Massed Pipes & Drums of Scottish and Irish Regiments play outside Westminster Abbey during The State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.īagpipe-playing suffered a decline after King George II passed his 1746 Act of Proscription, in an effort to gain the Scottish Highlands for his own empire. Read more: Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral – all the music played during the service This time also saw the rise of piping families, which included the MacCrimmons, MacArthurs, MacGregors and Rankins. Throughout this period, the ceòl mór, also known as pibroch – tunes for battle, marches, gatherings of friends and family, martial salutes and laments – became established as the core bagpipe repertoire. It’s likely that the Scottish Highland bagpipe began with just one drone, with the second added during the mid to late 1500s, and the third introduced in the early 1700s. The 16th century Scottish historian George Buchanan even wrote that bagpipes had replaced the trumpet on the battlefield as the symbolic sound of battle. We know for certain that they must have been there by 1400, as records of the Battle of the North Inch in 1396 describe ‘warpipes’ being played.īagpipes were commonly used as rallying instruments at war, as a French historical document notes their distinctive sound ringing out at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547. One clan claims to own a set of bagpipes that was carried at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Opinions differ as to how, or when exactly bagpipes arrived in Scotland. The history of Scottish Highland bagpipes Three dancing pigs are carved into an oak misericord in Ripon Cathedral, Yorkshire, one of which is playing the bagpipes. Bell Library in Perth, Scotland – is the oldest known instance of pipe music being printed. A document from the 1730s known as the ‘William Dixon manuscript’ – now kept in the A.K. Thanks to a strong culture of passing down music by ear, the first piece of music written down for the bagpipes may not have appeared until the 18th century.
In 1581, John Derricke published The Image of Irelande, with illustrations that clearly depict a bagpiper, and William Byrd’s My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591) includes a piece of music called ‘The bagpipe and the drone’, written for harpsichord.
The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century led to more and more written descriptions of musical culture and, importantly, music which had previously been passed on in the oral tradition began to be written down.
In some 15th and 16th-century European churches, you’ll find miniature sculptures of bagpipes – often played by animals – carved into the wooden choir stalls. The following century, a passage from Geoffrey Chaucer’s magnum opus, The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), describes the bagpiping proficiency of Robin the Miller: “A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne, And ther-with-al he broghte us out of towne”. A similar illustration can also be found in a manuscript from northern France, dated around the same time.Īn illustration from the Cantigas de Santa Maria shows two musicians with their bagpipes.
An illustration in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a 13th century book of poems set to music, quite clearly depicts two bagpipers, with visible pipes, bags, and chanters.
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