The Praetorius Schaper Pfeiff

By John Tose

Introduction
Everyone in the Bagpipe Society must be familiar with the Praetorius bagpipe illustrations from his `Syntagma Musicum’ of 1619. Recent editions of Chanter have covered Dave Vandoorn’s reconstructions of the Hummelchen and Grosser Boch but I don’t recall any articles covering the Schaper Pfeiff. In any case, the reconstructions of one maker are unlikely to be identical to those of someone else, and this in itself, and the reasons for it, should be of interest.
I have been making both conical bore, double reed and parallel bore, single reed `Welsh’ bagpipes for a number of years and I wanted to make something for playing early music that was significantly different from what I normally played. In addition, I also wanted an instrument that would fit in easily with the instruments my children were learning at school and with whom I sometimes play, namely Bb trombone and bass clarinet. Something of medium volume and able to play in F (for the clarinet) and Bb (for the trombone) would be ideal.

Problems with the source

A first glance at the Schaper Pfeiff showed that it might very well be ideal. Praetorius gives it with a chanter having an octave in F with a bell note of E. Looking at the drawing, the chanter would appear to be of about the right length relative to the rest of the instrument for this to be correct, and as luck would have it I already had a chanter in F from a previous uncompleted project that was a close match for the one pictured.
This is assuming the instrument to be a normal conical bore type, though as it is from Germany which marks the border between the single reed bagpipes of the east and the conical bore bagpipes of the west, this is by no means certain. As Praetorius describes it, the pitch of the chanter would be correct if it were conically bored, but in this case he has made an error with the pitch of the drones, giving them an octave too high, the longer drone being an octave below the chanters’ three finger note (Bb) and the smaller drone in unison with the six finger note (F). If the instrument had a single reed / parallel bore chanter then this may well be true but in that case, the whole instrument should be an octave lower!

Figure 1: Schaper - praetorius magdeburg drawing

To conclude, I decided that the chanter was to be conical, powered by a Highland chanter reed scraped and squeezed so that it would play with reasonable pressure. That it would have a six finger note of F with a semitone lower bell note and that the drones would be a `bass’ in Bb two octaves below the three finger note of the chanter while the `tenor’ would be in F an octave below the six finger note. I also decided to stick with my normal practice of having the bores of all the drone sections the same, purely because I find them much easier to reed up than those with stepped bores, and that the Bb drone should have a flared terminus on the top section while the F drone wouldn’t. With a uniform bore in the drones, and three sections to each drone as indicated in the drawings, by adjusting the sliders it is possible to get the drones to tune up a note to C and G respectively, facilitating playing five finger or two finger keynote tunes.
I also felt it was important to stick to the appearance of the turnings in the drawings, as what after all is the point of making a Praetorius Schaper Pfeiff unless it looks like a Praetorius Schaper Pfeiff?

Construction:
I will not go into too much technical detail on the construction of the parts. Those with experience will find no difficulty in following the plans. The only parts which are not straightforward are the chanter which requires the maker to first produce a suitable conical reamer, and the double drone stock which is quite fiddly to make if the drones are to end up parallel.
I have always used old files ground to shape with an angle grinder and fitted with a handle as conical bore reamers. The chanter is mounted on the lathe and, at low speed, I feed the reamer in by hand down a previously bored stepped pilot hole and removing it regularly to remove shavings. Woodturners these days abhore the use of turning tools made from files as it is said they have a tendency to shatter under load. If you feel this way then use some other type of steel. For a one-off, even mild steel would do.
Due to the length of the chanter I made mine in two parts, jointing and glueing them together afterwards. This is not shown in the diagrams as it should be possible to make the chanter in a single piece given a long enough piece of metal for the reamer.
The drone stock is a problem. I made mine from two pieces, a main stock turned to shape, with a flat side then filed on it to accept a secondary stock for the tenor drone. The main stock is bored straight through as the Bb drones’ reed is quite long. The secondary stock was shaped by hand to fit after having been bored part way through and attaches to the mainstock using a metal tube, a stud further up and plenty of araldite.
This arrangement has so far proved strong enough, though the original must surely have been made from a single block of wood, being bored first and then finished by hand carving.

Conclusions:
I had assumed when I decided to make the Schaper Pfeiff that they would be pretty much limited to tunes in Bb or C minor (with the drones tuned up a note ), though I did not perceive this as being a problem as I have never been very happy with tunes with a three finger tonic played against a six finger drone. I was somewhat surprised, however, when I fired them up for the first time, that although three finger tunes sounded good, so did many, though not all, tunes with a six finger keynote. This was even more noticeable when the pipes were tuned to the minor.
The drones make a very sweet, organ-like chord which seems to blend in very smoothly with much of the chanters’ range. At first I was somewhat confused at how nicely the chanters’ C sounded. How could that be possible with a Bb drone? The answer lay in a back issue of Chanter (newsletter 14, Jan, 1989) in a discussion of tuning philosophy for bagpipes with special reference to drone harmonics.
To summarise; the reason a single bass drone two octaves below the six finger note works so well is that the harmonics produced by the drone coincides with five of the notes produced by the chanter. The addition of a tenor drone an octave higher further strengthens some of these. Although it is generally said that a parallel bore single reeded pipe only produces the odd numbered harmonics, in practice they do produce weak even numbered ones, their strength depending on the design of the drone with its expanded bores at the joints and the terminal orifice.
With the Schaper pfeiff’s drone arrangement, these harmonics still coincide with five of the chanters notes, though different ones. In effect, the pipes sound slightly less good with six finger keynote tunes, as the harmonic for the third of the scale is lost, but much better for tunes with a three finger keynote as the harmonics support the three finger note, the two finger note, the one finger note as well as the six finger note and its octave.
Altogether a very satisfying and useful set of pipes.