I have a few questions about the Musette de Cour, so I,m importing part of a thread from northumbrianpipers.org.uk forum, called, "A smallpipe duet for our colonial cousins", (which has some rather nice transcriptions posted suitable for playing on NSP's), hoping for more insight on the subject from this eclectic forum. "Is there any evidence of musette de cour being played in New France ? It seems to be a bit of a mystery that pipes, (there were also many regional types in France in those times), didn,t seem to make it out to the colonies. As well as being curious about whether the musette de cour was played in New France and the other French colonies, I,m also wondering about the Scottish/border connection. There,s the musette supposedly belonging to Bonnie Prince Charlie, and a few pieces of music from the Sutherland collection, and others, showing some linkage, but I,m not finding much info on the subject, other than the theory that the musette influenced the makers of the Union/Pastoral and Northumbrian pipes, and that there were musettes floating around Scotland and the north of England at some point. As for French Baroque ornamentation, "V = port de voix, I,m not having much luck finding out how this one should be played, I've looked at the explanation in Hottere's method book for musette, but my French isn't up to it, and there isn't a notated example." John Gibbons kindly replied to this question, quote, "I think a port de voix is French for an appoggiatura - a stressed dissonant note resolving usually down (sometimes up) to the one below (above). It normally takes more time than the melody note it resolves to. So a dotted minim G with this marking might be played A2G." Any further insight and comments on any of the above would be welcome. Merci!

Since he spent most of his life in France, and since he is know to have played pipes, it makes sense that the type of pipe would be a musette. The provenance on the pipe in question if reasonable, IIRC. I'm thinking it came from an auction of his belongings...?

It is a beautiful instrument:

http://www.bagpipeworld.co.uk/gallery/m ... arlie.html

I don't know about the travels of the musette but the port de voix is another matter -

It was the principal French baroque ornament and is an appogiatura from below. It is the stressed note and the note it resolves to is unstressed. It is discussed at length in Quantz and Hotteterre does give a notated example in the introduction to his first book of flute pieces. I could forward you a translation of that page if you are interested.

Cheers!