson bag, the modern Northumbrian Bagpipe. The four drones,
proceeding from one stock, are mounted with brass and ivory. The
chanter, or melody pipe, has seven finger-holes in front and one
behind; also, seven brass keys. As there is only one hole open at a
time when the instrument is played, this manner of playing is called
close fingering. The chanter and drones are furnished with stops at
the ends. The instrument with a blue bag is the ancient Northumbrian
bagpipe. It has three drones, mounted with silver and ivory, of
different sizes; the longest being tuned an octave and the middle one
a fourth lower than the shortest. The chanter is of ivory, with seven
holes in front and one behind. The large bagpipe with a green bag is
the Lowland Scotch. It is of boxwood, with three drones placed in one
stock. The two shorter drones sound in unison, the long one an octave
lower, the same as in the Highland Bagpipe. They are mounted with
carved horn. The chanter has seven finger-holes and a vent-hole, also
the same as in the Highland Bagpipe, with which the Lowland agrees
in fingering and other particulars, except that it is inflated by
bellows attached to the bag by a short blow-pipe, a peculiarity that
it has in common with the other Bagpipes in this Plate. The bellows
of the modern Northumbrian Bagpipe are also drawn.
The Bagpipe is, as Mr. Henri Lavoix has justly said in his _La
Musique au Siècle de Saint Louis_, the organ reduced to its most
simple expression. It is of great antiquity, and in the Middle Ages
was generally popular in Europe. It was as well known in England as
in Scotland, in France as in Italy and Germany. Shakspeare makes out
Falstaff in Part I. of Henry IV. to be as melancholy as a lover's
lute or the drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe. If we may judge by the
peculiar scale of the Scotch Bagpipe, it would appear almost certain
that the instrument, in its modern forms, has come from the East, and
was most likely brought by the Crusaders. This would not of course
apply to the ancient principle of a pipe and air reservoir, which is
traced back to the Romans, but to the boring of the finger-holes of
the chanter, the reed pipe by which the melody is played. By their
position and size the intervals are so regulated that the thirds are
neither major nor minor, but give a neutral or mean interval that
is neither the one nor the other. This mean third, of a tone and
three-quarters, has not been elsewhere observed in Europe, but in
the East, in Syria and Egypt, and in other parts, it is of common
occurrence, and gives a peculiar character to the music, not to be
explained, but felt. An historical origin of the mean third is to be
found in Mr. A.J. Ellis's paper "On the Musical Scales of Various
Nations" (p. 498), published in the _Journal of the Society of Arts_,
London, March, 1885. Modern Bagpipes that have keys are, of course,
different.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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