Medieval bagpipes

[Mr. Woolery]

Thanks, Ken. I have a similar interest, though it is now in the background. I have done a lot of thinking about how to set up a medievalish bagpipe because I used to be in the SCA. I was never satisfied with the look of modern bagpipes for a non-modern venue. Sound, yes. Look, no.

I love the look of the older-style Gibsons and if I had the money for a set, I'd buy them. But I already have more bagpipes than I'll ever need. I've got my blackwood pipes, a set of Dunbar P1s, a no-name blackwood beater set, and I'm current custodian of my dad's first set of pipes, which are a beast to play and sound wonderful. I don't need any more bagpipes. But I sure do want them sometimes...

For now I get to live out that daydream vicariously by imagining Nighthawk's pipes the way I'd want them!

-Patrick

[wgority]

Go with Julian Goodacres pipes.

[OC Richard]

So- I've been on the chanter for a while- a year and a half!- and my instructor has been bugging me to get my own darned set of pipes. I don't want a set of modern Great Highland; I want a more historical set, as I am in a living group that centers around the late Renaissance. I was looking at these- http://harp-bagpipe.com/miba.html Do any of you know anything about them? I don't want to buy a cheap Pakistani POS model set of pipes. .

Yes those are Pakistani POS pipes.

You say you've been on chanter, and have an instructor. I'm going to guess/infer that it's the Scottish Highland pipes you've been learning and not something else like Spanish gaita or Irish uilleann pipes or whatever.

I applaud your desire to get a historical-looking bagpipe!! I'm always dismayed when I'm out at a Ren Faire and there's a musician who has spent hundreds of dollars on his costume, getting every little detail just so, but is playing an obviously modern istrument! A blackwood set of Highland pipes mounted in yellow plastic! A pennywhistle with red plastic top! And so forth.
When asked about it, they always plead the money issue, which I don't buy because there are historically correct instuments available for the same price that they paid for their modern-looking instrument, or in some cases less.

I've been an advocate for years for pipers playing at Ren Faires to play more historically appropriate pipes. Trouble is, for years it seems like all the makers who did chalice tops only did blackwood (Kintail and Dunbar come to mind) and makers who used other woods didn't do an 18th century profile.

This has changed! Now MacLellan is making a very nice-looking 18th century style bagpipe:



They're loosely based on the famous "Waterloo" drones, which despite their name date to the mid-18th century. If I were to buy a set I'd have blackwood mounts, which would resemble the black horn seen on some very old pipes.

Julian Goodacre makes a quite exact copy of the Waterloo drones but they are quite pricey. Here's Barnaby Brown, an expert on early piping, playing his Goodacre set:



Here's a closeup of the Goodacre Waterloo pipes, side by side with the originals:



Douglas MacPherson, a Scottish pipemaker, uses brown woods oftentimes, and I'm sure he could do an 18th-century profile pipe if you asked him. Here's examples of his Highland pipes in the wood called Mopane:





But you say, why 18th century Highland pipes? What about Renaissance era Highland pipes? Well the fact is that we have absolutely no idea what Highland bagpipes looked like before 1714. That's the date of The Piper To The Laird Grant, the first clear depicton of the Highland pipes, and of a Highland piper. What they looked like before that is pure speculation. Here he is:



It's been a long-held dream of mine to get somebody to make a copy of the Laird Grant pipes for me. The drone tops have such a lovely, interesting shape. The pipes are brown wood and appear to be mounted in grey cowhorn or perhaps pewter. Pewter mounts are traditional in Breton and Bulgarian pipes.

Here's a set that Mark Cushing made, a very ornate 18th century style set:





I should add that there are makers who make Renaissance style woodwind instruments such as crumhorns etc and some of these makers make bagpipes, but these bagpipes are designed to use recorder fingering, not Scottish Highland fingering. I would call using such a bagpipe going the Early Music route.
Likewise a Ren Faire piper could simply use a Spanish gaita and be pretty close to a typical Renaissance bagpipe, but the gaita fingering system is entirely different from the Scottish. There was a piper out here who played a single-droned gaita at our California Ren Faires for years, and it's look blended in nicely with the rest of his authentic Renaissance ensemble. The gaita is in the key of C and can play chromatically so it's great for playing Early Music.

I need to emphasise that using a replica of a European Renaissance bagpipe with a Scots group at a Ren Faire probably is not very historically accurate, and in my opinion it would come far closer to the truth to use a Highland bagpipe with an early "look" to it. As far as we know, Highland pipes have always sounded like Highland pipes, and there's no evidence that early Highland pipes looked or sounded like Renaissance German pipes etc.