Promoting the Bagpipe Revival since 1986
The Bagpipe Society
Chanter Autumn 1986
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Chanter ·the·journal·of· ·the·bagpipe·society·
·volume 1·part 2·
·interview·with· ·jean-pierre·rasle·of· ·the·cock·and·bull·band·
·jonathan·swayne·on· ·flemish·pipes·after·breugel·and· ·’english’·renaissance·bagpipes·
ISSN 0259 - 7939 AUTUMN/WINTER ‘86-87
SINFONYE PUBLICATIONS
Bagpipes and Hurdy-gurdies by Peter Stacey and Stevie Wishart
a delightful little book that could serve equally as a basic introduction to the two instruments or as a valuable source book for the already initiated person." Keith Hudson in Taplas
“Informative, well-produced, ideal for people between the ages of ten and one hundred years old.” Paul James in Folk Roots
24 pp, litho, 23 photos, 14 drawings £3.75 inc p+p
Fingering the Gaita Galega by Peter Stacey
A brief survey of methods of fingering the gaita galega (the bagpipe from Galicia, North-West Spain) including fingering charts from master gaiteiros Ricardo Portela, Juan Silvar and Pepe Ferreiros.
7 pp, mimeo, 6 charts £1.50 inc p+p
The Other Pipe Book
English melodies for bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies — currently being prepared for publication.
Also available from SINFONYE PUBLICATIONS…
Chanter: The Journal of the Bagpipe Society
Vol. 1, Part 1: Interview with Paul James of Blowzabella; Julian Goodacre on the Leicestershire Small-pipes… £2.75 inc p+p
Vol. 1, Part 2: Interview with Jean-Pierre Rasle of The Cock and Bull Band; Jonathan Swayne on Flemish Bagpipes after Breugel and ‘English’ Renaissance Bagpipes … £2.75 inc p+p
SINFONYE PUBLICATIONS, 62 Seymour Street, Splott, Cardiff CF2 2NS
Contents
A Warm Reception for Chanter: Peter Stacey 2
The Groeswen Glove: Or How to Make a Really Nifty Bagpipe for Less than Fifty Quid: Phil Edwards 5
Duda Duda Day: Simon Owen 7
WORKSHOP
Flemish Bagpipes after Breugel: Jonathan Swayne 11
‘English’ Renaissance Bagpipes: Jonathan Swayne 16
A Repertoire for the English Bagpipe? (1) Melodies from Playford’s Dancing Master: Peter Stacey and Matthew Spring 20
A Fur Cry from the MacCrimmons: Robert Wallace 35
‘A Fern from Skye’: Tony Conran 37
FOCUS ON Jean-Pierre Rasle
Jean-Pierre Rasle of The Cock and Bull Band talks to Simon Owen 42
Cock and Bull: The Story so Far: Jean-Pierre Rasle 50
FESTIVAL REVIEWS
The 1986 Blowzabella Festival: Dave Van Doorn 52
Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et Maitres-Sonneurs, St Chartier, Indre, France, 1986: Paul James 54
RECORD REVIEWS
Whistlebinkies — Whistlebinkies 4: Peter Stacey 58
Blowzabella — The Blowzabella Wall of Sound: Simon Owen 58
La Chavenee — Rage de Danse: Jonathan Swayne 60
Calicanto — Scano Boa: Jonathan Swayne 61
A Warm Reception for Chanter
Reviews and Reviewed
The first issue of Chanter was very well received and warmly welcomed by members of the Bagpipe Society and commentators in the folk press and other journals. Contributions for Chanter have been coming in at an encouraging rate. There is no doubt that members have a great wealth and depth of knowledge that they wish to share with each other. Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency. For Chanter to carry on being a useful journal, we need as many informed and interesting contributions as possible. We are particularly interested in expanding the reviews section. If you come across a new, or unusual, record of bagpiping, or including pipes, why not write a review of it for Chanter? This need not be a long-winded, literary commentary; it might include only: the title, performers, names, instruments used, type and origin of material, the name of the record company, and the name and address of the distributor. Steafan Hannegan is currently working on a comprehensive discography of bagpipe recordings, but it will be some time before we see the fruits of his labours. In the meantime it would be a great service if we could include at least some brief mention of all new releases.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee: Journal and Newsletter
Chanter is not the only publication of the Bagpipe Society. a Newsletter is also produced, appearing about six times a year. The latter carries news items about members, concerts, seminars, etc.: it also includes reviews of books and records. Chanter appears twice a year and aims to include material that will be of lasting interest. We hope to encourage the submission of well-researched articles. While we do not wish Chanter to become dry and academic, we do hope that it will have a certain seriousness of content making it a publication of more than ephemeral value.
New Editorial Address
All contributions for Chanter, including advertising material, should be sent to:
Peter Stacey
Journal Editor
62 Seymour Street
Splott
Cardiff
CF2 2NS
Deadlines
The next issue of Chanter should appear on June 1, 1987. Articles and advertising material should arrive no later than April 20, 1987.
Advertising Rates
£6.00 quarter page
£10.00 half page
£14.00 whole page (A5)
Please make all cheques payable to: The Bagpipe Society.
Address for Membership
If you are not a member of the Bagpipe Society and would like to join please write to:
Dave Van Doorn
49 Osborne Road
Hornchurch
RM11 1EX
© Copyright
The copyright of all material included in Chanter remains with the individual authors.
Apologies!
Perhaps we can blame it on teething problems, but one or two little (or not so little) mistakes crept into the last issue of Chanter. The most glaring domino was to omit a statement of the main aim of the Bagpipe Society from the list of the Society’s objectives reproduced in the constitution in Simon Owen’s article ‘The inaugural Meeting of the Bagpipe Society’. The list of aims should have been headed with this important statement:
‘The aim of the society is to promote communication, in all possible ways, between bagpipe players, makers, researchers and all those interested in bagpipes.’
We also owe apologies to John Goodacre on several counts: (1) For describing him in the editorial of Chanter vol. 1 no. 1 as the author of the Workshop article ‘Pipe Maker Beyond Leicestershire’ which was written by his brother Julian. (2) For not including the full and punning title of his composition included in the last issue of Chanter in Judy Tarry’s article ‘The Blowzabella Weekend Dance Tune Competition’. This should read ‘The Fruits of Newbury, a New Bourrée’. (3) For misprinting bar 6 of ‘The Fruits of Newbury, a New Bourrée’. This should read
[Music notation illustration]
Chanter 3
A Word of Thanks
We would like to thank all the contributors to this issue of Chanter and extend special thanks to André de Vries and Buddy Wells who have worked behind the scenes on typesetting and paste-up.
Peter Stacey
The Groeswen Glove — or how to make a really nifty
bagpipe for less than fifty quid
About five or six years ago, I was heavily involved in a really nice early music group called ‘The Dunstable Consort’. I also had a lovely recorder group at school and was looking for ways to extend them. Along came a musical instrument called a Cortol. It was described as a copy of the medieval instrument, the Kortholt. It was a wind-cap instrument, with fingering very similar to the recorder. It sounded ideal, so I ordered two.
Unfortunately, little lungs do not make good wind-cap players. They turn purple in the face and collapse. The two cortols languished in the cupboard whilst I toyed with the idea of turning them into a bagpipe. First of all I tried an old Tesco carrier bag. It worked but the crinkling sound was off-putting. The cortols languished for a few more months and then one night whilst doing the washing-up, a vision came to me. Why not use a rubber glove for the bag. And so Mark 1 was born. It was too hard to mouth blow, so I used an airbed foot-pump. The two cortols came out of the fingers, one of them have most of its holes blocked up with Blu-tack to provide the drone. Tuning was murder but when it was in tune, it sounded as sweet as a nut. It’s gone through quite a few changes but I think Mark 7 is pretty good. This is how to make one.
The Manifold device or stocks
Take a four-inch piece of drain-pipe. Stand in it three four-inch pieces of plastic pipe, the sort used for central heating and toilet overflows. Also, two four inch lengths of copper micro-bore. Fill up the spaces between the pipes with plastic casting resin, the sort that you get from craft and modelling shops. Don’t fill the drain-pipe right to the top. Leave about an inch of the pipes showing. When the resin has ‘gone off’ create a valve by sticking a small square of rubber (from a rubber glove of course!) along the edge of one of the micro-bores. Super-glue is great for this job. The valve fits on the flush end of the stock, not the end with the protruding pipes. Now I’m sure that was as clear as mud but rest assured, that’s the hardest part.
The Glove
Only one type of glove appears to work well! Luckily, this is the type that I first used, otherwise I would probably have given up on the project a long time ago. It can be found in Spar shops under the Spar rubber glove label, or in old-fashioned ironmongers where it is called a Span glove. Get a large pair in yellow; pink looks silly! Connect it to the stock with two large jubilee clips.
The Drone
I have only one drone but I’ve got blocked-up tubes where I could plug in a few more. I use aluminium tubing from a model shop. It’s the sort that is normally used to go around the drive shaft of a model boat. I have three pieces, one with a circumference of 1.9 cm and two with a circumference of 2.1 cm. Fit a cortol reed into one of the larger pieces. Wind some carpet tape around the pipe until the drone fits into one of the large pipes in the stock. Connect this piece of pipe to the other large piece using a small piece of rubber tubing. Slide the smaller piece of tubing into this piece. It slides up and down to facilitate tuning. Thus you have a drone pipe with a flexible bend in it. It may interest you to know that if you put the end of the drone in your mouth when you’re playing and kind of wobble your mouth a la Jew’s harp fashion, you get a bagpipe with a rhythm section! Try it with your pipes some time! Just for now block up the other two large tubes in the stock with wine corks.
The Pump
Use a standard Li-lo foot pump, the all-rubber type. The plastic type gives more air but it’s too noisy. You have to add some rubber tubing to the pump, otherwise it’s not long enough to reach from the floor to your arm-pit.
The Chanter
As I mentioned before, it’s a cortol, from Musica Ltd., 27 Fore St., Topsham, Devon. It’s a really nifty instrument as it has a doubled back bore like a bassoon, thus giving it a range of nearly two octaves and fully chromatic! Don’t forget to order a spare reed for your drone. Link it to the only obvious place left on your stock with another piece of rubber tubing and a little ingenuity.
Playing
Tuck the stock firmly under your left arm, pump slowly with your left foot, tune in, turn on and away you go.
Phil Edwards
Duda, Duda, Day . . .
‘There’s no such thing as Polish bagpipes,’ said my Polish friend with an air of finality. ‘Why then,’ I countered, ‘does the stamp on this letter you sent me show a picture of some?’ Faced with such irrefutable evidence, he promised to investigate when he got home. Some months later he returned bearing a bag of bits and pieces. ‘I got you these,’ he said, ‘and I’ve heard a tape of some being played, they sound horrible.’ Some things are the same the world over!
The result of assembling these bits is shown in Fig. 1.
[Drawing of assembled bagpipe figure]
Fig. 1
Figure 2 shows the individual components which will be considered in turn.
Chanter
The chanter is quite roughly made from stained, rather poor quality wood. The fingerholes, 6 + h (according to Baines’ nomenclature) are ungraded in size, but are all steeply slope-cut towards the reed end. Two vent holes lie terminal to the fingerholes and are followed by a tenon which fits into a huge ‘horn’, made from wood and bound with brass sheeting. It is possessed of a chain, although no obvious point of attachment on the chanter exists for it. The chanter reed is a single beating reed of cane which sits well down in the neck. The stock is in the form of a stylised goat’s head and is let into the top corner of the square, sewn vinyl bag.
Drone
The drone stock emerges from a stock in the other upper corner of the bag. Into this fits the compound drone assembly, consisting of three short wooden tubes bound together by brass rings, the bores being connected by brass U-tubes. No provision is made for tuning the drone by the usual fashion since none of the parts is movable, so presumably the drone must be pitched by means of the reed alone. The drone reed is monstrous and is made from a drilled piece of softwood. A wax blob adheres to the tongue, but no bridle is present. Tuning, therefore, is likely to be both inaccurate and time-consuming. Attaching to the end of the drone is a large metal-bound cow horn with a chain linking it to the rest of the components.
Blowing
The air supply comes courtesy of an enormous bellows which plays directly into a stock on the side of the bag.
The positioning of the stocks does not allow for a comfortable arrangement of holding and controlling the bag during playing. Since the bellows plays directly into the bag it must be held more to the front of the body than is usual, so the overall effect is rather clumsy.
The actual details of playing this instrument remain rather vague at present, since it was supplied with a broken chanter reed which I have not, as yet, replaced. The fingering is likely to be semi-closed if not fully closed, in order to maximise the tone and volume of the single-reed cylindrical chanter. However, the presence of vent holes in the chanter precludes the use of the bell as an imaginary drone as can be achieved in some other closed-fingered pipes (such as Julian Goodacre’s Leicestershire smallpipes). Perhaps there might be some reader(s) who can elucidate the salient points outlined above that I seem unable to resolve at present.
Simon Owen
WORKSHOP
The second article in a series in which makers describe the instruments they make
and discuss their philosophies of bagpipe design and construction.
Flemish Bagpipes after Breugel
I was bitten by bagpipes in 1977 at the London College of Furniture. It was all Bill
O’Toole’s fault. I thought I wanted to make baroque flutes, but then I discovered
that everyone was making them. Bill lent me a tin whistle and taught me some
tunes which he’d learnt from John Doonan records: then sometime during 1978 he
started making his first bagpipe based on a Flemish design he’d seen. It is fair to say
that there was a certain amount of outrage in the Early Woodwind Workshop, but
by the end of the year he had a working instrument in G/C. We did some playing
together on flute and bagpipe. Then Dave Armitage arrived at LCF with a
melodeon and an enormous knowledge of folk dance. Bill made me a set of pipes
like his, and in this way he was responsible for the beginnings of Blowzabella … In
due course we realised that what we needed was a G/C melodeon rather than
Dave’s D/G. Bill bought one, but when he returned to Australia he took it with
him. Rather than buy a new melodeon, for which we had no spare cash, I decided
to make a set of pipes in D/G.
The reason I made a Flemish set was that at that time no other type of pipe had
really penetrated my consciousness; I had heard some French instruments but was
very hazy about the different types. As for English ones, I had read Rod Cannon’s
articles, but there seemed so little to go on; there was certainly nothing of the
almost photographic quality of the dozens of Flemish paintings of pipes (see La
Cornemuse by Hubert Boone²). I realised that my parents had had a good full size
reproduction of Pieter Breugel the Elder’s ‘The Wedding Feast’ at home for as long
as I could remember, so I suppose I already had an unconscious familiarity with
Breugel’s instruments. I eventually chose the instrument in the ‘Peasant Dance’ as
a model, as it seemed about the right size for a D/G pipe. Secondly, although I had
seen one or two instruments posing as Breugel pipes, they did not look to me much
like the one in the pictures. Thirdly, although I was lucky enough to have a lot of
freedom in the course at LCF, the college attitude definitely favoured defunct
instruments as opposed to living ones.
Obviously, the first step was to work out the chanter. The only clear idea I had of
what I wanted was that it was to be a conically bored double-reed chanter, the
six-finger note giving D above middle C on the piano. Besides the major scale, with
a semi-tone leading note below, I wanted to be able to obtain C natural, B flat, F
natural and G sharp in that order of priority. At that time I thought of a whole-tone
below the main scale as being ‘Scottish’, but I have since decided that the
‘Scottishness’ or otherwise of the sound depends upon how the instrument is played
as far as this note is concerned, and now generally prefer to have a whole-tone, if
there is no choice. Knowing very little about conically bored wind instruments I had
Chanter 11
to decide on: (1) Bore taper (2) Bore length (3) Wall thickness (4) Fingerhole
positions (5) Reed type (6) Bore diameter at the throat. To start with I looked at an
early baroque oboe by Denner (whether J. C. Denner or I. Denner I cannot
remember). This had a main bore taper of 30:1, and a starting diameter of about
4.5 mm. In order to simplify matters I decided to neglect the variations from a true
truncated cone which occur in all baroque oboes, shawms, rauschpfeifen, and the
like. The taper turned out to be quite a fortunate choice. The minimal wall
thickness was fixed at 4 mm under the lowest finger hole and vent holes, gradually
increasing towards the top holes. As for the reed, I started rather optimistically
with a Highland chanter reed. Optimistically, since it is after all designed for a basic
pitch a major sixth higher than my intended design. Then I tried a Schalmei reed
from the Early Music shop; this seemed quite promising, but I couldn’t get them to
last very long; perhaps it was something to do with the fact that they are intended to
be played in the mouth. You can see that my ignorance about reeds at that stage
was phenomenal. The next try was an Irish chanter reed: Dave Armitage had a
practice set and gave me a couple of reeds to play about with. I cut down the staple
by about 15 mm, and have used a slightly modified Irish type reed ever since. The
fingerhole positions were arrived at by trial and error. Given eight fingerholes and
two vent holes, one set of positions for the first guess, and another set for the
second guess, and three trial reeds, that means a minimum of 60 holes for the first
prototype. Mine actually ended up with 60 holes, of which all but ten at any given
time were filled with beeswax. I was too lazy to make a new chestner for each new
trial. I only aimed for one octave, which made matters easier, but looking back. I
think I was quite lucky in getting a working chanter relatively quickly. That I was
able to get a cross-fingered F natural was an unexpected bonus, due, I now realise,
to the relatively large size and internal volume of an Irish reed for a chanter of this
type. The remaining cross-fingered notes are much easier to get anyway.
At this stage I returned to the painting to study the style and relative dimensions
of the instrument. The details of the turning are so precisely observed, and what is
more, consistent from painting to painting, that it seems quite reasonable to me to
place reliance on what is depicted. The next job was to decide on the length of the
drones. Dividing the length of the bass drone by the length of the chanter (less the
hidden tenons) gave the figure 1.78. Multiplying the length of my chanter, less
tenons, by the same figure gave about 900 mm. The actual length of the bass drone
relative to the chanter is probably greater than it appears because of foreshortening
due to parallax and perspective effects. I had already discovered by adding a
section onto the bass drone of my Bill O’Toole pipes that a length of somewhere
between 900 mm and 1000 mm was about right. I chose a bore of 7 mm, 8 mm and 9
mm for the first, second and third joints respectively. This seemed to give adequate
loudness and good stability. I was given the measurements of a Grunde Cornemuse
Bourbonnaise a few months ago, and discovered that the bass drone has the same
bore, and within a few millimetres the same length as mine. As for the tenor
drone, the ratio between tenor and bass drones in the past is roughly 3:2 which
implies an interval of a fifth. I decided to depend for authenticity in this respect,
since I wanted to be able to play tunes in D and G (six- and three-finger tonic)
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
without retuning or shutting off drones, so I designed the tenor drone to play one
octave above the bass; but I made it as long as I could within the requirement of
getting the right note in order to be as faithful as possible to the picture. Once the
lengths were decided, I could begin to arrive at the details of the turning, relative
diameters, lengths of sockets and tenons, size of decorations and so on. It was an
incredibly exciting and satisfying process to see the two-dimensional original
emerging in the solid reality of three dimensions.
The bag is really a story in itself, and I’m sure that many self-taught bagpipe
makers will find experiences in common. It took a lot of thinking about the shape
and internal visualisation before I even committed myself to put a shape on paper.
How to reproduce that beautifully plump and pear-shaped, but elegantly
swan-necked, bag? There is no evidence of a seam on top of the neck, so the bag
was not made from two pieces; instead the seam must continue at least up to the
drone stock position, and perhaps as far as the blowpipe. Nor does there seem to be
external stitching, so the bag must be turned inside out after stitching. But in ‘The
Wedding Feast’ there is what appears to be a fillet of leather protruding from the
seam; the answer lay in the bag of a Musette de Cour which I saw in the
Conservatoire Museum at Brussels. This was sewn in the manner of Fig. 1, Fig. 2
shows the arrangement with the bag everted. The result is a really solid seam.
However the process of sewing is somewhat laborious since there are six layers of
leather to deal with. The first bag was agony to make, and took about 8 hours of
sewing in all. It was so big that I had to sew up the neck after turning it inside out,
even after choosing a relatively large chanter stock diameter of 45 mm. Since then,
after learning from others, I have made a sewing clamp, and can finish a bag in
about 1½ hours. That first bag was much bigger than my present standard bag,
which itself, at a 10 a.m. festival bagpipe workshop the morning after, can seem
bottomless; but I think it was much nearer the size in the pictures. The line drawing
is from a photograph taken at St. Chartier in 1980. Unfortunately that instrument,
together with others, was nicked from my van a couple of years ago . . .
12 13
Chanter Chanter
s for materials, the first smart chanter was made from pear, and all subsequent from plum. Of all native hardwoods, I like plum the best, both for its colour its texture (except for box, which would not really be suitable for an instrument is size). The first dozen or so sets I made with stocks and drones from Pau a so-called box substitute from Brazil, which is cheap, turns well, and gives a 1 colour when acid-stained, but it’s not much good for chanters because you to get a hairy bore. Having secured a reasonable supply of plum I thereafter ed using plum throughout. ce my first tidy version of the instrument had settled down after the first 1s of playing, both on my own and in Blowzabella (an invaluable testbed for ipes), I did not change the design except in one or two minor ways, and it has ed the same since. anges have been: (1) slightly shortening the tenor drone to make it easier to , (2) changing to a plastic body/metal tongue reed for the bass drone, (3) ening the chanter bell to lessen the risk of damage from accidental knocks, and hanging to a water based bag dressing as opposed to an oil based one. The new bass drone reed was a great advance because the cane version, being rather , only fitted with difficulty in the stock: it was also a lot more stable. One us and unforeseen intermittent fault has been interaction between the two e reeds. This seems to be due to the particular internal dimensions of the & and is exacerbated by a tenor drone reed which is relatively weak. Using a r tenor drone reed seems to cure the trouble. have found the chanter somewhat critical as regards reed design. The reed has e rather precisely made and adjusted, whereas other types of chanter I have e since seem to be less demanding. On the other hand I have found that a good well treated will last a long time. nally, it is interesting to look at the correspondences, if any, between my initial an intentions, namely a ‘Breugel’ pipe in D/G, the instrument shown in the sant Dance’ and the finished bagpipe. It seems that the instrument which ually satisfied my requirements turned out to be remarkably like the mment in the picture without my having had, as it were, forced my design upon iture. Allowing for difficulties in precise measurement, the ratio of the visble th of the chanter to the length of the player’s right forearm from elbow to rtips is 1.13:1. The ratio of the length of my chanter to my forearm is about 1. The relationship of the player’s forearm to mine is not so easy to determine. I am 6’ 2" tall, I am likely to be taller than the musician in the picture, but it s that the relationship of forearm length to height is not constant, and I would essarily be longer in the forearm. Supposing his forearm to be not more than orter than mine, the pitch of his chanter could not be more than 180 cents (i.e. han one whole tone) higher in pitch than mine. The difference is likely to be n practice. realise that I have said little about the more subtle details of chanter rformance, such as response and tone quality. This reflects the fact that at the ning of the design process I was much more concerned about basic matters stability and inter-note tuning. That the tone quality has turned out to be quite
pleasing is I suppose to quite a large extent fortuitous, being governed by the reed shape and chanter dimensions (including hole positions and sizes). As far as stability is concerned, one aspect of it is the extent to which the pitch of any note changes with variations in bag pressure. A pipe which is unduly sensitive to bag pressure by way of pitch changes can be tricky to play in tune, thus it is desirable for the pitch of the chanter to be relatively insensitive to variations in bag pressure for all notes. This point assumes greater importance with a chanter designed to ‘octave’. (A useful verb, this; not recognised, as far as I know in English; but the French use the verb ‘octavier’ as in ‘Cet hautbois-ci octave, mais je ne peux pas octavier sur cet hautbois-la.’ Try to say the same thing using the usual English expressions and you will find yourself using many more words.) Since extra bag pressure is needed to octave, relative insensitivity of the lower octave to variations
Chanter
Flemish Bagpipes after Breugel
Chanter
15
in pressure means that transitions can be made more smoothly. As far as response is concerned, I would expect a chanter to be able to cope cleanly with wide and fast interval leaps within the basic octave; this would be especially important for leaps which end with the six-finger note, since this movement is such a basic component in the vocabulary of articulation. For wide and fast interval leaps to be achieved in tune, the basic octave must be tuned for constant bag pressure, so here, tuning, stability and response are inter-related. If all these considerations can be optimised and at the same time the bag pressure be made moderate, then the pipe will feel easy to play.
‘English’ Renaissance Bagpipes When I made the first set of Flemish pipes in 1980 I had no thought that making pipes would occupy so much of my time in the years to come. The pipes created their own demand, and making them stimulated my interest in bagpipes in general. After a year or two the desire arose to make a set of English pipes in G, and this happened to coincide with Blowzabella’s requirement for G pipes. Paul James and Cliff Stapleton had just joined the band, and Cliff’s hurdy-gurdy was pitched in G/C.
Rod Cannon’s articles opened my eyes to bagpipes in England, and I began to look around for pictures of them. As far as I know there are not many pictures of pipes in southern England. There is in fact no pictorial evidence of a distinct regional or national style of instrument, and those that do appear are not particularly dissimilar to contemporary north-west European types. Probably the best known are:
- an engraving on the bard of silvered armour belonging to King Henry VIII (1509-1547)
- ‘Southwark Fair’ (1773) by William Hogarth (1698-1764)
- ‘The Election Party’ by William Hogarth
- A sculpture in the antechapel of Magdalen College, Oxford.
There are of course any number of church sculptures showing various sorts of bagpipes. They are not of much use to me as a maker for three main reasons. Firstly, for obvious reasons they are not particularly realistic; secondly, most of them date from before the mid-15th century; thirdly, because I understand that as much stone-carving was carried out by itinerant artisans from all over Europe, the pipes cannot necessarily be regarded as having local attachments. The same argument can be applied to the pictures, but at least some of the artists are known to be English, even if they were depicting European models. The reason I was after pictures from the 16th century is that it was then that a second drone seems to have appeared, and I wanted a second drone for the extra body that it gives to the sound. My impressions of the pictorial evidence boiled down to two main stylistic features, namely, rather large bells on chanter and drones, and quite plain tuning. So much for stylistic objectives.
Musically speaking, I wanted to make a pipe that had very much a character of its own. The second half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th saw a general refinement in the tone quality of wind instruments, and this was reflected in the exterior shape. Bagpipes also followed this trend, witness the development of the pastoral pipes, the small pipes and apparently the Half-long and Border pipes during this period. The present-day pipes of central France with their exquisite sonority, probably developed at this time. My idea was to make an instrument which represented the visual and aural aesthetics of the pre-baroque era; at the same time the sound should not be so overpowering as to be useless in a band context.
Not long before, I had been fortunate enough to obtain an original early 19th century zampogna from the Abruzzi region of Italy, very similar to those depicted in Baines.¹ It was fitted with reeds, two of which were still in working order. These instruments come in two types; the solo version, in which the chanters are pitched a fourth apart, and the version designed to accompany a separate mouth-blown shawm (zicamella) in which the chanters are one octave apart. Mine was of the second type, the absolute pitch being centred around A. The style and technology of these instruments bear the hallmark of renaissance wind instruments, even down to the keywork. The sound is robust rather than subtle, quite loud but not raucous, and well-focused. In trying to make a renaissance bagpipe it suddenly struck me that the shorter chanter of my zampogna would be a perfect place to start.
A description of the bore will show that it is rather unusual as compared with more ‘modern’ bagpipes. The reed socket tapers from about 8 mm at the top to 6.3 mm over a distance of about 15 mm; there follows a parallel section of about 45 mm after which the bore expands to 10.5 mm over a distance of 75 mm; then there is a virtually parallel section for 85 mm, when the bore expands again for about 90 mm by a further 4.5 mm, but rather irregularly; thereafter the bore expands more steeply to form a rather flat (i.e. cone-shaped) bell about 90 mm long with a terminal diameter of about 65 mm. Although the taper of the two expanding sections is quite steep (about 18:1 for the first and 20:1 for the second) because of the two parallel sections, the overall taper to the start of the bell is relatively gentle — about 35:1. At the same time the diameter of the throat is large at 6.3 mm. There are two vent holes at 133 mm from the bell, and a third one at 185 mm. The fingerholes (five in all, giving a leading note and the first five notes of the major scale) are quite small and highly placed. Apart from some lightly incised rings, the exterior is devoid of decoration and nearly parallel down to the start of the bell. The reed is as described in Baines, with a short flat staple, and a long parallel blade. The top of the chanter, instead of having a narrower diameter tenon bound with lapping thread, carries a taper which fits into a corresponding female taper in the stock. My modifications consisted chiefly of some regularisation of the bore, finding the position of further fingerholes to complete the octave, and lowering the pitch by about a tone. The bore, after modification, started at 6 mm, then without a parallel section expanded over 150 mm to 11 mm; after a parallel section of 95 mm, there followed a further expansion of 3 mm over a distance of 90 mm, before the start of the bell.
I found that the acoustic parameters of the chanter (large reed, small holes?) gave good cross-fingering, so that I was able to get F natural, E flat, C sharp and B
12 Chanter 17
English Renaissance Bagpipes
flat, in addition to the normal major scale. With a good reed I could also get a top J A by increasing the bag pressure and pinching the thumbhole. By replacing the thumb and increasing the pressure still further I could even get to top B and C, but these notes were of limited musical use because of the excessive pressure required to get them. As for drones, I decided they should be divergent, in a common stock. There was no particular reason for this except that I liked the idea of divergent drones, but felt that they might be physically difficult to manage in separate stocks. The stock itself is circular in section but reducing in diameter from the drone end to the point where it ties into the bag. I applied very simple decoration in the form of plain beads at the top of the chanter and at the start of the bell, and in similar places on the drones. Sometimes I have carried these out in black horn, and sometimes in the wood of the pipe. I used the same bag as on the Flemish pipes, as I felt it represented a good average renaissance bag. From all of the foregoing, you can see that my approach to bagpipe making is essentially pragmatic. I prefer being in my workshop making instruments, or playing them, to spending time on painstaking research, which in any case I could not afford. I feel that my “English” pipes, despite their somewhat debatable claims to Englishness, stand at least as good a chance as any other of showing what a renaissance bagpipe might have sounded like. But perhaps what I like about them most is that they have a distinctive character all of their own which I have not heard elsewhere.
Jonathan Swayne
Notes
- R. D. Cannon, ‘The Bagpipe in Northern England’. Folk Music Journal II, No. 2 (1971), p. 127; ‘English Bagpipe Music’, Folk Music Journal II, No. 3 (1972), p. 176.
- Hubert Boone, La Cornemuse (Brussels: Editions La Renaissance du Livre).
- Anthony Baines, Bagpipes (Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, 1960).
Chanter Chanter 19
A Repertoire for the English Bagpipe?
Melodies from Playford’s Dancing Master (1651—ca. 1728)
This is the second article in a series exploring musical sources for the creation of a repertoire for the English bagpipe. The introductory article (Chanter vol. 1, part 1) briefly reviews the renaissance of early English bagpipes and considers various strategies for the creation of a repertoire for these instruments. In this and subsequent articles I will present melodies culled from various sources from medieval times to the eighteenth century.
This article does not present all the melodies from the Dancing Master that are possible on pipes, instead I have chosen a handful of pieces that seem suitable. My prefatory comments on choosing and adapting English melodies for bagpipes are followed by a general introduction to the Dancing Master by Matthew Spring, a lutenist and musicologist with a special research interest in seventeenth-century English music. The notes following some of the melodies that are presented at the end of the article are also by Matthew Spring.
Selection and Adaptation
Scouring through collections of English dance melodies and other sources produces a large quantity of material that seems suitable for performance on early English bagpipes. One quickly discovers, however, that not all of the material that can be played on bagpipes necessarily sounds convincing on these instruments. For every ten or so tunes that are possible, only one may be totally convincing as a bagpipe melody. So before we throw ourselves headlong into the search for old English melodies for the bagpipe, I think that it is worthwhile considering some of the principal points that go into making a successful bagpipe melody.
1. Available Pitches: The Chanter
The first and most obvious point in the selection of a suitable melody is that the notes of the melody in question must be available on the instrument that is to be used. Already we run into difficulties here as there is no standardisation in the style of chanter associated with early English bagpipes. Some instruments produce only the eight notes of the diatonic scale, others have chromatic possibilities and are capable of playing in major and minor tonalities. Some instruments have sharpened leading notes as the seven-finger note and these instruments are more suited to playing melodies in the major tonality, others have a flattened leading note and are therefore more suited to the performance of modal melodies.
While most instruments are limited to a range of an octave plus one note (the seven-finger note), other instruments are capable of overblowing and can play melodies that reach two, three, or more notes above the first octave. Some other instruments are fitted with keys to allow the inclusion of higher pitches.
In the process of selecting melodies to form the basis of a repertoire for English pipes, I have tended to choose melodies that are more or less restricted to one octave. Not all of the melodies presented in this series of articles will be playable on all instruments conceived of as English bagpipes or adopted as surrogates for this purpose. Some of the melodies are more suited to instruments capable of playing modal style melodies, while the others are more suited to instruments capable of playing diatonic melodies. However, it is always possible to adapt melodies transposing passages that fall outside the chanter’s range, and substituting sharpened leading notes for flattened ones and vice versa. Not all melodies can be successfully adapted in these ways; the success of such an adaptation depends entirely on the nature of the melody in question and the type of adaptation that is being attempted. (Methods of adaptation are considered in more detail below.)
2. The Drone
While a few melodies fit perfectly onto drones with just the right proportions of movement away from and back to melody notes that are consonant with the drone, other melodies have implied harmonic backgrounds that militate against a drone accompaniment. The easiest way to find out whether a melody fits on a drone is to play it; this experience quickly leads to an understanding of which melodies are likely to be successful. It is important to be critical in the selection of melodies to use over drones. Some melodies simply will not sit on a drone accompaniment and continued efforts to make them fit into this musical environment will only result in frustration.
Melodies like ‘Grimstock’, ‘Bobbing Joe’, and other melodies presented below have melodic outlines that easily accommodate a drone accompaniment, indeed some of them sound distinctly more interesting for it. ‘Greenwood or The Huntsman’ is an example of a melody that adapts less well to a drone accompaniment, especially in the form it appears in the first edition of the Dancing Master.
Greenwood or The Huntsman
♪ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩
Generally speaking, modulations or changes of key tend to make melodies less suitable for performance on bagpipes. There are exceptions to this rule, however, with modulations to the dominant, sub-dominant and submediant all being feasible especially where they occur as transitory modulations. A melody that has a pronounced structural modulation at the end of its first line, for example, is much less likely to work well on pipes.
Chanter 20 Chanter 21
- Articulation, Ornamentation and Rhythm
Articulation and ornamentation, cutting and gracing, are among the most idiomatic and fascinating aspects of bagpipe playing. If a melody invites the forms of articulation that suit bagpipes then it is more likely to be a successful candidate for the bagpipe repertoire.
Rhythmic patterns are also important. Melodies with regular rhythmic patterns tend to be more successful than those with varied and irregular patterns.
Adaptation
In some cases melodies that are in many respects suitable for performance on bagpipes may require a certain amount of adaptation before they become tolerably successful bagpipe melodies. A melody that sounds attractive over a drone may not fit the chanter well. ‘Bobbing Joe’ is an example of a good rhythmic melody that fits well over a drone.
[score excerpt]
Drone (5) in a
While all the notes of this melody are available on some chanters, other instruments may not have the flattened seventh (the note f’ in this example) or the minor third (the note b♭ flat in this example). An instrument that has a sharpened seventh in the seven-finger note would produce the following pattern in the second line if no adaptation were made:
[score excerpt]
This totally upsets the modal flavour of the tune. By transposing the f’ up an octave, however, this problem is avoided and the melody remains much the same:
[score excerpt]
For chanters that do not give a minor third (b♭ flat) another solution is available; this is to play the melody starting with the five-finger note. The result is that the key note of the melody will be discordant with the drone, but as so much of the melody works around the flattened seventh the overall effect is still acceptable.
22
Chanter
[score excerpt]
Instruments with the ability to change the pitch of the drone(s) can overcome this problem by bringing up the pitch of the drone(s) to the pitch produced by the five-finger note, and as a result no adaptation would be necessary.
To summarise, the essential principle of the adaptation of melodies to fit a given bagpipe involves the transposition of pitches, or the substitution of one pitch (or group of pitches) for another, without destroying the particular qualities of the melody. It is often surprising to find how much of a melody can be changed without the melody’s identity being lost, and it seems entirely in keeping with the pragmatic spirit of music making of past centuries to treat the inherited material in this way. Melodies are musical ideas whose spirits may move from one instrument to another, from one executant to another, undergoing a myriad of subtle transformations, without losing their essential identities.
Peter Stacey
23
Chanter
Stingo
Bobbing Joe
Picking of Sticks
The Whim
All in a Garden Green
Chanter 25
24
Goddesses
Red House
Grimstock
Washington’s March
Chanter
Chanter
Half Hanjikin
Old Rigadoon
Nonesuch
A la mode de France
An Italian Rant
Jenny Pluck Pears
A Brief Introduction to Playford’s Dancing Master
Jeremy Barlow in his recent edition of the 430 tunes published by John Playford and his successors as The Dancing Master, or in the case of the first edition The English Dancing Master, states in his preface that the tunes collectively ‘constitute the most important source of popular instrumental tunes to be found in England during the period’ (i.e. 1651-1728).’ Indeed, the tunes have been of interest as such since the eighteenth century. William Chappell in his monumental Popular Music of the Olden Times (1859) was the first to draw on the Dancing Master as a musical source for popular vocal music, especially as regards broadside ballads.2 The often topical broadside ballads of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not normally printed with music, but only with a reference to the possible popular tunes that would fit the verses. Chappell saw that Playford in his Dancing Master often provided the tunes that were lost.
Cecil Sharp early this century investigated Playford’s collection with an eye to using the books as sources for the revival of folk dancing. In doing so he drew attention to the changes in fashion apparent in the successive editions as regards dances in the period 1651-1728. In particular he noted with disapproval the decline of what he saw as the ‘older forms of dance’, the ‘Rounds’, ‘Squares’, ‘Langs for fours’, etc., in preference for types of ‘Langways for as many as will’.3
Sharp’s work was supplemented in the 1930’s by Evelyn K. Wells and Anne G. Gilchrist both of whom published articles in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society which investigated the origins of Playford’s tunes on an individual basis and in the case of Gilchrist pointed to similarities with Continental folk dance and song traditions.4 However, it was not until the 1950’s that a scholarly study was made of the Dancing Master by Margaret Dean-Smith who published Playford’s original book as A Facsimile Reprint with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (1957),5 as well as articles on the Playford family and work on the origins of Playford’s tunes.
Dean-Smith’s work is significant for showing not only how Playford’s published tunes and dances were known to all classes in the seventeenth century both high and low but that Playford intended his books primarily for the middle and gentry classes and not for the common folk. Indeed, the first edition was addressed particularly to the gentlemen of the Innes of Court ‘whose sweet and ayry Activity has crowned their Grand Solemnities with Admiration to all Spectators’ and was dedicated to the son of the Master of the Temple, Sir Peter Bell.6
Playford and his successors cast a wide net when looking for suitable dance tunes for his books, drawing not only on well established country dance tunes like ‘Trenchmore’ and ‘Nonesuch’ which we know were danced in Elizabethan times7 but also on Court masque dances such as ‘Aye me or The Symphony’ and ‘Gray’s Inn Mask’ which were composed for specific Court masques.’ Increasingly the Dancing Master editions, like Playford’s instrumental publications (especially Musicks Recreation of the Lyra-Viol 1652-1682) and Apollo’s Banquet (1670-1701) drew on Scots tunes as they increasingly became the fashion in the later
seventeenth century. However the eclecticism displayed by the Playfords in choosing their tunes should not prejudice us against any of them; they have all become, through use, a legitimate part of English traditional music.
Matthew Spring
Notes
- The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford’s Dancing Master (1651–ca. 1728). ed. Jeremy Barlowe (London: Faber Music, 1985), p. 4.
- William Chappell, Popular Music in the Olden Times (London: Chappell, 1859); reprint ed. with a new introduction by Frederick W. Sternfeld, 2 vols (New York: Dover, 1965).
- Cecil J. Sharp, The Country Dance Book, 6 parts (London: Novello, 1909–22). See part II (1913), pp. 7–26.
- Evelyn K. Wells, “Playford Tunes and Broadside Ballads”, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 3/2 (1937), 81–92; 3/3 (1938), 195–201; 3/4 (1939), 259–273. See also Anne G. Gilchrist, “Some Additional Notes on the Traditional History of Certain Ballad-Tunes in The Dancing Master (1650)”, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society 34 (1939), 274–280.
- Margaret Dean-Smith, Playford’s Dancing Master (1651) A Facsimile Reprint with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (London, 1957).
- Ibid. See the ‘Introduction’.
- See Wells, op. cit. (1938), p. 202.
- ‘Aye me or The Symphony’ appeared first in The Triumph of Peace (1634) with music by William Lawes. Simon Ives and Charles Coleman. ‘Grays Inn Mask’ or ‘Mad Tom’ is associated with the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613).
Abbreviations used in the following notes:
| Chappell | William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Times. London, 1859.
| Cithern and Cittern (1652) | John Playford, A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern and Cittern. London, 1652.
| Cithern (1666) | John Playford. Musick’s Delight on the Cithern. London, 1666.
| FWVB | Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 32 g.29 (Mus. MS 168). The Fitzwilliam virginal book.
| Musick’s Handmaid (1663–89) | John Playford. Musick’s Hand-maide presenting New and Pleasant Lessons for Virginals or Harpseyon (London, 1st ed. 1663 with further eds. in 1668, 78 and 89).
| Simpson | Claude M. Simpson. The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music. New Jersey, 1966.
Notes on Tunes
Bobbing Joe
This tune is associated with the ballad ‘I ne’er yet saw a lovely creature’ by Patrick Carey (Caroline Poems, ii, 456, from Trivial Poems (1651)). It is also associated with other broadside ballads and appears in Playford’s other instrumental books (Cittern and Cittern (1652), Cithern (1666)) and several ballad operas including Gay’s Polly. Simpson (pp. 46–47) states that ’the ballad makes it obvious that ‘Bobbin jo’ is equivalent to the ‘green grow’, a euphemism for the sexual act.’
Stingo or The oil of barley
Simpson (pp. 687–692) states that the Dancing Master (1651) contains the earliest musical text of this tune. It subsequently appeared in 1652 in Cithern and Cittern (1652). In 1652 Hilton published a slightly different version of the tune in his Catch that Catch can (1652) as ‘A Northern Catch’. This altered version was given new words by Thomas D’Urfey and published in Comes Amoris, ii. 1686, p. 16 as ‘The last New Scotch Song’ beginning ‘Could and Raw the North did blow’. The tune became enormously popular and a favourite of Queen Mary but, due to D’Urfey’s words, was usually thought of as a Scotch tune which it probably never was.
Nonesuch
A country dance tune associated with Henry VIII’s Nonesuch Palace. The tune is mentioned in letters of the Earls of Salisbury and Worcester in 1602, and was probably a pipe and tabor tune. It appears in many of Playford’s other instrumental books for violin, cittern, gittern and lyra-viol.
À la mode de France
The name ‘À la mode de France’ originates from a ballad of the 1640s which was set to the tune known as ‘The French Report’. The ballad comments on the raising of troops by the Queen in Holland during the Civil War and has the refrain ‘à la mode de France’.
Hulfe Hanniken
This tune seems to be related to the Hanskin of FWVB, Thysius MS and other instrumental MS sources which Playford included in his collections as ‘Jog On’ or ‘Eighty-eight’. The ‘Hulfe Hanniken’ tune which is somewhat different appears under its title in the Board and Ridout MSS for lute and cittern respectively. It was one of the country dances included in Ben Jonson’s masque Time Vindicated performed on 19 January 1623.
An Italian Rant
Federico Ghisi pointed out that this tune which became very popular in England in the seventeenth century, was composed by the Italian singer and composer Giuseppino. See ‘An Early Seventeenth Century MS’, Acta Musicologica, XX (1948), 49,50,58. The tune’s full title is ‘fuggi, fuggi, fuggi da questo cielo’. It appears in Cithern and Gittern (1652), Musick’s Handmaid (1678) and was published in the Netherlands and was later used by Smetana in Vltava. See New Grove 7, p. 417.
Jenny Pluck Pears
Playford’s version of this dance is the earliest source. In his The Country Dance Book part 2 (London: Novello, 1913) Sharp noted the significant changes made to the tune in successive publications of the Dancing Master. The first edition has the tune in the Dorian air with two flats. The second version has the tune in the minor mode with 5 sharps and the fourth and subsequent editions use the major mode. Cecil Sharp felt the versions in later editions were inferior to the original and the changes were indicative of the decline in quality of Playford’s dance books as they increasingly conformed to fashion.
All in a Garden Green
A ballad with the title ‘All in a garden grene/betwene ij lovers’ was licensed by William Pekering as early as 1565–66. It appears in an instrumental version in the Ballet lute book and was used by Sweelinck and Vallet in Holland as the basis for pieces.
Goddesses
This tune which appeared in the FWVB as ‘Querdling’s Delight’ was used for the ballad ‘The Northern Lasses Lamentation’. Gilchrist (p. 277) noted an affinity with Danish and Scandinavian ballad airs and with several northern airs.
The Whim
Also known as ‘Bartholomews Fair’, this tune is connected to the late seventeenth-century ballad ‘Roger in Amaizor, or, the Countrey Mans Ramble through Bartholomew Fair’. It appeared in all editions of Pills and many ballad operas.
Chappell (pp. 585–86) noted the unusual phrases of three measures common to English jigs and hornpipes and also that the termination of each phrase with the same note three times suggested Irish characteristics.
M.S.
This article first appeared in the West Highland Free Press
A Far Cry from the MacCrimmons: Scotland’s Forgotten Bagpipes
A glance at the history and recent revival of the Lowland pipes
There is nothing quite like the Great Highland Bagpipe. Its music and history have spread worldwide and the ancient tunes are whistled in Winnipeg and hummed in Hong Kong.
Yes, the music is quite magnificent and the history behind it not bad either. There’s enough romance there to keep every fireside storyteller occupied for hours.
But can I ask you to pause for a moment? I do so because I want you to consider what I’ll call the forgotten Scottish bagpipes. If you were unaware that there was such a thing as another form of Scottish bagpipe then I’m not surprised.
But in this small country of ours there once thrived no less than five different types of pipes. These were the Great Highland Pipe, the Reel pipe (a half-size Highland pipe), a miniature, or chamber pipe, the Lowland pipe, and the Lowland small pipe. You could also add to this various hybrid forms of the instrument, but these were the main instruments extant in Scotland until the mid-nineteenth century. We all know about the first-mentioned so I won’t waste space describing it, but I will explain a bit about the others.
The Reel pipe was, as I’ve said, a half-sized version of the Great Highland and was used, as the name suggests, for dances and social gatherings where a lot of playing was required. The smaller size probably made them quieter and easier to manage. They are seldom played today but are often used as a teaching aid for boys or girls. The miniature, or chamber, pipe was much quieter still and had a sound similar to Northumbrian pipes and could be either mouth or bellows blown. Again, very suitable for playing indoors. This pipe is still heard today but invariably the bottom half of a practice chanter is used instead of the proper chanter which would be of a higher pitch and therefore have more ‘carry’.
The Lowland pipe has undergone a major revival recently, as has its wee brother the Lowland small pipe. These instruments are both blown with a bellows. The Lowland pipe is similar to a Reel pipe with all of the drones in a common stock. The small pipe is the same but is much smaller and has a sound again like the Northumbrian pipe, the main differences being a less elaborate drone system and an open-ended chanter.
I first came across these instruments in the late Francis Collinson’s excellent work ‘The Traditional and National Music of Scotland’ 10 years or so ago. Since then the Lowland pipes, both large and small, have undergone an amazing revival.
A new society, the Lowland the Borders Pipers Society, has been formed. A tutor has been compiled and frantic research into the old Border tunes is underway by a number of people. An annual competition is held with pipers from all over the UK attending. There are categories for Lowland pipes, small pipes, duets for pipes.
Chanter Chanter
34 35
and other instrument (these pipes are much more suited than the Highland pipes to playing with other instruments), and song plus pipe accompaniment. There is one legend that says to be considered a competent Lowland piper you had to be able to play, sing and dance at the same time!
I was invited along to judge at the recent LBPS contest, held in the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh, and I asked Gordon Mooney, president, how he saw the future.
‘All the makers tell me that their sales of small pipes are booming. The larger Lowland pipes are also catching on but at a slower rate. I think this is because they are more difficult to handle. But for anyone who has the application the rewards are great. Highland pipers who have had to give up through poor health will find this instrument just the job. No blowing, just a gentle pumping action with the elbow and you can have the same sound almost as the Highland pipes with a lot less volume.
‘This is what people find attractive. We currently have 100 members, half of them overseas. There’s nothing formal or stylised about what we do. There’s even room for improvisation. It’s all very much a case of doing your own thing.’
And what of the competition? Lowland pipe champion was Paul Roberts from Leculs who was informality itself (Army style peaked cap, ear-ring, leather jacket) with a sparkling display of Border melodies, complete with bendy notes, vibrato and overblown extra notes. Scottish small pipes champion was Jamie MacDonald-Reid, the pipes-song competition was won by David Robertson and brothers Julian and John Goodacre took the pipes-and-other-instrument title.
It was all a far cry from the days of the MacCrimmons, but who knows things may have been just as rough and ready in their day.
Robert Wallace
A Fern from Sky
for Somhairle MacGill-eain
(Sorley Maclean)
“Lament for the Children” -
a pibroch by Pàdraig Mór MacCrimnein
1
We came across two worlds to see you, Sorley,
To Skye
The last battlefield, the last
Never say die
Of the Gael: the Celtic world squeezed out,
Cauterised for sheep;
Its leaders angled in sharp practice;
Highland and creek
Emptied of the tribes;
Croft and song
Left rotting like bladderwrack
On the high strand.
2
It was here, in Peinnachorrain of the Braes,
That the tenants held fast,
Met and showed fight. Broken head,
Clout and gasp
By their intransigence, refused
That grey day
At the sea coast, to be dumped
Or charted away.
Visitors we came. Clean air delighted us, gull music,
Cottages
Under the hill, clinking of little streams
And a damp breeze
From Raasay across the Sound. But you, you live here,
Poet, among
The presentative past of your people.
The old tongue
You teach to seed, in the imagination’s Freehold To grow and in untoward time, to green bare rock Like veins of gold.
3 To a tryst I’d come. For fifteen years I’d fingered the coin Of our one meeting together, kept our currency Of talk warm
In the pockets of my heart. Poet — Greatest in these islands now — here’s that groat for you. Look, my hand holds it!
4 But your cottage was closed. You were away! In the filtering light Tangled woods and wet places Of Raasay were bright . . .
But as I turned to join my children already Racing down In the joyous concentration of shingle and sand, The shrill sound
Of them dimmed in the great space like oystercatchers’, Like peewits’, And their mother walking between them, drawing them after her For all their tricks
Like a shepherd to the best pasture — As I turned, It was your wall caught my eye: the piled stones, stone-crop And the mats of fern.
5 Male fern, was it? Branching stocks, Stiff straight frond Crinkled and each pinna upturned to the air — no, It felt wrong! —
Dryopteris oreades then? Pioneer Of high screes, Not under a thousand feet, the books say, Nor by the sea.
A highland plant, its distribution Not fully known — Not, certainly, expected in the sea-level Stones of your home.
For a moment it seems like the Gael himself — Its history A lost unexpectedness, a perfecting Entelechy
Informing the blue distances. Not for it The plush leafmould of a wood. Rock its roots fit.
6 Rock. And a great music. Apprehension Of the fern resonating To the taut scansion
Of that ground. Piper pulls the lament Round him, Walks the contemplative ways The air has found him.
Slow measure of this music’s Magnanimity. A reaching certainty. Sorrow Between the cloud and sea.
Each variation affects the light, Each singling Of gracenotes the geometry of this Lament for the children.
For the children that are not. For those died In all ages, now. For those In the hunger have died.
For the Gael who loses this music. For the children, For me, O Conraíín of the Curraigh, This grace singling.
7 Oreades in the stone. Music’s geometry Along your wall Makes interface. People with real names Find your door.
The heart has freehold. Green veins Of a poetry Gold in the rock. Black roots Between cloud and sea.
The children circle the beach. Their antennae Gather Treasure from the stones — a shell, A curlew’s feather . . .
I thought, you wouldn’t mind. I widged With my knife A tiny crown — this fern — from the mat Of its crinkled life.
It grows now by my kitchen window My daughters carp As they come from school. their Welsh words Tugged and sharp
And flown across its space like a kite In the wind. It uncurls its own time still. It chooses to sing.
Tony Conran Bangor, 1986
40 Chanter
FOCUS ON Jean-Pierre Rasle
Jean-Pierre Rasle of The Cock and Bull Band talks to Simon Owen
Folk Revivals in England and France
Simon Owen: How do you come to be living in England?
Jean-Pierre Rasle: I first came to England as an assistant, I was working in a school in Staffordshire.
I was still studying then and I attended a course on folk life and customs which was run by the E.F.D.S.S. at Keele University, and from that I actually got the material for my French M.A. which was on the social aspects of folk music in England.
I didn’t realise at the time that the connection would run through, but that was my starting point. Then I forgot about it and went back to France. I was playing the seventies’ English ‘folk’ songs. I wasn’t playing French music at all then, partly because I didn’t even realise that I knew any.
Having finished my studies in France I came back to England to teach in 1973 and settled here for good.
Simon Owen: Is the way people grow up with folk music in France the same as it is here?
J-P.R. Not really. I realised when I came back to France in the seventies that there was a new folk movement beginning, but I was only vaguely aware of it. I am from Berry where there has always been a regional revival; but I didn’t think of it as folk music: it was my grandad’s music. I learnt bourrées from him, and for me they weren’t ‘folk’ music. It’s only many years after that I realised I know that tune, I used to play it on the harmonica when I was seven!
S.O. Do you find that that puts the music in a very much stronger cultural position?
J-P.R. Yes, and also because the original revival, instead of being a national one, like the E.F.D.S.S., was on a regional level. Moreover it was done while the tradition was still very much part of the community. My home town, Sancerre, is still a stronghold of Berry dance music and the local enthusiasts started collecting and reviving it in the early 1900’s. They just went down to the fields and got it from the farmers who had their own revival group there and then in the village — so it wasn’t a movement from Paris, or wherever.
S.O. So did you find the attitudes to traditional music over here very much different from those you had experienced in France?
J-P.R. Totally, there was nothing like folk clubs in France. This was a revelation to me, to be able to play so many times in front of an audience of people who wanted to hear the music.
S.O. Are folk clubs a sign that the tradition is wavering — the need to have a club to keep the thing going?
J-P.R. I’m not sure really. I wouldn’t say that the French tradition is particularly thriving; even if it was more alive there it was still very much on the fringe. It was actually frowned upon by the generation before me. After the Second World War it just wasn’t talked about, partly because it had been used by the French Government of Occupation … travail, famille, patrie!
The first traditional musician I met was Monsieur Roulis who made my pipes. He was a typical example because he played the pipes, the cabrette, before the Second World War and he probably started making them then. But he stopped altogether during the War partly because the Petain Government didn’t allow dances since you were supposed to mourn France having been defeated.
The stigma attached to the folk-song that had been used for nationalistic purposes carried on into the fifties, and it was not until our generation started to ask where the instruments came from and how they were made that he started to make them again. So he had something like twenty-five years when he did very little.
S.O. Is there still a large number of very old instruments around?
J-P.R. Yes — there are loads of them about, which is partly why I think of France as the richest country for the number of types of different kinds of bagpipes. There are twelve to twenty different types, I suppose, and some of them within a very narrow geographical area — particularly the central part.
Workman-like Music
J-P.R. So I came to French music in a pretty roundabout sort of way. I was playing English folk music in France before I played French music and it was when I came back to France to do military service that I met M. Rouds and people who were playing this French folk music properly. Before that I dabbled in Irish music and Breton music. But I found that those musics didn’t gel with me — a matter of culture maybe — I just found that there were far more similarities between the southern English folk music and French, than between French and Breton, or between English and Irish. I felt an affinity with that sort of workman-like type of music — it was less flashy.
S.O. Are the techniques involved in southern English and French musics very similar, or is the similarity in the structures of the tunes more important for you?
J-P.R. I think the structures of the tunes are more important; there was a heavy early Victorian influence on both, which you can feel in the polkas, waltzes, mazurkas. With all these you can play a French one and an English one and their structure is sometimes very similar, although the style of playing is different. Often with The Cock and Bull Band we mix the two and don’t tell people which one it is which and they don’t notice.
S.O. Do you find that more unites the two cultures than divides them?
J-P.R. Yes, definitely.
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Chanter
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Chanter
S.O. So it doesn’t involve too much of a different way of thinking to play a set of English tunes and then a set of French tunes?
J-P.R. I tended to be attracted by French tunes which had not got a very strong French stamp on them. We didn’t play very many bourrees because they’re specific to central France and can’t be used for anything else. But polkas, mazurkas, etc. can be shifted and used very successfully for English dances.
Instruments and Styles
S.O. So I suppose the deeper you get in to the music itself, the more you find out about the instruments that are appropriate for it.
J-P.R. Yes, I dabbled with the violin because I learnt it when I was a child, and then because I’d done a bit of Irish music, I played the tin whistle and eventually I came across that maker (M. Ruols) who made my first instrument. It took me a long while before I began to concentrate on pipes because it was a difficult instrument to take up and at the time nobody was around to teach me how to do it. The musician is very different now with the Bagpipe Society, but there was nothing like that then. If you didn’t play Irish or Northumbrian music there was nobody to teach you how to play pipes, except if you went into remote areas of central France.
S.O. So you are largely self-taught?
J-P.R. Yes, completely. The only thing I had to go by was an hour’s worth of cassettes from M. Ruols that I picked up when I went to see him a year after I’d had my pipes!
S.O. But your style remains very much as it would have been in whatever the heyday of the tradition was?
J-P.R. Yes, partly because he was the only one I had ever heard, I automatically copied his style — but I have absorbed many other influences since, and I wouldn’t say that my present style is particularly representative of the traditions at present, and neither are the instruments I use.
Cabrettes
J-P.R. Originally the cabrette that I started with was droneless.
S.O. So it had a dummy drone parallel to the chanter?
J-P.R. Yes, except that I asked M. Ruols to bore it and reed it which was something that he didn’t really know how to do. I wasn’t the first one who’d asked him, but he’d never been successful, so it had to be mostly redone by my other maker, John Addison.
S.O. So what prompted you to expand your collection?
J-P.R. What happened was that originally I had two different chanters for the same bag. I had a D/G large one with a side drone that never worked at all, and a little one which was in A/D with a side drone which did work. I discovered later that the larger versions of cabrette usually have a dummy side drone because of interference with the vibrations. So you have to have the system of north-central France, of Berry, Nivernais, and Bourbonnais where the side drone and the chanter are parallel, but feeding separately into the bag.
S.O. If both reeds poke up into the same chamber then they interfere with each other?
J-P.R. Yes, if the chamber is the bag, that’s alright because the vibrations get lost. If the chamber is the same as the musette de cour’s with one feeding from the other then it doesn’t work. We tried and tried to make it work for me, but in the end John Addison built me that hybrid Bourbonnais to use my other larger cabrette chanter and drone — and it turned out to look very much like the cornemuse Bourbonnaise, but with bellows.
From Half-longs to Electronic Pipes
S.O. And from those instruments you went on to half-longs?
J-P.R. Yes, I was very aware that I was attempting to play English dance music on a French instrument. So I shopped around to find an English instrument that would possibly match the English dance tunes better. At the time, the only instrument that was remotely similar was a version of the border pipes. That was the only instrument available, so I started to use it.
S.O. At which point do your electronic pipes come into the picture?
J-P.R. This was during a hiccup in my career when I worked with The Albion Band. When I joined with another two members of The Cork and Bull Band, The Albion Band became much less electric and much more like a working dance band. As the band changed and went back to its electric style, I found myself slightly redundant playing acoustic instruments which couldn’t be tampered with very much, and I came across a weird contraption made in Scotland — the electronic pipes. So I used them for a while with The Albion Band, but there were lots of faults in the construction of the instrument that made it very difficult to use, partly because it had a Scottish tuning, so if you played it with fixed pitch instruments you were out of tune a lot of the time. Nevertheless, it was interesting because you could actually ‘bend’ the tune. I didn’t use it as an ersatz of Scottish pipes, but more as a synthesizer with bagpipe fingering.
S.O. Did you find that traditionalists thought you were some sort of iconoclast?
J-P.R. No, particularly because the instrument was actually sold to Scottish pipers, usually the older ones who couldn’t blow any more… But it did raise a few eyebrows!
Musette de Cour and Musette Béchonnet
S.O. You have acquired a few more pipes since then?
J-P.R. I worked with those three sets for many years. Recently I started to look for a way of developing the range of material played on pipes and I came across that classical instrument, the musette de cour. I realised that there was a huge amount of wonderful music for this instrument which had been published in the 1700’s, so eventually I got hold of one.
S.O. Was it difficult to come by?
J-P.R. Yes, I think there are only about two or three makers, and it’s even more difficult to set up and to keep in tune, let alone play!
S.O. So your choice of instrument has been dictated by the types of music you wanted to play!
J-P.R. Very much so. I have tended to be untraditional in not sticking to one particular area, partly because the rest of my musical interests have led me to select instruments that are more and more versatile. That’s why I took up the musette de cour and the musette Béchonnet which is the most elaborate of the traditional French pipes – it is the one with the widest range and it’s nearly chromatic. On the musette Béchonnet you can perform a wider range of music than was originally intended for it, I suppose.
Each part of France has attempted to come to terms with the problem of the bass drone which is cumbersome and tends to stick out one way or another. So, one of the pipes from Auvergne, the chabrette limousine, has a three-part drone which reduces its length – and is held over the arm like the Northumbrian pipes. The cornemuse from Berry and Nivernais have the drone over the shoulder. The musette Béchonnet has a system not unlike the Breugel pipes with the bass drone tied to the neck of the bag and sticking forward. In this particular instrument the maker, Bernard Blanc, included a third, little drone, so when you clasp the instrument with your two hands you cup a side drone and there’s another little drone behind – this gives you three octaves, not unlike the border pipes in system.
This instrument overblows extremely easily to the next octave so it has at least an octave and a half plus the leading note. The bottom right-hand thumb is used to produce the flattened seventh (in the French system the flattened seventh is a tone below the key note which is the note with all the holes covered by the left hand down.)
S.O. Do many tunes make use of the overblowing facility?
J-P.R. Well, yes … one of the strange things about the pipes from Berry is that around the end of the nineteenth century pipers tended to play, or at least attempt, military music, especially chromatic marches. To play these pieces was regarded as the height of achievement! Because we had conscription, every year the conscrits would be sent to the army and they would have a parade in the village with the pipers and hurdy-gurdy players leading them all through the village.
S.O. Is your home area a very strong hurdy-gurdy area?
J-P.R. Yes, Berry and Auvergne are two of the parts that have the hurdy-gurdy and pipes.
S.O. So very often pipes like yours would be used with the hurdy-gurdy?
J-P.R. Yes, but I think it’s probably a later development – a combination that comes from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
appel
J-P.R. Technically, I think I acquired the famous French system of playing known as rappel without realising it. In this system you never think of six fingers down as the key note, your left hand down has that function. The note a fourth below this key note is the note de rappel. This note constantly occurs in the music, and the pipers keep playing around it. This is one of the most interesting things about cabrette music. Apparently one of the reasons for its existence is that when they stopped boring the drone, because they started to play with the piano accordion and the drone was felt to clash with the changing harmonics, the piper would instinctively look for the missing drone note and by doing so he would play that note as if it were still there. In fact, if you listen to some of the recordings from the nineteen-twenties and thirties with Bouscatel you can actually hear a drone that isn’t there!
tuning and Ornamentation
S.O. Do you have much choice in fingering system, of closed, open, semi-closed?
J-P.R. Yes, in the sense that if you get hold of an old instrument it is always out of tune – at least as far as modern norms of intonation are concerned. I feel that a lot of the time the ornamentation that was used was really there to cover up the out of tune notes as much as anything else. So you end up with an extraordinary virtuoso like Bouscatel playing all those wonderful flurries of notes and if you listen carefully many of the notes are out of tune – to our ears.
from Fillip the Toad to Cock and Bull
S.O. When you settled in this country did you make a conscious decision to play in bands, or did it just happen?
J-P.R. I settled in Stony Stratford and there was a very lively folk scene there with lots of people playing with each other — forming and disbanding groups. I first joined a band which we called Fillip the Toad – apparently the name of an old medieval game. Even in those early days I had fairly strong ideas on arrangements and the sort of music I wanted to play. For example, as early as that we used to play the series of Gervaise branles which surfaced ten years later on the Shuffle Off album. I had arranged it at the time and just forgot about it and later we used it with The Albion Dance Band.
S.O. Did you get a good reception for the French music in those early days, since there couldn’t have been much of it around then?
J-P.R. I felt very wary of playing French material, partly because I didn’t like the idea of its novelty value. In The Cock and Bull Band we always played less French music than bands like Blowzubella and certainly Rosbif. If anything we played it down. As a folk club band called Hemlock we used to do some French songs, but even then it formed only a very small proportion of our repertoire.
S.O. And Hemlock led on to Cock and Bull . . . ?
J-P.R. Hemlock was a folk club band specialising in English and French music and songs. Then somebody suggested that we have a go at doing dance music, and nearly overnight we turned into a dance band and called ourselves The Hemlock Cock and Bull Band.
S.O. Where does the name Cock and Bull come from?
J-P.R. There are two pubs in Stony Stratford next door to each other, in fact they are connected by an arch. One pub is called The Cock and the other The Bull. They used to say that a story would travel from one pub to the other and in the process its meaning would get lost or confused — hence the saying about ‘cock and bull’ stories.
S.O. Has there been much variation in the line-up of the Cock and Bull Band?
J-P.R. No. We started with a line-up that has remained fairly similar to what it was recently except that we used euphonium before Paul Martin joined on acoustic bass.
The Albion Experiment
S.O. Did you carry on working with The Cock and Bull Band while you worked with The Albion Band?
J-P.R. Yes, we kept the two groups going in parallel. We just played less in The Cock and Bull Band while we carried out what somebody called ‘the Albion experiment’. Most people said it wasn’t a very good idea — they couldn’t imagine a more unlikely combination than three members of The Cock and Bull Band and The Albion Band, but it showed me how not to do things — how not to play music! At one stage it all got very blurred. On Shuffle Off most of the material was written by Dave Whetstone and most of the traditional content was brought along by me. Much of it was like the usual Cock and Bull sound with a little electric thrown in. When our next Cock and Bull album came along we had to be influenced because in some ways we wanted a second L.P. to be what we would have wished Shuffle Off to have been if we’d had the control over it.
Some Wonderful, Unexpected Combinations
S.O. Do you find that you want to be in control or are you quite happy to . . . ?
J-P.R. No, I’ve always preferred to share with somebody else rather than take the lead. It’s taken me years before I considered being a solo performer. Partly because most of the tunes we did for dancing didn’t fit on the pipes, so I automatically became the person who did the harmonics. It’s only recently that I’ve started to select tunes purely for the pipes — with the right range, and this is when I started to work with Peter Stacey.
S.O. . . . which brings us up to date . . .
J-P.R. Yes — a sort of further development. We had that meeting at Newbury festival, an improvised piper’s session, it sounded very interesting, something that hadn’t quite been done in that form.
S.O. The climate now is probably more amenable to it. People are more accustomed to hearing drone instruments.
J-P.R. That’s right. It’s lost a bit of its novelty value and people are taking it more seriously. We’ve discovered some wonderful, unexpected combinations of Spanish gaitas and cabrette, pipe and tabor and cornemuse, half-longs and sax.
S.O. Any ideas as to where you are going next?
J-P.R. I’ve always tried to develop the sort of music that you can play on pipes — so there’s still a lot of room for experimenting, for improvising. Within the new line-up of Cock and Bull we now have Peter Lockwood playing synthesizer and sax, giving us a new way of handling pipe music.
S.O. Things are consolidating a bit now in the bagpipe world with the Society being formed.
J.P.R. Definitely, I think we’re moving in the right direction. People who start the pipes now are very lucky compared with ten or fifteen years ago. There are players who can teach each other and there’s a lot of sharing of ideas and techniques — that’s very promising.
The interview, which took place on September 16, 1986, was transcribed and edited by Peter Stacey.
Cock and Bull: The Story So Far
As early as 1972, when a French woodwind player joined a Stony Stratford guitar-based [3] folk group called Fillip the Toad to form the basis of what was to become Cock and Bull, the accent was already on an original treatment of ‘folk’ music, both English and French.
The same core of musicians formed Hemlock and, with Dave Whetstone on melodeon and the addition of French bagpipes and Auvergne music, took off in the folk-club circuit with the aim of exploring new directions in arranging traditional music.
It became The Hemlock Cock and Bull Band for dances when its singer Brad took up euphonium and John Maxwell added percussion. When Paul Martin came back on acoustic bass, the band had acquired its own distinctive sound as represented on its debut album ‘All Buttoned Up’, and proceeded to develop further its unique approach to dance music.
Following the album’s success came the Albion Band merger, professional status and the possibility of a different development of ‘electric folk’, hinted at on the Albion Dance Band’s ‘Shuffle Off’ album, and when the dust had settled on the various ideas and changes, ‘Eyes Closed and Rocking’ was finally released, the summary of five years of progress.
The next logical step was for the band to perform live the studio research of their last album, and this has been achieved by integrating the synthesizers and saxophone of Peter Lockwood, to send Cock and Bull off onto hopefully successful new horizons. And the good news for the readers of this magazine is that the ‘front’ instrument is now the bagpipe!
Jean-Pierre Rasle
Festival Reviews
The 1986 Blowzabella Festival
For those of you who have never been to one of Blowzabella’s Newbury festivals (shame!), the idea seems to be to open up their music and dance to anyone who wants to try their hand (or foot). Drone music is predominant with bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies of all types very much in evidence. It was splendid to see and hear people droning away in small groups on odd street corners or by the canal. The natives were amused but tolerant and, one can only hope, more than a little intrigued by it all.
But these were merely the commercials between the main programmes; a series of workshops ranging from Bagpipe Maintenance to Border Morris. It would be very easy to eulogise about all the workshops into which I dipped (sadly you can’t do ’em all) so instead I’ll try to stick only to the bagpipey ones.
Saturday morning saw a bagpipe maintenance discussion at which various ideas were traded such as reed and stock tying techniques with demonstrations of the knots used. This was followed by a beginners’ bagpipe workshop enhanced by numerous sets of pipes loaned by Society members so that those new to piping could have a go. Basic styles and techniques were demonstrated and taught but it was, of course, merely a sampling as you can’t do much more in an hour and a half.
In the afternoon, the first rehearsal took place of the Bagpipe Sinfonia. This was organised by Jon Swayne with the intention of achieving a reasonable performing standard of two or three tunes on G and D pipes for the Sunday concert. D pipes present at various times were: three sets of Leicestershire, two of Flemish, a set of Scottish smallpipes and a Hämmelchen. G pipes included three Flemish, a Béthuneet and a Petite Bourbonnaise, the whole lot being led by Jon on his Half-longs in G — oh, and not forgetting a metronomic bass drum and supporting percussion.
There was more rehearsal on the Sunday then the final performance at the afternoon concert. At last year’s event, a competition was held to find a collective noun for bagpipes; the winner was ‘an Approximation of Bagpipes’. At times, the Sinfonia fully lived up to that name but overall the sound was pretty good — no, why be modest? It was bloody good! And all thanks to Jon, for his patience and skill in bringing the ‘approximation’ up to performance standard.
The tunes performed were: Will’s Way, a molly dance/session standard; Lady Diamond, an eerie ballad (with out-of-time pauses, cunningly synchronised by pre-agreed counts of 3) and a beautiful French tune, Bouffard’s Waltz. The arrangements were clever but simple with three-part harmonies, key changes and scope for individual voicings of G and D pipe groups plus solo instruments.
The concerts are becoming an important feature of the Newbury festivals. Friday’s was heralded by the ubiquitous Blowzabella, not at their most inspired, I thought, but then I didn’t catch the second house (yes, the demand was so great, they needed to put on two concerts!). I’m told things got better after 11 o’clock, Mara! were superb. What a pity they don’t feature a regular bagpiper such as Paul Miller who joined them for their Saturday spot on Macedonian Gajda.
Although not featuring a single bagpipe (as far as I could see), mention must be made here of the Festival Workshop Orchestra who rehearsed, it seemed, all day Saturday to provide the opening set for that evening’s concert/dance. Particularly nice, too, to see so many youngsters involved. Full marks to ‘Sir’ Guy Crayford (monkey suit next year Guy?) and Dave Armitage.
Other concert spots throughout the weekend were filled by organiser Paul James and Nigel Eaton who performed a suite of French dance tunes on bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy that was the best I have ever heard from them. Jean-Pierre Rasle entertained us with his fine playing on a variety of French pipes and, unexpectedly, Dave Shaw gave us an excellent set on Northumbrian small pipes.
Somehow, the organisers even managed to squeeze in a mini-concert featuring the new, enlarged Rosbif who gave us an hour of good solid French music now underpinned by the impeccable cello playing of new member Helen Rockliff.
As well as all of these goodies, we were even treated to a dance tune competition of which there were no less than 22 entries. Would you believe bagpipes came second (Stacefen Hannigan) and third (Judy Tarry)? First place was taken by a piece for their neat relative, the bombarde (Hannah Barnes).
There’s so much more I could talk about — the delicious vegetarian food, the pubs sessions, the friendship, even the weather was good. If you went you’ll know, so why not write to the organiser (Paul James) to tell him how much you enjoyed it? If you didn’t go, make a point of putting it in your diary for next year!
POSTSCRIPT As a result of the success of the Newbury Bagpipe Sinfonia, the Society has decided to form a regular Bagpipe Society Sinfonia to meet, rehearse and perform at events such as Newbury and, hopefully, before the general public — perhaps even on television eventually, if you’d like to know more, contact Judy Tarry, 2 Hillside Close, Shillington, Hitchin, Herts SG5 3NN. Tel: Hitchin 711265. Don’t worry if your pipes are not in G or D. We hope to be able to accommodate all including non-concert pitch instruments (not all playing at the same time of course!).
David Van Doorn
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Chanter Chanter
Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et Maitres-Sonneurs, St Chartier, Indre, France. July 11-14th 1986
The Rencontres Internationales de Luthiers et Maitres-Sonneurs is the festival for bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy players and makers in Europe. Now in its 11th year it may have lost a little of its original energy and fascination but, nevertheless, it’s still the most enjoyable festival I’ve attended and this was my fifth visit. It takes place in a small village which slumbers for 51 weeks of the year to be rudely awakened by hundreds of maniac pipers, hurdy-gurdy and other instrument players who keep up a constant droning row for at least 3 days and four nights. I do mean constant, it’s not a good place to go to if you want to get any sleep. Overlooking the village is a tatty and very picturesque chateau which is my personal best contender as a set for a film version of Mervyn Peake’s ‘Titus Groan’. In the grounds, overhung by groups of large trees, are stands where instrument makers from all over Europe exhibit their work (this year there were about 80 makers exhibiting). They erect a grandstand in the open air, facing a large stage built onto part of one side of the chateau. It’s a glorious setting at night; the stage and chateau are lit up to provide an evocative setting and the perfect platform for any European traditional, ethnic or early music group who can cut the mustard in front of a large, pretty sophisticated and cosmopolitan audience. This stage contributed to the making (and sometimes the undoing) of many a European group’s reputation. Not an easy gig to play, but when a band gets it right you can witness some real magic, a special atmosphere unique to St. Chartier.
Out in the village they build their open air dance floors for what many people consider the best part of the festival. These provide a platform for any band bold enough to get up and play for dancing. Things usually start to hot up here around midnight and peter out around breakfast time. On a good night you can go from one dance floor to another and dance to hands from Brittany, Portugal, Belgium — you name it. There’s an open air bar to quench a late night thirst, where I’ve had loads of long conversations with foreign musicians in a patois of English, French and sign language. I can’t remember a lot but at the time it all seemed to make perfect sense!
Down on the camp site, which is a stone’s throw away, you can tell where the British are camping. Sagging tents, old cars surrounded by cardboard boxes (full of cooking stuff, bits of string, tin openers, old loaves of bread) which have exploded their contents everywhere, washing which has fallen off lines, violin cases seemingly abandoned in the heat and the occasional prostrate, crashed out body act like a flag of cultural identity: good old British messiness versus the immaculate concepts of continental outdoor living (nice camper vans, beautiful tents and barbecue sets).
In the village there are three cafés. As you walk down the street from the chateau there’s one on the left which has a miserable patron who overcharges all weekend, makes his stash for the year but hasn’t got the imagination to be pleasant about it (a
French friend described him, rather drily, as one of the people who probably served General Pétain during the war). Then there’s the one on the right which is run by a very tolerant woman in her fifties who always provides good value and makes an effort for the festival trade. Her toilet is the one to seek out. Definitely the best in the village, plenty of soft bog roll and hot water. You’ll realise the importance of this once you’ve seen the other facilities. Down the road to the campsite is the bakers where most people get their breakfast and the whole area gets its trade. When you’re dancing in the middle of the night you sometimes see the old bakers staggering up the road under a bundle of wood, on his way to prepare his first bake of the new day. I sometimes wonder what he thinks of it all.
As per usual a group of us travelled in Jon Swayne’s ancient and trusty Volkswagen van. We always seem to spend the first 10 miles quietly keeping our fingers crossed about its reliability and it always defies the opinion of Jon’s local garage man who tells him it’ll never make it and gets us there and back without a hitch. This year Jon had with him a few new sets of pipes to exhibit that were to prove a bit of a surprise to other makers and players alike. For some time now he’s been beavering away on a design for a new half-long bagpipe which does the sort of things contemporary players are looking for — cross fingering, overblowing, good tonal characteristics and general reliability — and judging by the general reaction and my own experience with the set he finished for me in time for the festival, he’s pulled it off. By studying original examples and utilising his own design capabilities he’s produced what I think is the only serious contender for a useful modern English bagpipe. If you don’t believe me try them out for yourself.
Remember the boom in early music in the 1970’s? Well, like all fashions it passed by but it left behind it a honed down, more knowledgeable early music scene with the best of the instrument makers surviving by concentrating on very authentic reconstructions and excellent craftsman/person/ship. The same thing is happening to the continental bagpipe/hurdy-gurdy scene. The whole thing has definitely peaked and is moving into a new phase where a plentiful supply of not so good makers is falling by the wayside and the best craftsmen are surviving to service an increasingly more discerning type of punter. Economically the scene isn’t as lush as it was five years ago, there are less people buying but they’re paying more. What they’re getting though is a vast improvement. The makers who have weathered the changes in the market have done so by the sheer quality of their work and, by concentrating on specific types of regional bagpipe, researching original examples thoroughly and applying that knowledge to their own design ideas, modern materials and workshop techniques. All this is happening at a time when the general interest in the subject of bagpipes seems to be on the rise over here. This is all to the good — if you go to St. Chartier and have a look around, there are less people exhibiting but, generally speaking, you’re looking at the best instruments currently on offer. Pre-eminent among these are Remy Dubois, who makes various Belgian and French pipes, Bernard Blanc, who specialises in Bourbonnais Cornemuses (in 5 sizes/tunings). If you’re interested in French bagpipes this is the place to indulge yourself, Cailbrettes, Musette de Cour, Cornemuse Béchanne, Cornemuse Limousine, Dubois and Blanc are both making a cheap, good quality
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Chanter Chanter
‘student’ bagpipe with a very short waiting list for around FF2000. I’m surprised that no-one has done this before. Part of the bagpipe market are people who want to learn but don’t want to risk a large investment until they’ve sorted out how they get along with the things. I think I’m right in saying that Julian Goodacre does pretty well at St. Chartier with his pipes partly because they’re cheap and readily available. I ordered a set Bourbonnais Cornemuse from Blanc and I get them next year, 3 years after ordering them. Long waiting lists don’t encourage the beginner so any moves in the direction of cheap, off-the-peg pipes can only be a positive thing.
There were main stage concerts on three nights. The previous year saw the best ever concert line-up with RITMIA (Italy), GWERZ (Brittany) and DE DANANN (Ireland) compared to that almost anything was going to be a come down. ALABATSCHI (S. Germany), and NA LUA (Galicia) were pleasant but unmemorable on the Friday night. Things looked up on the Saturday when the ENSEMBLE FOLKLORIQUE NATIONAL RODOBA DE SMOLYAN (Bul-garia) gave a breathtaking performance of Bulgarian traditional dance, song and instrumental music. They should have headlined the entire event, instead they were stuck on at three in the afternoon. The highlight on Saturday night was “ANITA ANITA” (French/Italian), described as music from the Mediterranean, they concentrate on their own compositions, influenced by elements of traditional music but firmly in the contemporary field, their music had a lightness of touch and a sophistication that wasn’t to everyone’s taste although generally well received.
On the Sunday morning Nigel Eaton won the hurdy-gurdy players competition and was awarded a sort of double first prize for being about two streets ahead of the other competitors. No mean feat. The Sunday night concert featured “FUBU” (France, centre), the godfather of the Sardinian Launeddas—AURELIO PORCU and the “WHISTLEBINKIES” (Scotland). First up were “FUBU” who came on stage to a returning heroes-type welcome. The atmosphere in the crowd was electric before they played. They were supposed to have played last year but due to illness they cancelled. This time they made it and they didn’t disappoint. Thierry Mirebeau is regarded as the best young Cabrette player there is which was borne out by a masterful and relaxed performance complete with electric hair drier to warm up the chanter reed. The Launeddas from Sardinia, is a traditional instrument, it’s three cane tubes, two are chanters and one a drone. They’re all inserted into the mouth of the player and played like a bagpipe using continuous breathing. The extraordinary effect has to be experienced; the best way to do that is to go and buy “SARDAIGNE: LAUNEDDAS, LUICI LAI & AURELIO PORCU” OCORA RECORDS 558611, distributed in the U.K. by Harmonia Mundi. Porcu (meaning Pig, shame he never met Billy Pigg) is a superstar, he loved the audience and they loved him. Brilliant. Buy the record. “THE WHISTLEBINKIES” finished the evening. To be honest I only caught the first couple of numbers. A good solid band but not the most imaginative when it comes to arrangements but they do a good show and the audience loved them. Out in the village the dance floors were heating all night and every night to every conceivable type of continental dance music. Atmosphere is what St. Chartier is all about. It is not what it was but it still beats every other festival hands down for good times and great music.
For information write to: Michele FROMENTEAU, 5, Place du Marché, 36400 LA CHATRE. FRANCE.
Paul James
Chanter 57
Record Reviews
‘The Whistlebinkies 4’ the Whistlebinkies Claddagh Records cc 43
Having spent some time recording music for film the Whistlebinkies returned to the studio to record this, their fourth album. Stuart Eydmann, one of the band’s fiddle players, told me at the Edinburgh Festival that this experience had helped considerably in the making of the new album, especially as far as sound recording goes — they simply didn’t have to spend so long messing around with microphones trying to get the right sounds on to tape. This helps to account for the consistently good recording quality on this record from a group who already have a very distinguished history of recording behind them.
‘The Whistlebinkies 4’ continues their theme of drawing together the usually separate, yet closely related, aspects of Scottish music-making using a combination of traditional instruments centred around the clarsach (played by Judith Peacock) the pipes (bellows-blown Lowland or Border pipes and the quieter Scottish smallpipes played by Rab Wallace) and fiddles (played by Stuart Eydmann and Mark Hayward): a fine intention and fine result. The other instruments grouped around this nucleus are the flute and piccolo (played by Eddie McGuire), the Scottish side drum (Peter Anderson) and the bodhrán (played by the group’s vocalist Mick Broderick). The Whistlebinkies is a group that may be compared to The Chieftains, or perhaps Milladoiro, both in the expansive nature of their instrumentation, and their conscientiously high instrumental and arranging skills.
As well as a diverse collection of Scottish instruments, this record also presents a variety of musical forms from Scotland: Lowland jigs, Strathspeys, Hebridean marches, and an enchanting lament from Skye, captivatingly sung by Judith Peacock with a quite magical accompaniment from flute and delicate sounding Scottish smallpipes. There are also some original compositions here, notably some pieces by Eddie, who is already well-established as a composer outside the folk scene. The sinuous contours of his ‘Highland River’, which draws on the rhythms of puirt-a-beul (mouth-music) pulls gently at the formal constraints of traditional music. The rousing collection of Breton pieces entitled simply ‘Breizh’ is the only set on the album that does not have a Scottish origin, however, it sits very happily in this distinguished Scottish setting.
Peter Stacey
Blowzabella The Blowzabella Wall of Sound Plant Life PLR 074
As Paul James has stated (interview in Charter 1/1), Blowzabella has moved on a great distance from being a vehicle for displaying the previously unusual (for this country) combination of bagpipes and gurdy-gurdies as the lead voices of a large group; these days a more unified approach is in evidence and goes a long way towards making this album, their fourth, their best yet.
Several new facets of the band are presented here. Firstly, Ian Luff’s bass guitar which adds a fullness of texture in a range which was rather lacking in their sound before; secondly, Nigel Eaton’s exceptional hurdy-gurdy playing, more of which later, and thirdly, Jon Swayne’s recently developed half-long pipes.
The half ‘ongs are certainly the most versatile bagpipes that Jon Swayne has so far produced, having a wide range (one and a half octaves) and an expressive tone that seems to vary with the nature of the tune. On ‘Lyke Wake Dirge’ (dedicated to the late Nigel Chippindale) the melody is taken up by the pipes with only a drum accompanying, and such is the strength and emotion of Jon’s playing that it seems the actual notes of the tune are transcended, leaving in their place a voice speaking of sadness and loss. However, the pipes breathe a totally different atmosphere into ‘Glass Island’ a melodically intriguing piece composed by Jon. Excellently arranged to show off the unusual construction of the tune, this item is, for me, one of the high spots of the album.
The other high spot is in the tune medley on the first side. Nigel Eaton’s piece ‘Lisa’, in the style of a 3/8 bourée is played so powerfully and recorded with such presence that one’s only possible reaction is to turn the volume up to maximum and be drawn along with it, hoping it will never end. The pleasure is a sustained one, however, as this leads into an Ian Luff composition ‘Stukka Gruppa’, which allows each member to do a ‘party piece’ solo between the recurring main theme. This main theme keeps the tension at full stretch, producing inspired results from the soloists. Jon Swayne puts the half-longs through their paces and uses their whole range in a free-flowing solo. Nigel Eaton’s brief solo drives the piece on relentlessly, a few moments of pure joy.
An unexpected inclusion is the song ‘Hallowed Ground’. Anathema to the purists, certainly, but a good, solid song, firmly held in check by Paul James’ drumming. The quality of the band’s arranging prowess shows through on this — in lesser hands it might well might well have become an uninteresting thrash. Once again, the hurdy-gurdy shows how effective it can be in any style of music.
The use of saxophones instead of bagpipes as lead instruments is exploited to good effect in the Bulgarian ‘Kopenitsa’, an 11/8 dance tune, although I think that introducing a Bulgarian gaida into the performance would have lifted it onto another level of excitement. Compare the treatment of this with that of the Rutchenitza on the ‘In Colour’ album with its exhilarating bagpipe playing, and one concludes an opportunity miscd.
All the dance tunes on the album are given very strong arrangements which make them eminently listenable while not losing sight of their primary function, and it is this quality which sets Blowzabella apart. A good example of this is the tune set Newbury Jig/Moll in the Wood/Sward Dance/Old Wife of Coverdale, where honours are evenly shared by the band members. The acoustic bass, in particular, is highly effective in this set, and shows what an asset this instrument can be when applied intelligently.
Mention has to be made also of the snatch of Handel’s Sinfonia which closes the record. Orchestral versions of this tune pale into insignificance compared to Nigel Eaton’s rendition on the hurdy gurdy (with Jon Swayne’s accompaniment). Now what a treat this would have been if done as a full-length piece!
Now that the listening public is more accustomed to hearing bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies in a band context, bands like Blowzabella can be more adventurous in their choice and arrangement of material. Rather than take the safe option of repeating a formula which proved successful in the past, Blowzabella are still in a state of active evolution, both enriching the tradition and pushing back its boundaries, and for that we can be sure that they will continue to develop in new and challenging directions.
Whatever the next album brings though, let us hope that it features Jon Swayne’s amazing bass bagpipe!
Simon Owen
Rage de Danse: La Chavanée: unnumbered self-produced cassette
La Chavanée are a group based in Bourbonnais and comprise Florence Blin, accordéon diatonique; Patrick Bouffard, vielle; Pascale Daumin, accordéon diatonique; Eric Elsener, musettes/flute; Maxou Heintzen, vielle; Emmanuel Paris, violon; Frederic Paris, vielle/musettes/accordeon/clarinette/flute. (The term musette refers to the Bourbonnais bagpipe. Several sizes are represented here, namely, 14, 16, 20 and 26 pouces pitched in A, G, D and low A respectively. Philippe Prieur joins the group to play pipes of 20 and 26 pouces.)
This is a quite remarkable production in many ways; the tunes, with one exception, are all written by members of the band and are in traditional dance style - waltz, bourrée, schottische, etc. There are eighteen in all. By no means do all the instruments play together all the time: indeed often a tune is given to the vielles, or bagpipes or accordions. The arrangements are simple, restrained and strictly traditional (except for the bagpipes in harmony?). There are no hectic tempi, no attempts to generate (a sometimes spurious) excitement, no fusions of the traditional with the modern. In the light of recent trends in folk music stemming from the problems of ‘performance’, some might find only blandness here, and yet I find this record completely enchanting. The quality of the music and musicianship is outstanding: there is something for any musician to learn here, especially those who play the instruments represented. By their contained and inward, almost contemplative approach the group manage to conjure an extraordinarily beguiling atmosphere. If I had to pick out one tune, it would be an irresistible waltz by Eric Elsener entitled ‘Callipyge’. If I interpret the meaning of the title correctly (literally - ‘beautiful-bottomed’), there is no doubt that his inspiration was effective.
Note: If, as seems likely, this cassette cannot be obtained over here through the usual channels, I will be happy to investigate the possibility of ordering direct from the group if there is a demand.
Scano Boa: Calicanto: ed La Torre X3
The members of Calicanto, a north Italian group, are Corrado Corradi, concertina, guitar (battente), percussion; Massimo Fumagalli, bagpipe, guitar, etc.; Riccardo Sandini, violin; Giancarlo Tombesi, double-bass, percussion; Roberto Tombesi, vocal, organetti (melodeons), bouzouki, percussion, etc.
This record is of variable quality, with some very exciting sounds here and there, but is of chief interest for the bagpipe. It is a northern mountain instrument hitherto neglected, reconstructed and played here by Massimo Fumagalli.
Jonathan Swayne
Alison
Anderson
MAKER OF ALL
TYPES OF BAGPIPE COVERS,
materials and colours
as requested
90 Stirling Rd.
Larbert FK5 4NF
Telephone: 0324 557991
JAMES
ALLAN
CELEBRATED
NORTHUMBER-
LAND PIPER
Still available…
☞ THE LIFE OF JAMES ALLAN
A new edition of the 19th C. chapbook.
£1.50 inc. p. & p.
☞ COMMEMORATIVE BROADSIDE
Copy of verses, prose tribute and wood-
cut portrait in contemporary style. Two
colours, 11" x 14.5" £2.50 inc. p & p.
From …
Alan Brignull, 23 Gladstone Avenue, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 1NP
UILLEANN PIPES
by
Soefirne
Birkwood - Lignon
Rosewood - Boc - Yew
DAVID EVANS
CHRISTINE SHEARD
New Phone No - 0743 232339-
S
JONATHAN SWAYNE
MAKER OF HISTORICAL & FOLK
WOODWINDS
1, Gilbert’s Corner,
Baltonsborough,
Glastonbury,
Somerset, England BA6 8RB
Tel: 0458 50911
BORDER/HALF-LONG STYLE PIPES
- chanter range of one and a half octaves - in addition to major mode notes, you can get flattened third, fifth, sixth and seventh - preferred drone combination is bass, octave and high fifth, but other options are possible - normally bellows-blown, but I will supply mouthblown if required - pitches available at present, A, G and D.
NEW STUDENT BAGPIPE
- based on G chanter of border pipes - mouthblown - single bass drone - leather bag - plain turning - easy to play and maintain - attractive appearance - attractive price
ALSO - Renaissance pipes: FLEMISH in D (after Breugel) : ENGLISH in G
- Whistles, flutes and recorders
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