Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, around the Persian Gulf and northern parts of South Asia.
The term bagpipe is equally correct in the singular or the plural, though pipers usually refer to the bagpipes as "the pipes", "a set of pipes" or "a stand of pipes".
The great Highland bagpipe (Scottish Gaelic: a' phìob mhòr pronounced [a ˈfiəp ˈvoːɾ] lit. 'the great pipe') is a type of bagpipe native to Scotland, and the Scottish analogue to the great Irish warpipes. It has acquired widespread recognition through its usage in the British military and in pipe bands throughout the world.
The bagpipe of any kind is first attested in Scotland around 1400. The earliest references to bagpipes in Scotland are in a military context, and it is in that context that the great Highland bagpipe became established in the British military and achieved the widespread prominence it enjoys today, whereas other bagpipe traditions throughout Europe, ranging from Portugal to Russia, almost universally went into decline by the late 19th and early 20th century.
Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood.
In Baroque music, a pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of pifferari, players of the traditional Italian bagpipe (zampogna) and reed pipe (piffero). Pastorales are generally in
8 or
8 or
8 metre, at a moderate tempo. They resemble a slowed-down version of a tarantella, encompassing many of the same rhythms and melodic phrases.
The chanter (Irish: seamsúr; Scottish Gaelic: seannsair; Scots: chanter, chaunter) is the part of the bagpipe upon which the player creates the melody. It consists of a number of finger-holes, and in its simpler forms looks similar to a recorder. On more elaborate bagpipes, such as the Northumbrian bagpipes or the Uilleann pipes, it also may have a number of keys, to increase the instrument's range and/or the number of keys (in the modal sense) it can play in. Like the rest of the bagpipe, they are often decorated with a variety of substances, including metal (silver/nickel/gold/brass), bone, ivory, or plastic mountings.
A battle cry or war cry is a yell or chant taken up in battle, usually by members of the same combatant group.Battle cries are not necessarily articulate (e.g. "Eulaliaaaa!", "Alala"..), although they often aim to invoke patriotic or religious sentiment. Their purpose is twofold, both arousing aggression and esprit de corps on one's own side and causing intimidation on the hostile side. Battle cries are a universal form of display behaviour (i.e., threat display) aiming at competitive advantage, ideally by overstating one's own aggressive potential to a point where the enemy prefers to avoid confrontation altogether and opts to flee. In order to overstate one's potential for aggression, battle cries need to be as loud as possible, and have historically often been amplified by acoustic devices such as horns, drums, conches, carnyxes, bagpipes, bugles, etc. (see also martial music).
Battle cries are closely related to other behavioral patterns of human aggression, such as war dances and taunting, performed during the "warming up" phase preceding the escalation of physical violence. From the Middle Ages, many cries appeared on speech scrolls in standards or coat of arms as slogans (see slogan (heraldry)) and were adopted as mottoes, an example being the motto "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right") of the English kings. It is said that this was Edward III's rallying cry during the Battle of Crécy. The word "slogan" originally derives from sluagh-gairm or sluagh-ghairm (sluagh = "people", "army", and gairm = "call", "proclamation"), the Scottish Gaelic word for "gathering-cry" and in times of war for "battle-cry". The Gaelic word was borrowed into English as slughorn, sluggorne, "slogum", and slogan.
Dankiyo (from ancient Greek: To angeion (Τὸ ἀγγεῖον)), is an ancient word from the text of Evliya Çelebi (17th century, Ottoman Era "The Laz's of Trebizond invented a bagpipe called a dankiyo..." describing the Pontian tulum, a type of bagpipe which the ancient Greeks called an askaulos (ἀσκός askos – wine-skin, αὐλός aulos – flute). It consists of a lamb skin, a blow pipe, and the double reed chanter.
The dankiyo is played in small villages near Trabzon and Rize. A similar type of bagpipe can be found on the islands of Greece with different names like Tsampouna or Askomandoura. Its use is also widespread in the region of Macedonia in Northern Greece amongst Pontian Greek populations. What differentiates the dankiyo from other bagpipes is that the dankiyo does not use a separate pipe for the drone. Instead, the sound is created by two reeds in the chanter.
The tulum (Laz: გუდა, romanized: guda) is a musical instrument, a form of bagpipe from the Black Sea region of Turkey. It is droneless with two parallel chanters, and is usually played by the Laz, Black sea Turks, Hemshin peoples and by Pontic Greeks, particularly Chaldians. It is a prominent instrument in the music of Pazar, Hemşin, Çamlıhemşin, Ardeşen, Fındıklı, Arhavi, Hopa, some other districts of Artvin and in the villages of the Tatos range (the watershed between the provinces of Rize and Trabzon) of İspir. It is the characteristic instrument of the transhumant population of the northeastern provinces of Anatolia and, like the kemençe in its area, the tulum imposes its style on all the dance and entertainment music of those for whom it is "our music".
The uilleann pipes (/ˈɪlən/ IL-ən or /ˈɪljən/ IL-yən, Irish: [ˈɪl̠ʲən̪ˠ]), also known as Union pipes and sometimes called Irish pipes, are the characteristic national bagpipe of Ireland. Their current name is a partial translation of the Irish language terms píobaí uilleann (literally, "pipes of the elbow"), from their method of inflation. There is no historical record of the name or use of the term uilleann pipes before the 20th century. The name was an invention of Grattan Flood and it stuck. People mistook the term "union" to refer to the 1800 Act of Union; however, this is incorrect as Breandán Breathnach points out that a poem published in 1796 uses the term "union".
The bag of the uilleann pipes is inflated by means of a small set of bellows strapped around the waist and the right arm (in the case of a right-handed player; in the case of a left-handed player the location and orientation of all components are reversed). The bellows not only relieve the player from the effort needed to blow into a bag to maintain pressure, they also allow relatively dry air to power the reeds, reducing the adverse effects of moisture on tuning and longevity. Some pipers can converse or sing while playing. The bag which the bellows fill is clamped under the other elbow, which squeezes the bag to control the flow of air to the reeds (which make the notes).