The medieval bagpipe consisted of an animal-skin bag and a series of wooden pipes. The player held the bag under the arm and inflated it by blowing down one of the pipes. A second pipe, the ‘chanter’, contained a series of holes on which to play a melody, while the remainder, the ‘drones’, maintained a continuous, unvarying ...
The bagpipe consists of drones, or reedpipes, which are connected to a windbag. The windbag is held under the arm and is squeezed by the elbow to pass air into the pipes. The windbag is inflated by a blowpipe or bellows, and the melody is played by means of a chanter, a pipe with fingerholes. Although the ...
The bagpipe principle is simple: instead of the player blowing directly on a reed pipe, the air is supplied from a reservoir, usually made of animal skin, which is inflated either by mouth or by bellows. The result is the ability to produce a continuous tone, and the possibility of adding extra reed-pipes to enable a single ...
that region being less affected by Moorish culture than the rest of Iberia, it is called a gaita – a name that more usually across Europe refers to a bagpipe, but in the Moorish homelands of North Africa ghaita, ghaïta, ghaida, rhaita, rhita or ghayta means a shawm, and it is a common instrument. ...
music. Three pipes were found on the wreck of the ship Mary Rose, which sank off Portsmouth in 1545. Styles & Forms | Medieval Era | Classical Instruments | Bagpipe | Medieval Era | Classical ...
, and can be slid in or out for tuning. This is a delicate instrument, of limited life, but the sound is similar to that of a single-reed bagpipe chanter. In most reed-pipes, the fingered tube is made of a more robust material – be it an existing tube such as bamboo or other cane, or wood ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
(Ärk-an’-jel-o Ko-rel’-le) 1653–1713 Italian composer and violinist Corelli studied in Bologna, but by the mid-1670s was living in Rome, where he acquired a reputation as one of the city’s foremost violinists. His first patron in Rome was the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, to whom he dedicated his earliest printed collection, 12 trio sonatas op. 1 (1681). Next ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1981–2001) Stuart Adamson began with Scottish punk band The Skids. His Caledonian heritage came to the fore with Big Country, as he employed guitar gizmos to create a choral ‘bagpipe’ sound. The epic, yearning songs of debut album The Crossing (1983) played well in America. The follow-up, the more political Steeltown (1984), was a UK ...
Celts have become a hugely successful international band. But they have not been the only ones to experiment with technology. While regularly busking in Edinburgh, the Newfoundland-born fiddle and bagpipe player Martyn Bennett one day found himself playing jigs and reels to a techno backing track. The crowd liked it and so did Bennett, who went on to make ...
Euskadi (the Basque country) dug deep. Today, music and poetry are vital to keeping culture and language alive. Kepa Junkera is among the best-known exponents of trikitrixa, Spanish bagpipe music that has been adapted for the accordion. In Galicia, it is the piper Carlos Núñez who leads the roots revival. His affinity with other Celts is clear: his ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
The crumhorn is a double-reed wind-cap instrument. This means that the two reeds are enclosed in a rigid cap. The player blows through a hole in one end of the cap, which makes the reed vibrate unimpeded, since there is no direct contact with the lips. The crumhorn is a cylindrically bored instrument, normally made of maple with ...
A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who have come together to play music. In theory, an ensemble could contain any number of instruments in any combination, but in practice, certain combinations just don’t work very well, either for musical reasons or because of the sheer practicality of getting particular instruments and players ...
The basic harpsichord mechanism of a sprung lever with a quill plectrum plucking the string a single time, remained largely unchanged since its origins. However, a small series of stops was developed, allowing the sound quality of the instrument to be varied between a brighter sound and a muted pizzicato. Because these changes were effected mechanically, by ...
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