[I don't really know where else to post this so here it goes]
Bagpipes and their history.
The origin of bagpipes is actually mysterious. The first definite depictions of bagpipes in Europe date from the mid-13th century with various examples in several books, treaties, and even sculptures on the walls of monasteries. However, by that point it seems bagpipes were already widespread and diversified. But earlier attestations are controversial.
Perhaps the most solid pre-Middle Ages evidence for bagpipes is in 1st century writing of the Greek historian Dio Chrysostom, who wrote that a contemporary Roman Emperor was known for being able to “play the pipe, both by means of his lips and by tucking a skin beneath his armpits”, a description that strongly ressembles bagpipes, but also indicates that the author considered the instrument unusual enough that he had to describe it.
Going as far back as 1000 BC, some Hittite murals have been interpreted as representing bagpipes, but this remains debated.
The basic concept of a bagpipe is to attach a reed instrument (either single-reed like a clarinet or double-reed like an oboe) to a bag made of skin into which air is blown. The bag is then compressed to make the air come out of the pipes, and so it acts as an air buffer: the instrument can be played continuously with no audible pause when the musician takes back their breathing, at the cost of control over the sound — bagpipe sounds cannot be played with much nuance in volume nor in timbre.
Another advantage of the bag is that multiple pipes can be hooked to it and played simultaneously, going far beyond what a human mouth can do — generally two pipes at once, like in the ancient greek aulos, was the limit (while musicians like Rahsaan Roland Kirk have shown that it
was in fact possible to play up to three saxophones at once with no special mouthpiece, this is not a feat at the reach of most musicians). This brings up a common (though not universal) feature of bagpipes: drone pipes. The drones are pipes that each play a single, continuously sustained note, thus providing a harmonic base on which the melody can be played (on the “chanter”, the pipe that actually has holes for the performer to use). Drones are a distinctive part of the bagpipes sound that make them instantly recognizable to the profane’s ear (though again not all bagpipes actually have drown pipes).
By the early modern period, bagpipes were present in all of Europe and the Caucasus, the Middle East, North Africa, as far as southern Iran, and perhaps even in India — it is an unresolved historical matter whether the native bagpipes of India are relatively recent creations inspired by the Great Highland bagpipes that British troups brought with them, or if they are a more ancient instrument that was then made closer to the Great Highland bagpipes under British influence. In general, the timing and direction of diffusion of bagpipes is not clear.
These bagpipes came in a wide variety of shape and size, usually to adapt to the demand of the different local folk music. The British Isles, France, Iberia and Italy had a wide variety of region-specific bagpipes. The bagpipes of the Islamic world and of the Caucasus all seem to derive from a Greek model which lacked drone pipes, but had a double chanter, allowing the performer to play two melodies conjointly (
or at least to play chords).
In western Europe, some of the later bagpipes became pretty sophisticated. A common innovation on many model was the addition of bellows, which the performer would action with their other arm to fill the bag, thus freeing their mouth (for singing) and preserving the inside of the bagpipe from moisture.
The French musette de cour, which had those bellows, also had a unique system of drones with four pipes folded in half and enclosed in a single cylinder box with sliders to set the note of each drone (or indeed turn them off completely). It also had a keyed double-chanter that allowed to play chromatically over an octave and a 6th,
making it much more versatile than most other bagpipes, which were usually very specialized and could only play within one mode and one tonality (that which was needed for whatever folk style they were constructed for). It is one of the few bagpipes that had classical musique composed for it, in the baroque era (although in Common Practice performances, its part is usually replaced by a recorder — but it can be heard in historically informed performances).
Fun fact: baroque composer and piper Nicolas Chédeville, who composed
many pieces for the musette de cour and hurdy-gurdy, at some point participated in a forgery where some of his compositions were passed as being from Vivaldi, apparently in an attempt to give more credit and reputation to the musette de cour so that more composers would include it in their pieces.
The pastoral pipe (and its modern descendant, the
uillean pipe), another bellow-blown bagpipe, from Ireland, introduced a distinct set of “regulator” pipes in addition to the chanter and drones, in the form of a trio of keyed-pipes designed to play chords when actionated with the palm of the hand (while simultaneously playing the melody).
Due to their limitations and perceived “folk instrument” nature, bagpipes began to decline in Europe during the Common Practice period (along with many other folk instruments like the hurdy-gurdy), although what almost completely made the instrument disappear was the invention of the accordion in the early 19th century, which displaced the bagpipes in many genres of folk music — the French bal-musette, which is now inextricably associated with the sound the accordion, was originally performed on a bagpipe (“musette”). At this point many local bagpipes completely ceased to be played.
However, during WWI and WWII, many europeans were exposed to Scottish pipers playing the
great highland pipe, which sparked an interest in reviving local pipe traditions, with some success at least in a few areas, although bagpipes remain largely seen as quaint folk instruments. Scottish pipers proved to be a double-edged sword — because the only exposure to bagpipes most people have had is through those, they expect all bagpipes to be extremely loud, whereas in fact the great highland pipe is a war instrument, designed to be heard and rallied around on a battlefield, and is not representative of how most bagpipes sound.
