Bagpipe History
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This page was added because, in addition to why and how I began playing this unique instrument, another frequent question I receive is around the long history of the Great Highland Bagpipes. Please select the links below to discover the origin and tradition of the bagpipes which have captivated audiences for centuries:
Bible
Bible Hub
Musical Instruments of Antiquity
Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology
The Spirituality of the Pipes
Wartime
Bill Millin
Pipers of the Trenches
Bagpipes – A Weapon of War!
The story of the “mad” Highland piper of World War II
The 5 Most Badass War Heroes Who Never Held a Weapon
Bagpipes at the Front: Pipers and Piping during Combat in the Great War
Why did bagpipers march into battle knowing they were unarmed and would likely be targeted?
Various Pipers
The Best
The Badpiper
Women on Pipes
Pipes in Rock Bands and More
Rome and the Ancient World
Before opening even a small window on the ancient world, we must first appreciate some basic facts about the instruments of that world. To begin, let us look at the flute.
The flute does not appear in Grecian or Roman art until very late in recorded history. Pre Christian Greek and Roman artists show no usage of the flute; the presumption therefore is that it did not exist in the more ancient days of these cultures. It has been dated to no earlier than the second century B.C. The double pipes of antiquity have been mistranslated in editions of the Greek classics as "flutes" or "double flutes". For countless generations, classical scholars have given a completely false picture glaringly apparent in their translations of Thucydides, Aristotle and others. Every translator of the Latin and Greek classics has misleadingly translated the Greek word aulos and the Latin tibia as flutes. Both in fact mean musical pipes sounded by a reed.
Reeded pipes were in use for nearly three thousand years before the bag principle was applied and Proclus advises that at least three overtones could be produced from each hole of the mouth blown pipe. The art of playing these overtones had been mastered over a period of thousands of years. Aristoxenus stated that the compass of Greek and Roman pipes was two octaves and a fifth. The reproduction of the Lady Maket's pipes, ca.1160 B.C. produced an instrument capable of going into three octaves. The introduction of the bag too many traditional players trained to master harmonic overtones must have seemed a backward step. Once the bag was introduced, these overtones were incapable of being sounded. The bag drastically curtailed the compass of the double pipes and ended forever the art of ancient piping. The instrument lost its ancient art form and became available to anyone, even the humble peasant. The bag did not constitute a new instrument, merely an addition to an existing one although with its use, grace notes had to be invented to separate notes. However, these in turn gave birth to a new art form.
Perhaps the bag had to be invented to avoid cheek distortion, like the "reproach of Athena". Ancient religious devotion required continuous musical accompaniment and the ancients developed nasal inhalation to give a continuous sound. Dio Chrystom refers to the piper's avoidance of the "reproach of Athena", a distortion of the face by puffing out the cheeks so they could be used as an air reservoir, an age-old contortion. (Many older Scottish pipers used this technique when playing a practice chanter.) Detailed descriptions of the cheek distortion problem ensuing from nasal inhalation have come down to us from Greek and Roman literature. Some pipers felt that the distortion of the face was too unattractive and ugly, causing students to break their instruments giving up playing. Apparently, it caused permanent disfigurement which must have been an easily recognisable means of identifying a piper.
To support the cheeks, the Greeks invented thephorbeia, a device to ensure a steady pressure in the cheeks and alleviate strain. A band of leather, which passed across the mouth and round the cheeks, was fastened at the back of the head it was pierced at the front with two holes to allow the mouthpieces of the two pipes to pass through, into the mouth of the piper. The Romans called their model the capistrum for use on their more powerful pipe. An additional purpose of the bag was to hold the pipes in place and prevent them from dropping from the mouth. We know from vase depictions that when all the fingers were raised, there was nothing to hold the pipes, which were resting on the thumb only.
If we think about the importance of the cheeks and the art of nasal inhalation, we may appreciate that the mouth was a bag after all. We know that the bag was implemented in Egypt during the first century B.C, a hundred and fifty years before appearing in Rome, during the mid first century A.D. and Egypt then belonged to Rome.
The Greeks introduced various improvements in the pipes that came to them from Egypt. Cane reeds replaced those of straw and wood replaced the cane pipes themselves. Their use of sycamore and boxwood pipes indicated stronger reeds and greater volume of sound. They introduced a vent or a speaker hole, which enabled the production of harmonic overtones. Finger holes were increased to as many as eleven, which were covered by moveable rings and stops. These enabled the same set of pipes to be played in different modes or keys. Vase decorations from 600 B.C. show that before the invention of the movable rings, it was customary to carry several sets of pipes for various keys, slung over the shoulder in a type of quiver. These vase decorations show how the pipes were held and how the fingers were placed. The Greeks added a second and third tube to their pipes which lengthening a pipe, provided a lower pitch. They even fitted a hollow pear shaped bulb or bell into the top end of a pipe which added further to the depth of the pitch.
The first to march to the reed pipes were the Lacedaemonians or Spartans. They were the first to use a drum with the pipes and the first to have massed pipers playing the same tune and it seems the first to match their pipes to reduce discordance. Thucydides advises that 'they advance slowly to the music of many pipe players which were stationed at regular intervals throughout the ranks, marching together rhythmically, that their ranks might not be broken.' Aristotle advises that 'it was their custom of entering battle to the music of pipe players which was adopted in order to make the fearlessness and ardour of the soldiers more evident'. This achieved a strict rhythmical advance. Plutarch advises that the 'Spartans marched when going into battle, the pipers playing the tune called 'The Hymn of Castor", marching on to the tune of their pipers without any disorder in their ranks, moving with the music'. Imagine a body of men, three thousand massed infantry advancing in step in utter silence. Silence must have been enforced, because otherwise, the tune would have been lost. A rhythmical advance would not have been possible. The pipers would need silence also to concentrate on the unison of playing that one tune. Matched tuning would also be necessary to reduce cacophony and eliminate every chance of disorder and broken ranks. Would it be wrong to conclude that the Greeks wrote the book regarding pipe bands? It is time to look at the real ancient world.
The history of the reed pipe goes back over a vast period in time to the third millennium B.C. Pipers played on reed sounded pipes and not flutes, and these stretch back unbroken for five thousand years. The earliest specimens of the reed sounded pipe have been found in Babylonia and ancient Egypt. Pipes excavated in the tombs of Egypt had actual reeds of straw, some with uncut straws beside them for their replacement. Straw reeds have been found in position in the pipes and protective cases also found with spare straws for cutting into reeds. Reeds found in the pipes have been identified as barley straw.
The earliest known specimens of reed pipes and the earliest depictions of them are all of the double pipe. These were two duplicate pipes of cylindrical bore, bound together, each sounding its own reed. Finger holes corresponding in position in each pipe indicate that each finger covered the same holes in both pipes and produced the same note. Both pipes were intended to play the melody simultaneously. These pipes obviously produce twice the volume of sound that a single pipe would. They have been identified on a relief as early as 2700 B.C. and some of these parallel pipes seem even to have been fitted with only a single reed.
A second type of pipe has been found, and it also illustrated in similar fashion to the parallel pipe. These were the divergent pipes. Two separate pipes, held in each hand, and not bound together which were fitted with separate reeds. Since each pipe was fingered separately, many of them have been found with four holes in one pipe, (probably the right hand pipe) and three holes in the other, probably the left. The oldest set of pipes ever found, those of Ur, are divergent pipes. These were made of silver, indicating a highly developed instrument. They were found in the royal cemetery of Ur, ca 2800 B.C. (Now in the university museum, Pennsylvania) unfortunately without reeds.
A common alteration to both types of pipes was found where one of the pipes had all its holes except one, altered by the application of resinous material, probably wax. This enabled one of the pipes to sound a different note from the other. This would result in a continuous drone sound or harmony against the melody pipe. In some cases, this drone note was varied when two of the holes of the drone pipe were left open. Thus, the drone sound could be lowered or raised at will to produce a greater harmony without difficulty. Some pipes have been found with a hook extended from a chain for the purpose of extracting the wax.
The status of the ancient world piper was held in great esteem as judged by the grave of the piper in the Royal Sumerian Cemetery at Ur and the ancient Greek statue erected to Phronomus, (the inventor of the ring stops.)Aside from his silver pipes, the Ur piper had the greatest number of offerings, more than any other burial in the cemetery. During the last thousand years B.C. double pipes were known and played all over the old world of the Near and Middle East. The divergent type was to prove more popular than the parallel type according to archeological finds which show them more numerous. From Ur in Sumeria, the divergent double pipes can be traced right up through Mesopotamia and Arabia, to the Eastern Mediterranean and the countries of Israel and Phoenicia, to Troy and the Hellespont, right to Greece and Rome. The divergent reed pipes were supreme in the ancient world. The literature of both Greece and Rome indicate that the pipes were one of the facets of everyday life in both countries. It becomes apparent that Jesus of Nazareth must have known the sound of pipes. The chain of development seems to have been Sumeria, Egypt, Phrygia, Lydia, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome and Rome's colonies.
The Greeks could have acquired the reed pipe early on from Egypt and from Asia Minor (Lydia). The first mention of the pipes in Greek literature was in the Iliad of Homer and Greek tradition holds that reed pipes came to them from Asiatic neighbours. The Greeks used only divergent pipes and could change the pitch of one or two of their pipes while playing, by shortening the length of the reed held in the mouth (which the introduction of the bag would quickly end.)Greek pipes were intricate and sophisticated as was their method of blowing by nasal inhalation. Greece and Rome produced a golden age of piping which produced actual solo piping contests at Delphi and Pythia. A special pipe music known as the Pythian Nome, a musical form of five parts or movements was devised for these competitions.
The Romans claimed that their pipes had come to them from the Greeks. They liked their pipes bigger and louder. The sheer volume of Roman sound had increased immeasurably from the ancient Greek aulos. Here, a piper's guild was formed where the use of pipes was a recognised accompaniment to religious ceremony by law. The law also provided for the use of pipes at funerals, public games and the theatre. These pipers were employed by the state permeating life in the city of Rome. Even Gaius Julius Caesar recounted that the vision of a piper beckoned him to cross the Rubicon. In Rome, strong stiff reeds came into use and street bands of pipes, drums, and cymbals became a familiar sight where, according to Ovid, pipers dressed up in fanciful garb. A procession of two hundred pipers was organised in 284A.D.at the Roman Circus by Carinus. It is with the Emperor Nero, in the first century A.D. that we have the first definite mention of the bag applied to reed pipes. His use of a bag is actually confirmed by Dio Chrysdstom who mentions Nero's use of the bagpipe in the second half of the first century A.D, as a means of avoiding 'the reproach of Athena' (distortion of the cheeks) caused by using the cheeks as an air reservoir. We know that the application of a bag was a new novelty during the first century A.D. because the Roman general Martial, not knowing what to call it, borrowed the Greek name for the pipes, aulos and added the Greek word for a bag, askos, to it. He thus invents the word askaules to describe a bagpiper. The tibia utricularis was simply an adaptation of the bag principle to the Roman tibia.
The divergent double pipes were also in ancient Britain before the Romans came for good in 43A.D. They are shown on ancient British coins long before the Roman invasion. The second century altar to the god Atys found at Gloster depicting a rudimentary bag blown drone would seem to indicate that the application of a bag was not too long in being adopted in Britain. In his book "The Bagpipe", Francis Collinson does not allow this conclusion, but this line of reasoning is not easy to understand. We know the instrument flourished in Gaul and Britain after the Romans left. Scottish lowland mercenaries served with the Roman Legions in the Danube campaign. The Roman occupation lasted for some three hundred and sixty years and we all know, all roads of culture led to Rome.
A Listing of the Ancient Names of Reeded Pipes:
Sumeria: Na, Nabu, Sem, Malilu, Halhallatu, Sinnitu, Masroqita
Syria: Abuba, Imbubu
Egypt: Zummara, Mashourah, Ma, Mat
Israel: Halil
Phrygia: Tibiae, Impares
Greece: Aulos, Auloi, Elymoi
Rome: Tibia, Tibia Sarranae, Monaulos, Tibia Impares, Tibia Duae, Dextrae, Tibia Incentiva, Fistula
A Tibicen or Ascaules was a piper, a Tibiarius a pipe maker. The Lingula was the tongue of a reed and Zeugos the mouthpiece of the pipe. When a bag was added, Utricularis became the ubiquitous term for it (from which) our word uterus (was derived).
The Collegium Tibicinum was the guild of piper's which, in 311 B.C. went on strike and brought the city of Rome to a standstill. State paid pipers refused to play! After all, all religious worship required a piper, by law.
References
Bagpipes by Anthony Baines, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
The Bagpipe by Francis Collinson. 1975 Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd.
Instrument Details
The Highland Bagpipes consist of a mouthpiece for air supply, a bag, a chanter, and three drones. The unique sound of the instrument comes from the combination of these components, creating a powerful and distinctive musical experience.
Experience the Tradition
Immerse yourself in the timeless beauty of bagpipe music. Contact me to book a performance for your next event and create unforgettable memories.
Bagpiper Bill Millin played rousing Scottish music as Lord Lovat’s British Commandos fought their way ashore on D-Day.
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