Instrument Biography: The Shawm

You might not have heard of this infamous Renaissance instrument, but the shawm is a relative to the oboe, the bassoon, and, in that it was an instrument meant for the great outdoors, to the bagpipe. It’s a member of the woodwind family and it looks like a recorder with an oboe reed.

The shawm was popular in Europe from the 12^th century until the 17^th century. It’s essentially a primitive oboe, with a conically bored wooden body, a double reed, and finger holes. Some have belled bottoms, some are curved. All are very loud.

The instrument and its music were considered symbolic of the pastoral mood for quite a while. In 1388, King John of Saragossa, when writing to his brother Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, said that he was fond of the shawm, along with the cornamusse, bombarde, harp, and portative organ. So there’s evidence of it being played in royal circles, not only out in the fields.

Shawms came to the rest of Europe through Italy, and the oldest known mention is from 12^th century Saracen Sicily. The reed was nearly completely inside the player’s mouth (like the Egyptian aulos), which made it impossible to control the tone or color with the lips. There was no personal expression in the playing because of this limitation, and the instrument sounded with all the power and astringent vigor of the age. The shawm’s loud and clear tones made it suitable for playing with trumpets and percussion in consorts. In other words, it was loud, nasal, and not meant to be in the background.

Shawm History

The shawm is probably descended from the Asian zuma, and from similar instruments brought to Europe from the Near East during the time of the Crusades. It’s possible that the name comes from the Arabic salamiya, a traditional oboe from Egypt.

The shawm is represented in Norman drawings from about the 12^th century. In England, it was used in connection with the night watches established by Henry III, and was called the waygte, or wayte pipe. Images of shawms from the 14^th century look physically the same as the surviving instruments from the 16^th and 17^th century, so it’s not likely to have changed much for its whole period of popularity.

The shawm can still be heard in many countries, usually played by street musicians or military bands (and historically informed groups playing early music on period instruments). In the 12^th century, the Crusaders would have found the military bands familiar, because they often faced huge bands of Saracen shawms and nakers (like a small kettle drum), used, like the bagpipe, as a psychological weapon.

The instrument was quickly adopted by Europeans for both dancing and military purposes. The standard outdoor dance band in the 15^th century consisted of a slide trumpet playing popular melodies while two shawms improvised countermelodies over it.

By the 16^th century, the shawm had evolved only slightly. The harsh tonality of the medieval shawm had modulated somewhat because of narrowing the bore and reducing the size of the finger holes. This extended the range, enabling a performer to play a second octave. Larger sizes were built, down to great bass, two octaves below the soprano. The larger sizes were unwieldy and impractical, making them rare. The great bass, in particular, could only be played with a performer standing on a small platform.

Smaller shawms, chiefly the soprano, alto, and sometimes the tenor, were often coupled with the Renaissance trombone or sackbut (biography to come), and the majestic sound of this ensemble was much in demand. The shawm became standard equipment in town bands, called a wait (or waygte or wayte), who heralded the beginning of municipal functions and signaled the time of day. Shawms became so closely associated with the town waits, (the Stadpfeifer in German, and piffari in Italian) that it was also known as the wait pipe.

The shawm was too loud for indoor use, and crumhorn and sordun were preferred in those roles for indoor bands. Those instruments were also double reeds, but they were fitted with a capsule that completely enclosed the reed, quieting the sound but continuing to limit the dynamic range.

The 16^th century interest in building instruments led to a full-range of sizes, but the shawm consort proved to be a short-lived experiment. The extreme length of the pipe on the bass instruments meant that few were built and few played. Inventers found a way to bend the bore back upon itself, creating a more manageable instrument. The new instrument was often referred to as the dulcian, and was called a curtal in England, fagot or fagotto in Germany and Italy, the bajon in Spain. The dulcian became very popular as a general-purpose bass instrument where shawms were considered inappropriate (such as anyplace indoors). This attractively bent up instrument is the ancestor of the modern bassoon.

The charumera or charumeru is a double-reeded instrument in traditional Japanese music, thought to descend either from shawms brought there by Portuguese Christian missionaries, or by Iberian traders in the 16^th century. They could also have come from a Chinese instrument, although that too, is thought to have come from Portuguese missionaries or traders. The shawm is sometimes used in kabuki theater performances.

Known by the Spanish as the chirimia, the shawm remains an important instrument among Mayan people in Highland Guatemala. Accompanied by a drum, the chirimia is used in processions and certain ritual dances, such as Baile de la Conquista (Dance of the Conquest) that is still played today.

The shawm inspired the 17^th century hautbois, an invention of French musician Jacque-Martin Hotteterre (1674-1763). (There’s more about this fine fellow in my blog about the flute.) He is thought to have invented a new instrument that borrowed several features from the shawm, like its double reed and conical bore, but was otherwise unique. Around 1760, the hautbois began replacing the shawm in military bands, concert music, and opera. By 1800, the shawm was gone from concert life, although in 1830, shawms could still be heard in German town bands at municipal functions. The Germans and the Dutch continued to manufacture an ornate version, called the Deutsche Schalmey, long after the introduction of the hautbois.

A specimen of shawm was made by Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707) of Nurenberg, who later invented the clarinet. His version didn’t catch on.

The shawm was the leading double-reed instrument until the 18^th century when the Baroque taste for more expressive playing made it somewhat obsolete, as it offered no dynamics. And so it was that the powerful little shawm evolved into the more refined and delicate oboe (biography to come).

Shawm Structure

The original shawm was a double-reeded instrument (which means that two flat reeds are bound together like a tight duck’s bill) with seven finger holes, no keys, and a long, flared bell. Modern instruments have a conical bore. The body of the shawm is turned from a single piece of wood and ends in a flared bell.

Compared to the oboe, the shawm has a wide bore, which makes its tone loud and shrill. It has a cup-shaped connection between the mouthpiece and the instrument itself. Originally, shawms were keyless and the reed was set on a metal disk.

One curious feature is that the lowest finger hole is doubled, appearing both on the right and left side of the instrument, as some performers played with the right hand above the left and others with the left above the right (like the cornetto). The unused hole was stopped with wax. The bombard (the bass version) also has this feature, but its lowest hole, because of the difficulty reaching it with a finger, is occasionally covered by a key that is protected by a little perforated barrel called the fontanelle. The key was outfitted with a double touch piece, one for the right hand, and one for the left. Later shawms, except the smallest, had at least one key, allowing a larger range.

The double reed is made from the same cane, Arundo donar, used for modern oboes and bassoons. It was inserted directly into a socket at the top of the instrument, or in the larger types, at the end of a metal tube called the bocal. A small cylindrical piece of wood with a hole in the middle, called the pirouette, was placed over the reed and acted as support for the lips and embouchure. Only a portion of the reed protruded past the pirouette, allowing limited contact with the reed itself. The shawm had acquired a funnel-shaped pirouette mouthpiece by the 14^th century, used mostly for military, ceremonial, and dance music.

The reed vibrates freely, completely inside the player’s mouth, unlike an oboe reed, which is held firmly between the lips. Because the reed is loose within the cavity of the mouth, there’s no way to play louder or softer, or offer much in the way of artistic expression.

The reed’s hidden nature, combined with the conical bore and flared bell, give the instrument a piercing sound, like the progeny of a trumpet and a goose. It’s ill-suited to indoor playing because it was very loud, and in a consort, is definitely outside-in-the-yard material.

There were only two sizes of shawm by the end of the Middle Ages, but by the beginning of the 17^th century, there were seven sizes. The largest ones were so long that fingers couldn’t reach the lower finger holes and as many as five long-levered keys were added. Their mechanisms were protected by a perforated wooden barrel (the fontanelle). The keys had two wings, so the player could access them with either hand.

The alto shawm was tuned to F, with a range of nine notes. It was called the basselt nicolo. This instrument was described by Michael Praetorius as having one key, but was depicted by him as a four-keyed instrument. That was a reed-cap shawm, related to the hautbois de Poitou and the Rauschpfeife.

The bombarde, the bass instrument from the time of Konrad of Megenberg (1309-1374), is pitched a fifth lower than a shawm and has that special key for the pinky finger hidden under a wooden barrel. This instrument was also described by Michael Praetorius.

The shawm, unlike many other Medieval instruments that are otherwise lost to us, has continued to evolve. Where once it was a clumsy and heavy instrument, now it’s made in two sizes: a small, slender soprano instrument with a belled end and seven finger-holes; and an alto instrument (the pommer or bombard) pitched a fifth lower.

In Asian countries, shawm technique includes circular breathing, allowing continuous playing without pausing for air. You can find this technique among didgeridoo players, oboists, and occasionally clarinets, too.

The Name

In Latin, the name is calamus, meaning “reed” or “stalk.” It’s possible that the name comes from the Arabic salamiya, a traditional oboe from Egypt. The Romance languages all have similar names for the shawm. In Italian, it’s the ciaramella, in Old French it’s chalemie, in Spanish, it’s the chirimia. The French went on to make a hautbois , and the Italians made a piffari. Shalmei is essentially the same as the Old French name, chalemie, and both are thought to have come from the Hirtenschalmei, or shepherd’s shawm in German.

The larger members of the family were the bombard, and in English in the 14^th century, which was later corrupted to Bombhardt and finally in the 17^th century to Pommer in German.

In German, it’s called the Schalmer or Schalmei, and the Stadpfeifer. The Germans and the Dutch continued to manufacture an ornate version, called Deutsche Schalmey.

The name shawm appears in English in the 14^th century. There were three original forms: shallemele (or shamulle or shamble), schalmys (or shalemeyes or chalemyes, which are plural forms), and schalmuse (or schalmesse), all from the Old French chalemei, chalemie, and chalemeaux (plural for chaleme). Another instrument, called the chalumeau shares this same etymology

Many folk shawms have  different names, like the Castilian, Aragonese, and Leonese dulzaina (or chirimia), and Catalan xirimia, docaina, or gralla, and the Navareese gaita in Spain. In Portugal, there’s a charamela, and in Italian, there’s a ciaramella (or cialamello or cennamella).

The taepyeongso is a Korean version and the gyaling is a Tibetan  version.

More modern instruments are often referred to as the dulcian, which was called a curtal in England, fagot or fagotto in Germany and Italy, and bajon in Spain. It became very popular as a general-purpose bass instrument where shawms were considered inappropriate (like in church). The dulcian is the ancestor of the modern bassoon.

Early plural forms were made from singular in most languages. The later reduction in the 15^th and 16^th centuries to a single syllable in forms such as shalme, shaume, shawme, and finally, in the 16^th century, shawm, were probably due to the confusion about plurals.

Shawm Composers

Guillaume Machaut (c1300-1377) wrote “Hoquetus David,” which had two upper parts that would have been played by shawm and schalmuse, and the trumpet would have been played for the third and lowest part.

Other composers include Englishmen Thomas Weelkes (c1575-1623), William Byrd (c1540-1623) and English composer born in Italy Augustin Bassano (fl. c 1603).

Shawm Players

I didn’t find any historical references for people who played the shawm, but there are plenty of good recordings available today. These feature creative folks like David Munrow and The Early Music Consort of London, Piffaro, a renaissance band, and my local favorites, The Whole Noyse.

Sources:

“Musical Instruments; Their History in Western Culture from the Stone Age to the Present Day,” by Karl Geiringer, translated by Bernard Miall. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London, 1949.

“A Dictionary of Early Music; From the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.

“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010.

“Music in the Middle Ages,” by Gustave Reese. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1940.

“Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992.

Instrument Biography: The Bagpipe

Some of you are going to get all squirmy because you think you don’t like the this instrument. But give this ancient instrument a chance—maybe you’ll change your mind.

The bagpipe is the universal folk instrument, appearing on nearly every continent. The bagpipe is an aerophone, which means that it’s a wind instrument. Unlike most aerophones, it’s fueled by air from a bag rather than directly by the player’s breath. The bag is filled by the player’s breath or by a bellows, and the melodies are played when the player squeezes the air out of the bag and through drone pipes and chanter (melody) pipes. The bagpipe, like the clarinet or the oboe, uses enclosed reeds that create a buzzing and cause the tube of the chanter to resonate when the air passes through it.

The most famous pipes are the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish Uilleann pipes, but bagpipes are nearly everywhere, from Northern Africa, to the Persian Gulf, throughout the Caucasus, and in most of Europe. Australia doesn’t seem to have invented this instrument on its own, and I attribute this to the dominance of another drone instrument, the didgeridoo.

In the story of instrumental descendants, if you think of the panpipes as the ancestor of the organ, you can also think of the panpipe as the ancestor of the bagpipe. It’s important to note that both the organ and the bagpipe came about as a result of mechanical improvements and that included adding some sort of chest or bellows to existing instruments. But where the organ has enjoyed a lush literature, the bagpipe has not. In part, this is because the organ became the instrument of churches and kings and the bagpipe stayed with its humble origins and remained a folk instrument, which means that much of the literature was never documented.

A History of Bagpipes

The bagpipe might have, like the lute, come to the Middle East and then on to Europe via the traveling song girls sent by the conquered rulers of India in about the 15^th century BCE. It’s also possible that people in the Middle East invented it for themselves. Images of bagpipes have been identified on a Hittite slab at Eyuk dated to 1000 BCE.

Hellenistic writings left by Aristophanes in the 1^st century BCE tell of an instrument whose squeezed bladders provided a reservoir of breath with a controlled exit through a pipe. In Rome, Latin writers also described the bagpipe in the 1^st century.

In Roman times, the bagpipe’s place was in the tavern, not the palace, although there are stories from Suetonius (c69-c122 CE) that Nero fancied himself to be an utricularius player (bagpiper). Despite Nero’s preference, the bagpipe never became accepted into sophisticated musical circles. There is an obvious connection between the development of the bagpipe and the development of the pipe organ well into the 2^nd century (referred to by Julius Pollux), and when I write about pipe organs, I’ll cover that.

The bagpipe was widely used at all social levels during the Middle Ages across Europe, although it had mostly rustic associations. The church’s insistence on anonymity in the Middle Ages gave rise to the popularity of the bagpipe as far back as the 9^th century because the very nature of the chanter prevented much in the way of articulation and accents, smoothing things out and eliminating the possibility of distinctive personal expression. Bagpipes were seen in England around 1100, but didn’t appear in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland until considerably later.

The instrument wasn’t fully developed in Europe until the 13^th century. In the early Middle Ages, it was chiefly used by herdsmen, and because of that, was introduced into Christmas music. You see, as Christianity spread northward, the Catholic church integrated pagan and pastoral music and traditions into their own as in an effort to make Christianity appealing to older cultures. Christmas and Easter are particularly full of these older traditions. But I digress.

Jewish music used a bagpipe with one chanter and two drones in the 13^th century. The Cantigas de Santa Maria, compiled in Castile in the 13^th century, depicts several styles of bagpipes.

Bagpipes are mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the late 14^th century and around the same time in France, Guillaume Machaut mentions four types of bagpipes in his Prise d’Alexandrie and Reméde de Fortune.

Jewish scholar Abraham da Portaleone (c1540-1612) wrote a strange and inaccurate treatise on things biblical, called “Shilte ha-Gibbonrim” (“The Shields of the Mighty” in Hebrew), documenting history and archaeology, including musical instruments. It’s not a very scientific tome, and one of his many errors is to describe a nablon (the Greek form of the word nebel) as a combination of the harp and the bagpipe. In another spot, he compares the nebel with a lute, describing a fingerboard, a sounding box, the string arrangement, and otherwise describes something that is probably a chitarrone. He also describes a sumponyah (an instrument listed in the Bible) as a bagpipe, which it might have been. It also might have been a dulcimer.

By the 16^th century, the bagpipe’s popularity had nearly completely waned among the aristocracy and at court, and it became the instrument of shepherds, soldiers, and dancing peasants rather than princes. Despite this, it underwent development into as many as five different sizes. Some styles had as many as three drones and sometimes two chanters. At the turn of the 17^th century, the biggest change came with the Irish invention of the Uilleann pipes (elbow pipes) that are now called Union pipes. These used a bellows rather than a simple bladder, so the opening of the player’s elbow provided the source of wind (like an accordion) rather than a mouth pipe.

Interest in the oboe in France during the early 17^th century, for some reason, led to interest in the bagpipe, and they invented a new type, called the musette, with a bellows like the Uilleann pipe. Its chanter was narrower than the oboe, but cylindrical, like the flute. They also invented a racket (a double-reeded instrument like the oboe), with a dozen or more bores. The racket was about 6.5 inches in height, and it provided a drone that had an alterable pitch. A flute maker called Hotteterre (see my blog on the history of the flute for a bit more about him) added a second small chanter for the highest notes, giving the instrument about two octaves. The racket also used the bellows method of sound production.

It was at this point that there was a new immigration of bagpipes from the east—a Slavonic instrument showed up in Germany with cylindrical drones and chanters and a single reed (like that of a clarinet).

In 17^th century France, composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and other composers who were fond of the pastoral tendencies of the instrument brought the bagpipe back to the attention of the aristocracy. Because they couldn’t bring obviously rustic things into the court, during this period, bagpipes were decorated with true rococo fabulousness.

The 18^th century fostered a kind of faux pastoral movement, and both the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipe had a resurgence in popularity. It was the bass drone that made the rococo composers deem these instruments appropriate, the opposite of what Renaissance musicians had felt.

Few bagpipes have survived from earlier than the 18^th century, but there are loads of paintings, carvings, engravings, and manuscript illuminations. Folk bagpipes can be found in continental European paintings of Brueghel, Teniers, Jordaens, and Dūrer.

In the 1730s, William Dixon wrote music for the Border pipe, and for a nine-note bellows-blown bagpipe with a chanter similar to that of the Great Highland Bagpipe. Dixon’s music was mostly dance tunes, and some have been absorbed into a 19^th century collection of songs for the smallpipes written (or perhaps collected) by John Peacock. In 1760, Joseph MacDonald made the first serious study of the Scottish Highland Pipes.

Large numbers of pipers were trained in the British Empire for service in WWI and WWII. In Canada and New Zealand, it’s still used in the military, especially for formal ceremonies. Other countries’ militaries have taken it on, including Uganda, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Oman. Police and fire services in Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong King, and the United States have also adopted the bagpipe into marching bands.

In recent years, bagpipes have participated in rock, heavy metal, jazz, hip-hop, punk, and classical music.

Bagpipe Structure

A bagpipe consists of an air supply (either a bellows or a person’s breath), a bag, a chanter, and at least one drone (a single note that is sustained during the melody—and beyond). Most have more than one drone, and some have more than one chanter. The pieces are held together by means of sockets that fasten the pipes and the chanter to the bag.

The usual method of air delivery is by blowing into a blowpipe to fill the bag. In some cases, the end of the blowpipe needs to be covered by the tip of the tongue during inhalation, but most have a valve that prevents air from escaping.

In the 16^th or 17^th century, a bellows was attached to supply air. Such pipes are occasionally called cauld wind pipes (cold wind pipes), as the air is not heated by the player’s breath, so they can use more delicate reeds. In Britain, the Uilleann pipe, Border pipes, and Northumbrian smallpipes are among this type, and in France, the musette de cour.

The bag that holds the air is airtight. The player keeps the bag inflated by blowing into the blowpipe or pumping air through the bellows. Materials for the bags can include animal skins (goats, dogs, sheep, and cows, most commonly), and recently, man-made materials are used, such as Gore-Tex.

Skin bags are saddle stitched with an extra strip folded over the seam and stitched down. In synthetic bags, glue is used to make the seal. Holes are cut to accommodate the sockets into which the pipes and chanter fit. In bags that are cut from larger skins, the sockets are tied into the points where the animal’s limbs and the head joined the torso.

The chanter is the pipe on which the melody is played. Some bagpipes have more than one chanter, particularly those in North Africa, Southeastern Europe, and Southwest Asia. The inside bore of the chanter can be either parallel or conical (like the head of a flute).

The chanter is usually open-ended, making it hard for the player to stop the chanter from sounding as long as there is air flowing from the bag. This affects the music in that there are no “rests” or silences as part of the music. Because of this, grace notes (squiggly squirmy notes that drop down or spring up to the intended note) are used to break up long notes and to create a sense of articulation or accent. These embellishments are highly prescribed and are specific to each type of bagpipe. They are difficult to play and take many years to conquer.

Closed-ended chanters, or those that close the end on the player’s leg, include the Uilleann pipes, the Northumbrian smallpipe, and the left chanter of the surdulina, a type of Calabrian zampogna. This closed end, when all the finger holes of the chanter are also covered, causes the pipe to be silent. (The drone continues. Only the chanter is silenced this way.)

The chanter has a reed, either single (like a clarinet) or double (like an oboe). Double reeds are most common, and are in both parallel and conically bored chanters. Single reeds are found only in parallel bores. Double reeds are found in western Europe and single reeds are nearly everywhere else.

In bladder pipes, the chanter and the blow pipe always lie in a straight line and might even be rigidly connected inside the bladder. The chanter is sometimes straight and sometimes bent.

The drone is a pipe that isn’t fingered but produces a constant sound against which the melody is played in a kind of harmony. The drone pipe is usually cylindrically bored with a single reed, and the ability to have their pitch slightly adjusted (tuning, not note changing) by sliding its two parts snugly together or slightly apart along a sliding joint.

In most pipes, a single drone is pitched two octaves below the lowest note of the chanter. Additional drones might be an octave below that or matching the fifth (the fifth note up from the lowest—it’s a musical interval of key significance in many forms of music) of the chanter.

Drone pipes might lie on the player’s shoulder, across the arm opposite the bag, or dangle parallel to the chanter. Some drones have a tuning screw, which alters the length of the pipe by opening or closing a hole. Such a screw allows the player to choose one of two pitches (open and half-open) or turn the drone entirely off.

Bagpipes vary enormously in size an appearance, but all have:

• A bag or reservoir for air
• A mouthpipe used to fill the bag. Some have a one-directional valve to keep the air in
• A chanter or melody-pipe with a double or single reed and usually eight finger holes (which gives it a nine-note range)
• At least one fixed-pitch drone pipe

The notes are obtained by fingering a chanter that has an unbroken stream of air passing through it, caused by squeezing the full bag of air between the player’s torso and elbow. This same air also passes through one or more drone pipes that are sounded by reeds.

Origins of the Name

The Greek word askaulos means bag-piper, but doesn’t appear in a Greek context until after the classical period.

French has the word muse or cornamuse, although there’s another instrument, a relative of the crumhorn, by the same name. (The crumhorn is a reed-capped instrument with a beautiful bent-tube and a cylindrical bore that makes a buzzing nasal sound. There’s a biography to come on this one). The chanter of the cornamuse was called the chalumeau, and had eight or nine holes.

Also from France, through the French court at Naples, the troubadours working with Adam de la Halle (c1230-c1288)—biography to come—used a form of bagpipe called a chevrette.

In the British Isles, other names were the chorus or choron. The smallest bagpipe was called a forel.

In Latin, the name is Tibia utricularis.

In German, there are Sacphife, Dudelsack, Platerspiel and Bläterspiel. (I like Dudelsack best, don’t you?)

In English, with its specific rules about making things plural, both bagpipe or bagpipes is correct for a single instrument, and pipers speak of “the pipes” or a “set of pipes.”

Famous Bagpipe Composers

Jean-Baptist Lully (1632-1687) used the musette in his operatic orchestras. In Germany, the instrument was popular with Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), and Franz Schubert (1897-1828)

In the British Isles, Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847-1935) wrote the “Pibroch Suite” to include bagpipes, and Granville Bantock (1868-1946) wrote his “Hebridean Symphony.” Erik Chisholm (1904-1965) used the pipes and Frederick Loewe (1901-1988) featured them in “Brigadoon” in 1947.

People are still writing for bagpipes, including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-   ) in his “Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise,” Shaun Davey (1948-  ) has written “Relief of Derry Symphony,” “The Pilgrim,” and the “Special Olympics Suite,” and Lindsay Davidson (1973-  ) has written the “Tulsa Opera” and others.

Oh, you haven’t heard of any of these? How about Paddy Maloney (1938-   ) writing for The Chieftans, Paul McCartney in his “Mull of Kintyre,” AC/DC in “It’s a long way to the Top,” Korn in their “Shoots and Ladders” and John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice.”

Famous Bagpipe Players

Relatively few people make their names as soloists on the bagpipe, so the following is a list of groups of pipers or groups that include pipes among other instruments.

• The Tannahill Weavers,
• Rare Air
• Wolfstone
• Jerry O’Sullivan
• Scottish National Pipe and Drum Corps and Military Band
• Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
• Ian McGregor and Scottish Pipe Band
• The Highland Bagpipes
• Bagpipe Hero
• Massea Scottish Bands

There. See? There’s nothing at all dry or dull about the history of the bagpipe. I, for one, can’t wait until the Bay Area’s annual Highland Games each year to get my fill.

Sources:

“Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture,” by Bruce W. Holsinger. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2001.

“The Music of the Jews in the Diaspora,” by Alfred Sendrey. A.S. Barnes and Co., Inc, New York, 1970.

“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholfer, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude V. Palisca. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2010.

“The Concise Oxford History of Music,” by Gerald Abraham. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1979.

“Music in Ancient Greece and Rome,” by John G. Landels. Routledege, London, 1999.

“A Dictionary of Early Music; From the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome and Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

“Music in the Middle Ages,” by Gustave Reese. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1940.

“Musical Instruments, Their History in Western Culture from the Stone Age to the Present Day,” by Karl Geiringer, translated by Bernard Miall. George Allen &Unwind, Ltd., London, 1949.

“Music in Ancient Israel,” by Alfred Sendrey. Philosophical Library, New York, 1969.