Bagpipes
Although universally associated with Scotland, bagpipes have a history stretching back at least to ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. The instrument may have reached Scotland from Ireland, although they can be found in different forms throughout Europe over many centuries. Indeed, they are a common feature of Mediæval and Renaissance paintings of village fairs and weddings where they were considered to exert an especially erotic effect. However, after the defeat of Charles Edward Stewart and the Jacobite Rising of 1745, the London government banned bagpipes as an instrument of war!
The basic instrument is a bag with a chanter (with finger holes to create different notes) and one or more drones. Some bagpipes were mouth blown while others used a bellows attachment to supply the air. The bag provided a sustained tone while the musician took a breath and allowed several tones to be played at once. In Ireland, the traditional form known as uillean pipes (pronounced "ill-awn" from the Irish for "elbow") uses a bellows system with a chanter, three drones and three regulators.
Highlands
The Highland bagpipes consist of a bag with five pipes; one to blow air into the bag, a chanter which can produce nine notes from low G to high A, one base drone and two tenor drones. To embellish this limited range the piper uses grace notes and trills which, with the wailing sound of the drones, give the familiar sound known in Scotland as the "skirl of the pipes". The greatest bagpipe exponents were the MacCrimmons, hereditary pipers to the MacLeod clan.
Lowlands
The Scottish small pipes are a more recent instrument dating back about 300 years. They have open-ended chanters, with a parallel (cylindrical) bore, and no keys. There are 3 drones. They are also known as the "cauld wind pipes" as the air is produced from bellows rather that warm air from the breath of the Highland bagpiper.
Although they died out as a living instrument about 1800, they have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in the last 25 years. They were known only from a few historical examples, from which a set in F was reconstructed around 1980 by Colin Ross. Since then many more references to them have been found throughout Scotland, and many makers now produce them, most commonly in the keys of A, Bb, C and D. Most modern examples use the same fingering system as the Great Highland bagpipe, but are fairly quiet, indoor instruments, and they have become very popular with Highland pipers for this reason.
World Pipe Band Championships
This annual event takes place in Glasgow, attended by around 200 bands and about 8,000 pipers, a quarter of who come from outwith the UK. It is fiercely contested and a mark of great prestige to the winners as the unrestrained joy shown in the photograph above proves.
The 2008 championships took place on Saturday, 16th August on Glasgow Green, the oldest public park in Scotland. The band from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada won the title in front of 40,000 enthusiastic fans. Full story here.
From 11th to 17th August is the Glasgow International Piping Festival and on Saturday, 25th October is the World Solo Drumming Championships. Further information here.