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E. McDentinger Celtic Musician
The Great Highland Bagpipe
The origins of the bagpipe are lost in the past. Some say it was introduced in Scotland at the time of the Roman invasion and occupation of the British Isles. If we take for granted (but not yet established with certainty) that local celtic populations did not use this instrument so far, we are breaking a myth : the bagpipes are not celtic but simply mediterranean... But we do have a lot to learn about it yet...
Scots Wha Hae
If the materials that are used and the general shape of the instrument differ by country, the principle remains the same : some pipes attached to a bag to replace the cheeks of the player as a reserve of air. The bagpipes played in Scotland will experience an original evolution that will make them completely different from the others. Initially fitted with a single drone tenor playing an octave below the chanter (melodic pipe) , it began to single out likely from the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries by adopting a second drone tenor, as on the bagpipe kept at the Museum of Edinburgh, dated 1409. In the seventeenth century, a bass drone was added, playing two octaves below the chanter, giving the bagpipe its actual structure. Historically tuned in the key of A, the Great Highland Bagpipe is today tuned in B flat most of the time, especially among the bagadoù of Brittany which have gradually adopted the Highland bagpipe after the Second World War, replacing their "binioù braz" (great bagpipe) with a similar architecture and of course their small bagpipes (binioù kozh).