The Pastoral Pipes
Ross Anderson
Outline of Talk
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The written sources
The instruments
Getting a period instrument playing again
Geoghegan
Tuning
What this teaches about 18th century music
What we still don’t know
Earliest Days
• Many European countries have pipes that play an
octave plus a few notes (gaita, cornemuse, …)
• Pipes were based on shawms, and the typical
shawm plays a few second-octave notes depending
on the reed and the player
• By the second quarter of the 18th century, we find
evidence of a more developed chanter
• Maybe someone put an oboe into a set of border
pipes, or based a chanter on an oboe
Border Pipes
• ‘Old Geordy’ Sime,
Dalkeith town piper
and retainer to the
Duke of Buccleugh
• Painting by John Kay,
about 1789
• Contemporary of
travelling piper Jamie
Allan
Oboe, Grand Bourbonnais,
Pastoral Chanters, Union Chanter
Beggar’s Opera, 1728
The Written Sources
• ‘The Compleat Tutor for the Pastoral or New
Bagpipe’, John Geoghegan, 1743
• First book of bagpipe music published
• Describes an instrument with an open end and
range from low C to third-octave D, A drones
• Text describes both Scots and Irish piping
gracings
• Repertoire: a mixture of traditional Scots/Irish
tunes, popular airs, and pieces for the oboe
Objections to Geoghegan
• There’s certainly some interesting material
(e.g. “A Bagpipe Concerto call’d the Battle
of Aughrim, or the Football March”)
• But also tunes in keys like F and B flat –
surely these don’t work well with A drones?
• One tune has a low C sharp!
• Consensus up till now: Geoghegan
overstated his expertise
Advocates’ Manuscript
• Found in National Library of Scotland
• Classed as union pipe music, but several tunes
have low C
• I got permission to scan it and put it online (see
www.piob.info)
• Mostly Scottish dance tunes; some Irish
• Wrote ‘The pastoral pipe repertoire, rediscovered’,
Common Stock v 20 no 2 (Dec 2005)
The Sutherland Manuscript
• In the Mitchell Library in Glasgow
• Hundreds of tunes – mostly Scots, many Irish, also
variation sets and popular airs
• Only three ‘pastoral’ tunes with low C – the rest
are playable on modern uilleann pipes
• There’s also a fingering chart for the highland
pipes showing two second-octave notes!
• See ‘The Sutherland Manuscript’, An Piobaire,
2006
Later Sources
• O’Farrell's Collection
of National Irish
Music for the Union
Pipes, 1804
• O’Farrell taught music
in London and played
on stage – ‘Oscar and
Malvina’ was a hit in
1791
Later Sources (2)
• O’Farrell's Pocket Companion for the Irish
or Union Pipes, 4 volumes 1805-10
• The MacKie Manuscript, 1828
• The Millar Manuscript, 1830
• Colclough’s Tutor, 1840
Late Pastoral Pipes
• The MacKie set of
pastoral pipes, 1828
• National Museum of
Scotland
• Came with manuscript
of music, now online
at www.piob.info
Iconographic & other sources …
• ‘The Dance of the
Little People’, William
Holmes Sullivan
(early 19th century)
• Other references to
‘the long chanter’ up
till about WW1
• Sam Grier
The Instruments
• Pastoral and early union pipes are found in many
collections – notably the National Museum of
Scotland and the Chantry at Morpeth
• See Hugh Cheape, ‘Bagpipes’, NMS, 2008
• Replicas have been made by Brian McCandless,
Sean Folsom, Michael McHarg, Chris Bayley, Jon
Swayne
• I have two sets that were sold and Sotheby’s in
1994, then owned by John Hughes and Ken
McLeod
Getting an old instrument playing
• Ken McLeod fitted a new bag
• Bass drone reed borrowed from another old set
• The big problem with old pastoral chanters was
always thought to be the chanter reed – the C, E
always out of tune
• Breakthrough at WKPF 2007 – I got a few
narrowbore D reeds from Joe Kennedy and also
played two chanters owned by Hamish Moore
• All four chanters played the same!
The Late 18C Pastoral Scale
• Open – with the foot joint – the chanter
plays like a highland chanter (but LH notes
slightly flat unless some RH fingers raised)
• Closed it plays like a union pipe except that
C nat is x oxo xxxx and C# is o xxo xxxx
• So you can play either Irish or Scots style!
• The cost is that the open second octave has
some out-of-tune notes (notably E!)
The Key Insight
• The reason people have struggled to reed pastoral
chanters is not that making the reed is an
impossible lost art…
• It’s just that the scale is fingered differently!
• I visited Jon Swayne and we played all
combinations of our reeds and chanters
• It turned out that when he’d copied my chanter,
he’d moved the first finger hole up 3mm to make
the open C#, as on a modern chanter
• Looking at old fingering charts, this is obvious!
Voicing for an Open Scale
• Jon Swayne’s copy of my set, with the first finger
hole 3mm up the chanter, is also voiced to give a
more in-tune E with the foot joint on
• It plays well open across two octaves
• Performance closed is OK but lacks bite, the low
C tends to autocran, and it’s easy to get into the
wrong octave (the reed is much softer than mine)
• But it seems an appropriate instrument to play the
Sutherland repertoire
Chanter Evolution?
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1700: border pipe: octave plus a few notes
1740: baroque oboe, in-tune played open
1760: people start playing staccato
1780: chanters being optimised for this
1800: recognisably modern chanters
1820: foot joints stop being made
Unexpected Research Holdup…
Later Chanter Evolution
• The earliest chanter with modern fingering is the
James Kenna set donated by Ken McLeod and
played by Ronan Browne
• Even so, this has some slightly odd crossfingerings (as do sets until the 1840s)
• See for example fingering charts from O’Farrell,
1804 – he has a cross-fingered second octave C
nat, and some notes must be played open
• Fully modern fingering – 1815?
Implications for Music
• First, we can rehabilitate John Geoghegan!
• Pastoral chanters have small finger holes and so
cross-finger well, like a recorder
• No problem playing in F, G minor …
• Geoghegan’s set had A drones (as did a set in
Newcastle in early 20C) which probably could
tune to B flat
• The low C sharp was the bell note with foot joint
off for the oboe – and for Sean Folsom’s repro set
Implications for Music (2)
• Older tunes tend to use C nat – e.g. listen to
Kitty’s Rambles by Leo Rowsome
• Even although C# is playable, it’s simpler to play
the natural scale in fast dance music
• Big source of ‘pastoral’ tunes is the Goodman
manuscript – tunes from West Ireland in 1860s
• Johnny Doran’s music also has pastoral flavour
• Older instruments likely to remain in use longer in
more remote and marginalised communities
Next steps
• Let’s get more 18th century sets going
• Even if museum sets can’t be refurbished
their chanters can still be played
• Then look again at manuscript sources once
we understand chanter evolution timelines
• Precedent: the early music movement –
‘historically inspired performance’
Conclusion
• The pastoral pipe is the missing link in the
evolution from the 17th century border pipe / gaita
/ cornemuse design to the 19th century union pipe
• It wasn’t one single design, but a progression
• The music also evolved through the 18th century
• Instruments stayed able to play ‘highland’ too
• Their footprints in modern Scots and Irish music
are evident once we know what to look for
• And it’s time to rehabilitate John Geoghegan!