It's an acquired taste, and few acquire it, though that is partly (probably a small part!) to do with a lack of opportunity.
It has a wonderfully ancient and savage sound, to my ears. Others might just use the word savage on its own.
Incidentally, there's nothing French about the bagpipe, as Bob W points out. The Greeks had them, and they probably existed long before that. However, the Scots did most to develop the music, and pibroch's greatest days were around 1600. The British army keeps the tradition alive through its pipe-majors, who are often composers themselves.
John
On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 20:47:42 -0500 (EST), D. Glenn Arthur Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
John Forbes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:38:06 -0500 (EST), D. Glenn Arthur Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The irony there is that although bagpipes are today associated > primarily with the Scots in most people's minds, darn near every > culture seems to have come up with the idea -- a bladder or > bellows supplying air to one or more single- or double-reed pipes -- > independently at some point in history. I've got more recordings > of Flemish bagpipes than Scottish ones in my CD collection.
Do I take it you're a Pibroch lover? Or not?
Um ... honestly, I haven't heard enough of the form to have an answer. Most of the Scottish music I know -- pipe tunes or otherwise -- is dance tunes (strathspeys, reels, jigs, marches), and most of the rest is airs and songs. I've heard Pibroch (though off the top of my head I don't remember whether it was on pipes or fiddle), but only once or twice and not recently.
I've heard long bagpipe performances from other traditions than Scottish but even apart from the different-country aspect, it hasn't matched the description of Pibroch. Much of it has been uptempo throughout, often danceable, and some seems to be largely improvised or medleys of shorter tunes. I'm going to have to check my CDs to see what slow bagpipe tunes I've got, and what centuries they're from, but when I buy early-music recordings (which is what most of the bagpipe music I've got is), I mostly buy dance music and songs. So there's quite a lot of bagpipe music from various countries and centuries that I haven't gotten around to yet.
When I hear pipes live, they're usually eith German or Scottish, and the Scottish is usually competition pieces -- heavy on the dance repertoire -- at festivals. (The band I play in, The Homespun Celidh Band, is a fiddle band, not a pipe band, but we've had pipers join us on occasion. Oh, and our second CD is out, sort of -- we had a handful of "pre-release" copies burned while we're waiting for the big pressed-and-shrink-wrapped order to be done.)
-- Glenn
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