A curious little animal of an instrument (indeed, a bagpipe), many countries have them in one form or another. There are different types with different pitches and tunings.
There's a 9 minute video of a man giving a presentation on one here. Although we can't always hear what he's saying, it's something of an overview and we get a sense of the sound. An additional sense of that sound can be found here with replica instruments.
At the risk of appearing dry, here are a couple of links concerning the history of concert pitch and standardised tuning. From this second link:
Sir John Hawkins, writing in 1776, tells us that the tuning fork, originally called the 'pitch-fork', was invented in 1711, by John Shore, a trumpeter in the band of Queen Anne. It provided the first and, until the advent of electronic meters, the most trustworthy pitch-carrier, and was in every way superior to the 'pitch-pipe' about which the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), writing in 1764, noted "the impossibility of being certain of the same sound in two places at the same time".
The history of tuning forks!
ReplyDeleteI wonder why this is:
"After the French Revolution, the musette seems to have fallen rapidly out of favour while simpler forms of bagpipe remained popular as folk-instruments. As a result, musicologists examining French baroque music at the end of the 19th century found it difficult to imagine that what they took to be the same as a simple folk bagpipe could ever have had a place in highly sophisticated music for the court."
Some of the stuff on tuning (insomuch as I'm capable of understanding it!) reminds me of the greater control over the performance of scores that Romanticist composers would demand a generation or two later (elimination of cadenzas & virtuoso interpretations, etc.). Do you think there's a relation there to the greater control of pitch changing composer's expectations? Or would those developments not be likely to influence each other much?
"Once we reach an era where pitch and tuning were anchored to that of a pre-tuned keyboard instrument, any freedom all but disappeared. Where musicians performed in a band, an orchestra, at court, in the opera house or in a church they would have to cope with several different working pitches. For stringed and keyboard instruments the solution was to retune the instrument. It is said that Isabella d'Este (1474-1539) considered stringed instruments, such as the lute, superior to winds, which were associated with vice and strife. Maybe for wind instruments this association reflected their inability to cope with changes in the pitch, a problem that could be solved only by purchasing completely new instruments when moving from place to place, venue to venue, or by working from parts specifically transposed to take account of the difference in pitch."
It may be that control of pitch and the edging away from cadenzas etc. are related, but another factor in this change may be that, by the late 18th century, a composer's works began to more often be played and conducted by persons other than the composer. When the composer was playing in and/or leading the performance, he had near total control of those artist interpretations. As the works began to be published and played by others, often in other countries and sometimes by other composers who had differing sets of interpretation sensibilities, they may have been more reluctant to give up that much control of their compositions.
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ReplyDeleteGoing through Béranger poems for Vol. II of the Reader, I found one in which he mentions the musette in the chorus!
ReplyDelete(The translator had changed it to the generic ‘Pipe’ but I changed it back here).
This is from the first English translation of Béranger’s songs, in the 1847 book in my Counter-Culture Archive:
THE POET-LAUREATE.
VERSES FOR THE FETE OF MARIE ***.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me.
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.
What! to thee, Marie, tune a song again?
No, no, in truth I may not dare obey:
My Muse is nerved to try a bolder strain,
And towards the Court at length she wings her way.
I'll wager they would raise a loan to buy
A new Voltaire, if one to life should spring;
Ready for sale to Government am I:
Marie, for thee no longer can I sing.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me,
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.
If I should speak to please thy simple ear.
Some folks would smile, in pity for our state;
Love now-a-days hath little business here;
Friendship herself is banished by the great.
All patriotic notions now are hissed;
To reckon readily 's the only thing :
An ode I'm writing to an egotist :
Marie, for thee no longer can I sing.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me,
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.
Moved by thy voice, I fear lest from my lips
Praise of the gallant Greeks should haply gush.
Whom Europe now is leaguing to eclipse.
Lest before them she still be forced to blush.
Thy generous soul must sympathise in vain;
In vain their sorrows must thy feelings wring:
I greet in song the happy land of Spain:
Marie, for thee no longer can I sing.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me,
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.
But, Heavens! how would my calculations fail,
If in my words thy hero they should see:
He left us glory on so vast a scale.
We are embarrassed by the legacy.
Whilst thy fond hand, to decorate his bust,
Laurels all worthy of respect doth bring,
I serve with praise a person most august:
Marie, for thee no longer can I sing.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me,
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.
Thy doubts, dear Marie, tell me whence they came.
That thus to change has been thy lover's lot ?
Country and honour, liberty and fame
Are merely words, and men discount them not.
To offer flattery to the great I'm learning,
And songs for thee on them might satire fling;
No, no, where'er my heart would fain be turning,
Marie, for thee no longer can I sing.
They purchase musette and lyre!
Full time 'tis, then, for me,
Like others, to aspire
Court-Laureate to be.