The Continued Debate on the Origons of the UP's

[sean an piobaire]

My Fellow Pipers !
I have the books in front of me... for further citations in regard to the German perspectives on pipe history, iconography, etc. etc.

Ernst Eugen Schmidt (I corrected my spelling of "Schimdt" on my first post, above) has compiled a very large, and comprehensive book, on Bagpipe Folktales under the title: "Vom Singenden Dudelsack" published in 2005, by Schwabishes Kulturarchive des Schwabischen Albvereins
im Haus der Volkskunst
Ebinger Strasse 52-56
72336 Balingen
Germany
www.schwaben-kultur.de

Email: info@schwaben-kultur.de

Oliver Seeler brought a number of these books back to the USA, and he supplied me with my copies.
Herr Schmidt also headed up to a very good book on German Bagpipe Art, under the title: "Sackpfeifen in Schwaben" with other contributions by George Ballling, Fritz Schneider, and Manfred Stingel. This book was published by the same Culture Archive (as above) in 1997.

Another book, with contributions by Ernst Eugen Schmidt, that is a kind of German "Baines' Bagpipes" museum catalogue, goes by the title:
" Der Dudelsack in Europa" "mit besonderer Berucksichtigung Bayerns", and is published by Bayerischer Landsverein fur Heimatpflege e.V. Munchen, 1996.
The really interesting examples of the Northumbrian Small Pipes / Hummelchen connection, is on pages 21-23, especialy a painting by Antoine Pesne (circa 1735?) showing piper Gustav Adolf Graf Gotter, playing a Bagpipe with 2 drones in a common stock, bellows blown, with a chanter so small, it is hidden by Herr Gotter's hands.
On page 59, there's a very good photo of a Hummelchen chanter, and chanter stock. This chanter is from an 1994 archeological find, from a Dutch "Clog" (merchant ship) that sank in a river mouth, in Northern Germany (circa 1625).
The chanter is open ended, it has a cyclindrical bore and sides.
It has 8 holes (Thumb plus 7). The chanter is 198mm (roughly 7 & 3/4s inches)in length, and it has the remains of the chanter reed (the staple) in place !!! At the top of the chanter, there is a large diameter tenon, not like the usual narrow diameter tenons found on "our" modern pipes.
On page 61, there is a photo of a painting from 1618, showing a Hummelchen Piper with the same type of chanter... with even the same style of turnings on the chanter stock as this "Dutch chanter"!
I have to say that all this evidence is limited by the small size of the statistical sample.... I CAN be convinced that these "Continental" Small Pipes filled a a popular need for an "Indoor" Bagpipe, and this was back in THE HEYDAY of the various Germanic Bagpipes, so vividly depicted in Renaissance Art.
Danke Schon, Meine Bruder Sackpfeifen !
Sean Folsom

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

Bumsen mir tot!
Didn't Praetorious say the Hummelchen sounded like a cat being tortured, or the like? Maybe he didn't groove with those missing partials from a cylinder bore.
Were there other parlor instruments kicking around in the late renaissance, or early Baroque? Racketts didn't make much of a...racket. At least the ones I've heard don't.
All of this being in continuity with the need for a domestic bagpipe, providing the market for the "origon" of the Irish pipes.

[CHasR]

so we're talking Dutch 'golden-age' times. What strikes me is the chanter length..(kinda like a really long cylindrical biniou...)
anyhoo, one can still easily throw this newfound pipe into the same nsp/ssp/pp/bp milleux that gave us Uilleann; seems very likely what with all that interprotestant trading between Tyneside and Holland...
excellent!

[Hans-Joerg]

Bumsen mir tot!
Didn't Praetorious say the Hummelchen sounded like a cat being tortured, or the like? Maybe he didn't groove with those missing partials from a cylinder bore.
Were there other parlor instruments kicking around in the late renaissance, or early Baroque? Racketts didn't make much of a...racket. At least the ones I've heard don't.
All of this being in continuity with the need for a domestic bagpipe, providing the market for the "origon" of the Irish pipes.

There also is Dudey (not Dudley) wich is absolutely the same but with 3 drones instead of 2. Huemmelchen (means "Little Bumblebee")/Dudley have recorder fingerings with cylindrical bores. On Andreas´ homepage
http://www.uilleann-pipes.de/english/index.htm
there are pics and a short soundsample (goto "instruments) of his products. I think that the scetched sets in Praetorius´ "Syntagma Musicum" have shorter chanters and might in fact have sounded like a cat with bellows on the butt. The modern ones clearly sound much more "elegantly" and are quite similiar to NSPs:

so we're talking Dutch 'golden-age' times. What strikes me is the chanter length..(kinda like a really long cylindrical biniou...)
anyhoo, one can still easily throw this newfound pipe into the same nsp/ssp/pp/bp milleux that gave us Uilleann; seems very likely what with all that interprotestant trading between Tyneside and Holland...
excellent!

[billh]

I think this discussion, though interesting, has veered well off-topic, insofar as discussions about cylindrical bored european instruments doesn't shed much light in the origins of the Union pipes.

The view that the Union Pipes and the Pastoral Pipes (or 'New Bagpipe') are very closely, even directly, related, has been predominant for at least 100 years. However there has been debate about which came first. Nowadays those who hold that the Irish flavor (without the foot joint) came first, and was "hybridized" into the Pastoral instrument, are in the minority. The apparent chronology of the surviving instruments (though murky) supports the view that the foot joint came first; however the regulator seems to have first accompanied the Pastoral instrument.

The business is complicated by the fact that it is very difficult to tell an early Union pipe from a Pastoral that has lost its foot joint. In fact it is this very resemblance which leads to the presumption that the Union pipe is just that - a Pastoral design from which the foot joint has been removed (and the chanter re-tuned to work better on-the-knee).

So - we still don't have a good candidate for the "predecessor chanter" to the Pastorals. Frankly the baroque oboe looks closer than anything else being mooted - bearing in mind that the various members of the oboe family actually look rather different from one another on the inside, and have historically used reeds very different from modern oboe reeds.

We also don't know just when (and in what country, on what bagpipe) the bellows first made its appearance. If someone can come up with an illustration of a bellows-blown pipe that predates about 1680, then we might have a trail to follow, at least with regard to that innovation.

Bill

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

I think this discussion, though interesting, has veered well off-topic

Since when is that a problem?



I was trying to veer things in the direction of low-volume domestic type instruments, to bring it back to the subject of parlour pipes.
Was Praetorious the first to illustrate a bellows pipe? The Syn­tag­ma mu­sic­um was from ca. 1615, why do you use the date 1680, Bill?
What do baroque oboe reeds look like? I have the Reedmaking for Early Winds book or whatever it's called, I seem to remember the reeds in that looking basically like modern jobs with the diving board heads though.

[billh]

As far as I know praetorius is the first. I meant 1630 I think -was syntagma as early as 1615?

The baroque reeds I've seen have been more spade-shaped, i.e. more like narrow bore union pipe reeds, as opposed to the straight-sided things we're used to. Have another look at the 'Early Winds' book, there are plenty of wedge/boat shaped models in there.

I was having this discussion with an oboeist this week and he thought flat pipe reeds seemed uncannily like some early oboe reeds...

[CHasR]

In fact, recently, a pastoral piper in another forum went online looking for a gouged baroque oboe cane source for his pastoral chanter. Aparently the dimensions needed are identical, or close

[CHasR]

knew there was a picture of it somewhere:

http://www.dudelsack.at/dudey_dudelsack.php


but, @#%^-ed if I can post it!

[fiddlerwill]

[Thread revival. - Mod]

“We also don't know just when (and in what country, on what bagpipe) the bellows first made its appearance. If someone can come up with an illustration of a bellows-blown pipe that predates about 1680, then we might have a trail to follow, at least with regard to that innovation.
“

Here you go Bill https://specialcollections.ul.ie/bolton-library-a-z-p/