Hi everyone, my name is Rich Walter and I am the curator for USA / Canada and Europe here
at MIM. I am standing here in front of our bagpipes display in the Europe Gallery.
The early history of the bagpipes is actually a bit murky. It goes
back, we believe, up to about 3,000 years ago. There are some references we could
interpret from texts and other documents and even artwork that there
was the existence of something that resembled a bagpipe. Though it is hard to
know exactly if that is the case, but there are some interpretations of that.
References in ancient Greek and Roman history that there were similar
instruments that we would associate with the bagpipe. By about the thirteenth, fourteenth
century there are clearer references to bagpipe as musical instruments and by
the fifteenth century more and more artistic depictions and historical
accounts of people playing bagpipes of a variety of sorts. So we know it started
to spread as an instrument type by certainly the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth centuries. By the
fifteenth century, actually, the bagpipe with roots probably more in the Mediterranean
region had moved to Scotland, where it really assumed one of its most iconic
forms, the Scottish Great Highland bagpipes, like we have an example here
with the full piper’s uniform. But that is by no means the only version of the
bagpipe, nor is it the original version of the bagpipe, though certainly an
iconic staple of bagpipe music and recognized around the world. So what I
want to do is just call a bit of attention, it’s nice always to have an
assortment of instruments of any given type in one spot in the museum because
you can do some really nice comparison and contrast. It is always important
for us to think that people can take a close look at the instruments on
display and ideally learn something about how they work, how they produce
their sound. At its core, a bagpipe is a reed pipe instrument. So, if you think of
something like an oboe or its precursor the shawm, it is a reed instrument. These
reed pipes that you are seeing in the video right now don’t have bags attached
to them, but they sort of show the melody component of a bagpipe where there are
finger holes and depending on how you place your fingers over those holes, you
can play a variety of melody notes. Of course, the characteristic feature of any
bagpipe is that it is attached to a bag. That bag supplies the air through
the reed pipe. Rather than blowing through it, like an oboe or a clarinet, you
pump air from a bag through that reed pipe chanter melody instrument. The bag
can be inflated frequently also with breath. So you blow into the bag, but
also there are examples, let’s say from Ireland and Poland, where you use a
bellows. You use your arms to pump a bellows that sort of mechanically inflates
that bag. And then, when you see the bags attached, in this case here’s the
melody pipe, that chanter reed pipe, but it also has this long drone pipe.
That’s another common feature of bagpipes. Not universal. There are
bagpipes that don’t have drone pipes, but many of them have one or more drone pipes.
So once you have inflated the bag, with breath or a bellows, you can
squeeze that air out of the bag and it goes through a melody component, called
the chanter in this case or in some cases we call it a chanter, and a drone pipe
which is a constant single note. It doesn’t change. You don’t play that note,
it is just sounding the whole time you are supplying air through it. So it is a
combination of a melody that you can play with your fingers and frequently a set
of droning notes going through those longer drone pipes. You can see that
that configuration, those basic elements, are present on all of these instruments, but the
drone pipes are shorter or longer, the melody pipes can either be single, or
in some cases, double melody chanters. So there’s a wide variety of how these can
be displayed and that’s what you really see in other parts of the world.
It’s not isolated to one part of the world. You can discover this music and these
instruments in certainly Scotland and the UK, but also Croatia, Poland,
Turkey, and Italy. So it is really a widespread tradition.
When we see some of these other varieties, again you see here there is a
way to inflate the bag. You squeeze that air. It is a combination of coming through
a melody reed pipe that you play with your fingers and a short drone pipe.
Looking back at these Highland bagpipes, you can actually see now we have got a way to
inflate the bag, a melody pipe here you play with your fingers, and a set of
three drone pipes. If you look carefully, there’s actually a way to
slide these drone pipes to make them shorter or longer. That helps tune the
drone pitches to a fine-tuned pitch to make it play in tune with
itself and the way the player wants. So there is a great degree of flexibility
on how they are made, but they all have that combination of a mechanism to
inflate the bag, either from breath or from a bellows, a bag that is then filled
with air that can be squeezed out and through a combination of melody pipe and
normally one or more drone pipes. So, just again wanted to spend a little bit of time.
We love it when people come to MIM to learn how musical instruments work.
We love having them kind of arranged in a specific, thematic display to get a
good comparison and contrast of the diversity of types that exist around the world.
Then, of course, we especially love, when you have time, to explore the
museum and actually discover these instruments in their native countries,
in their native traditions so you can really see the types of bagpipe
instruments that might be played in Slovakia or might be played in Spain, and
see that these are thriving musical instruments around the world still today
with ancient roots. That’s just a little glimpse of our bagpipe collection.
You can find them here in the Bagpipes display, but especially you can
find them exploring MIM on your next visit. Thank you.