The Continued Debate on the Origons of the UP's

[L42B]

Hi Everyone

I was browsing Andreas Rogge's website just now and I realised that the Schaeferpfeife has a very simmilar chanter to that of the older Pastoral Pipes; with a foot joint. The chanter construction and the finger chart looks almost identical to an Oboe D'Amore and it sounds very simmilar as well. I was wondering if these two bagpipes and the Oboe have simmilar origins and are connected in some way.

My Aunt use to play the Oboe and when she heared the sound of a Bb set of Uilleann Pipes on a recording she commented how some playing techniques and the sound was 'simmilar'. At the time I also had a rush up the bore of my chanter to flatten the D notes, and to my amasment Oboe players use a simmilar technique as well sometimes. The reed is even constructed in a simmilar fashion. Or so my Aunt tells me.

Anybody care to enlighten this 'controvertial' debate. Please keep things civil. There is definatly (in my opinion) a connection between these three instruments.

Here's a link to the instrument in question

http://www.uilleann-pipes.de/english/schaef_tief-c.html

Fingering Chart for the Schaeferpfeife:

http://www.uilleann-pipes.de/english/index.html

Cheers L42B

[CHasR]

This is one of my pet topics! I was a pro oboist in pre-pipe life BTW.
We need to start where the bellows pipe may have begun: Bohemia. The Bock may be the earliest extant bellows pipe; although running on single reeds + conical chanter as it does leaves us at a dead end.
The Sordelinna, developed fron the Phagotus, may be the earliest fully-double reeded, double chantered bellows pipe. It had , as far as we can surmise, closed chanters, and regulator -like drones. It is popular for a time, then the whole D/R Bellowspipe idea vanishes. There are no extant sordelinnas (not to be confused with the SURDulina, still quite popular in Italy today.)
We next hear of D/R bellows pipes in the Musette De Court (Musette Royale) being developed from the Musette de poitou (vanished?) by the Bros Hotteterre in France, who also made oboes, flutes, fagotti, etc.. (BTW dosent 'Hotteterre' 'Haute-Terre' translate as 'high-land'? Highland? food for thought....) Completely no link to the Sordelinna.
Around the same time as the Musette Royale fell out of fashion with the aristocracy, we have records of several types of bellowspipes in Great Britain. We can all quibble about who came first, but the NSP, Pastoral pipe, Northumbrian 1/2 longs (a.k.a. Borderpipe), "Reelpipes"(Lesser highland bagpipe) all tend to foam + percolate in some sort of milleux at this time. From which we get the most evolved specimen since the Musette Royale , the Uilleann pipe as we know it today.
The oboe? Probably it gained more from the Musette Royale than the Bagpipe in general gained from the oboe. Look at early oboes, they are, IMO, rather boxy, limited in dymanic range, crudely made, gripe, gripe, gripe...
But the sleek chanter of the musette royale was quickly adopted into the oboe by the Hotteterres, and the rest is history. The knop at the top of the oboe upper joint is, in fact, homage to its origins as a bagpipe chanter.
(oboists worldwide are livid at my statement...)
Oh, sorry, UP reeds are *nothing* like oboe reeds, and I've *never* used a rush up the bore of my oboe. I could easily turn out 3 or 4 Oboe reeds a day when I was fulltiming, but in 7 years, have yet to manage a single UP reed I trust.
I'm certain others will link up to their favourite sites, and sportingly(AHEM!) pick my post apart, word for word. But there you have it.

[L42B]

Hi ChasR, thanks for your reply and informative post. By simmilarity in Oboe reeds I was mainly pointing to the double reed and not necessarily the construction. Maybe my aunt was the odd one out who used a rush in the oboe chanter (mmm).

Interesting in the regards to the history of the bellows-blown pipes. Anyone else care to comment, add anything else.

Cheers L42B

[Joseph E. Smith]

Eastern Europe, 1632, a young boy is about to make musical history when he inserts the the tip of a bellows into the rectum of a common house cat and squeezes...

[CHasR]

probably that was more like 1432...plus, we can pinpoint the approx region to south swabia. Modern rectal feline measurement data supports the theory...(not that I pore over such texts...)

[Joseph E. Smith]

probably that was more like 1432...plus, we can pinpoint the approx region to south swabia. Modern rectal feline measurement data supports the theory...(not that I pore over such texts...)

Ah yes, but, I was only off by 200 years or so. Being a Vet Tech, I have spent a good deal of time around the caudal aspect of felines, canines, bovines, etc... etc... and each have their own pipe qualities and tones, though not all respond equally to a bellows:D

Cows are particularly complicated, as they have multiple stomachs (4), and can produce a variety of tones.

[marcpipes]

Do the udders act like regulators?

[Joseph E. Smith]

Do the udders act like regulators?

Yes, but they're a pain in the arse to reed.

My goofing around aside, has anyone reading this forum done research regarding bellows blown or cold wind pipes and their history? If so, could they share their findings?

[oliver]

It seems that the musette de cour or musette baroque ("musette royale" is an unknown term in France) is the likeliest origin for the uilleann pipes. Bonnie Prince Charlie used to play the musette and I think his can still be seen in a Scottish museum. The musette seems to have well spread in the British Isles at that time, hence the further development of Northumbrian pipes and so on. At any rate, it is an Anglo-Irish invention, rather than just Irish. Too bad for the celtomaniacs !

[CHasR]

really all these instruments developments are inextricably intertwined...c.f., the Sordelinna (reportedly having up to 52 keys on its 'drones') does it qualify as the first accordion?
The MDeC ('Royale' is too hard to type anyway... ) was such a critical instrument...so much was perfected in it, shuttle drones, keyed chanters, 'double stops' with the petit chalameau, etc etc etc, not to mention the first printed music specifically for any bagpipe, acceptance in the early symphony orchestra (never extended to any subsequent pipe), and a huge repertoire by some lg. caliber composers to boot...
Its site:

http://homepage.mac.com/muzette/Eng.File

[sean an piobaire]

I Agree with alot of what ChasR (of Philly) says, (and I was an Oboe player too). I have mentioned the Bohemian area as a possible 1st place for the bellows being added to BAGPIPES for years.....First the "Bock" Pipes and then, PERHAPS....
THE HUMMELCHEN !
Which is more likely origin for the Northumbrian Small Pipes than the Mussette, and a lot easier to construct, with the 3 drones sticking out of a common stock, instead of the "RACK-KETTE" derived back and forth bores in a single wooden cyclinder, with Layettes (shuttles) over the slots.
I recently got a look at Herr Ernst Eugen Schmidt's article in the Northumbrian Piper's Society Review which (strangely) provoked no discussion of any sort (left over WW 1&2 anamosity for anything German?) I have This Bit of info from Oliver Seeler, who recently had a quick visit with his mother in Wiesbaden, and met with Mr. Schmidt for a day, & brought back books and articles with some amazing info about a Hummelchen survivor in the Wendish (Slavic/German) community.
More quotes forthcoming as I don't have all the citations in front of me.
Regards!
Sean Folsom
PS. I have a contra bass Renaissance Rackett, made by Keith Lorraine in Penngrove, California, which I use to illustrate the origin of my Musette drones & if the Bassoon is called the farting bedpost, then this particular Rackett, could be characterized as.... The Farting Shampoo Bottle.
(it sounds like an Elephant with gastric processes in full swing) S.F.

[Roger O'Keeffe]

From a linguistic point of view, bear in mind that Schäferpfeife literally means pastoral pipe.

[billh]

The 'pastoral' name seems to link these instruments more to a 'movement' or fashion than to each other.

As for the history of bellows, it's hard to say because so many instruments were retro-fitted with bellows, we don't know whether the bellows were original. Perhaps the best evidence we have is contemporary artwork and writing:

http://homepage.mac.com/muzette/Eng.Fil ... llery.html

In the link above, note the sort of implausibly dressed "Shepherd playing the Musette" - clearly part of the romantic pastoral thing. In the painting "Bal at the Court of Henry III", dated 1581, it's unclear whether the musette player has a blowpipe in his mouth or not (unfortunately the detail is dark and blurry). So perhaps one of the first sure pieces of evidence for bellows on the musette is Praetorius' 1619 publication. Surely it had been around before that, but where it might have originated I don't think anyone knows. Note that it appears in Mersenne's drawing of an Italian yoke ("Sourdeline") in 1636,

The "Pastoral" or "New" bagpipe was probably rather a latecomer to this whole gentry-playing-peasant thing, i.e. 100 years later. By that time, perhaps a backlash against the Industrial Revolution among other things... one quickly gets into sociological speculation when looking at these things.

But it's mostly just that - speculation, since very little hard evidence exists. The paintings and drawings are about the best we have, and until the 19th century I don't know that we have ANY pictures of Pastoral, 'New', Union, or 'Irish' pipes of the bellows blown variety.

Regarding oboes - well, the various oboe family instruments like Oboe, Oboe d'amore, Cor anglais, 'baroque' oboe, etc. are really quite different from one another, as are their reeds. Capped-reed instruments were however pretty common in the 17th and 18th centuries. It would not be a huge leap to discover that cold wind/bellows blowing a reedcap instrument would allow the reed to be scraped so as to produce a second octave (provided the bore was subtle enough).

I have never seen any convincing origin for the 'New' bagpipe (aka pastoral pipe or 'hybrid union pipe' as it's been called by people who would like to think that the Pastorals were derived from the Union pipe and not vice-versa), in some earlier pipe. That doesn't mean there isn't one, but it's also plausible that it derived from a mouth blown instrument of the oboe family, in a marriage of 'art music' technology and bucolic bagpipe fantasy. Who knows?

regards

Bill

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

I recently read about a piper whose chanter was swollen out in a bell. I think it was in the minutes of the Dublin Piper's Club, which are available from the NPU website. So those depictions of wide bells in old artworks aren't fanciful. I suppose there must be a few in museums too. This visually puts them in the company of oboes and the like. English made oboes at the end of the 18th century had a very slim profile, which makes them look very UP-chanterish to my eye. The keys and turnings of pipes were always very au courant, it was only about 1770 that they began to go beyond one key on the flute, too. So these bagpipes very well may have led the way.
The drawings in Flood's book showing the evolution of the pipes also show a primitive bellows-blown pipes with double chanter. Whether that's pure fancy is hard to say. Certainly there are some very old doubles around.

[John S]

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/S ... script.pdf

John S