Pastoral pipe: England musical instrument

The Pastoral Pipe was a bellows-blown bagpipe, widely identified as the forerunner and ancestor of the 19th-century amalgamation pipes, which became the Uilleann Pipes of today. Analogous in design and carving, the musical instrument had a base junction in alignment to play a reduced premier note and performances a two octave chromatic scale. There is a tutor for the "Pastoral or New Bagpipe" by J. Geoghegan, released in London in 1745.

source: machellmusic.com

 It had been considered that Geoghegan had overstated the capabilities of the musical instrument, but a study on enduring musical instrument has shown that it did really have the range and chromatic possibilities which he asserted.

This bagpipe was commonly performed in the Lowlands of Scotland, the boundaries, and Ireland from the mid-18th until the early 20th years. The pastoral pipe was a forerunner of what are now renowned as Uilleann pipes, and there were many well-known producers over a large geographic locality, including London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Newcastle upon Tyne. Thus it is difficult to state which homeland the pastoral pipe and its subsequent adapted Union Pipe expressly arrive from whereas the soonest known piping tunebook - "Geoghegan's Compleat Tutor" - refers to a maker in London in 1746. As the pastoral pipe was modified it developed into the union pipe in the period 1770-1830, makers in all three nations assisted concepts and design improvements. Both pipes were performed by gentlemen pipers of the period in Scotland, England and the Anglo-Irish Protestants in Ireland, people in society who could pay for a costly handmade set of pipes.

The period “New bagpipe” mentions to the amplified compass and improvements to the equipment. Whereas the period Pastoral is not historic found outside Geoghegan's London context, it is evocative of a method of melodies performed at the time. Originally the mark “Pastoral” may be used to refer to the “ancient Pastoral airs" performed on the equipment created in a "gentle, very sweet, very simple kind in the immolation of those airs which Shepard’s are supposed to play" This method would match the sweet pitch of the Pastoral pipes Union/Uilleann pipes of the late 18th years, when publications, art and melodies romanticized rural life. In the 19th years oboes were being sold in London as “Pastoral” to fit the melodies methods of the times. The pastoral bagpipe may have been the creation of an professional equipment manufacturer who was aiming at the loving market. The Pastoral pipes and subsequent Union pipes were absolutely a desired of the top classes in Scotland, Ireland and the North-East of England and were trendy for a time in formal communal backgrounds, where the period amalgamation pipes may originate.

The first quotation to a Pastoral pipe arrives from well-liked and trendy pastoral dramas of the time with melodies such as the mild Shepherd in (1725) by the writer and poet Allan Ramsay and the English Ballad the Beggar’s Opera in 1728, as a counter-measure against the influx of Pastoral Italian melodies. The Opera featured an “en masse” promenade led by a Pastoral pipe and the view was engraved by William Hogarth (1697–1764) who clearly displays a bellows blown bagpipe analogous to the one later portrayed in the Geoghegan tutor. The Geoghegan repertoire sketches on up to date compositions namely the London organist John Ravenwood (1745), composer John Grey (1745) the melodious collection of William Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius in (1733) and also operatic arrangements for the Ossian Cycle.

The pastoral pipes were considered in a classical or neo-baroque setting, performed by gentlemen pipers and disperse over the top circles of polite society as the musical instrument of choice. An established bellows pipes with an expanded variety is documented to be performed over Scotland no subsequent than 1760 in the “Complete idea of the large Highland bagpipe” by Joseph MacDonald.
      “ Lovers of Ossian sensed a kind of enthusiastic rapture when they beheld the guests seated, and the bards organised in the flower-decked auditorium of Fingal; when they perceived the sugary harmony of the harps (clarsach) and the amalgamation pipes and the recital of the bards they perceived furthermore the warlike sound of the shield of the hall of Fingal”. —Oscar and Malvina

The first quotation to the musical instrument in Ireland is supplied by John O'Keefe in (1760) as musical instrument of gracious society and the emerging 'Pastoral' and prototype Union pipe leveraged the folk tradition of the 18^th century and 19^th century in Scotland and Ireland. This can be considered of as a distributed custom which assisted a Neo-baroque orchestral and live performance latest trend but also drew powerfully on the ‘native traditions’ of both Scotland and Ireland and the melodies methods of the times.

The musical instruments can be played either standing or in a seated position with the use of a set of bellows, and the chanter is analogous to the subsequent amalgamation pipes, but it had an supplemented base joint that expanded its range one tone lower. This added foot joint had holes in its edges in supplement to the aperture at the base of the unexciting. The musical instruments are like the Highland pipes in that the sound is continuous; its notes are articulated by finger techniques such as grace notes. The Union pipes, which originated from the pastoral pipes, enable the player to interrupt the flow of air on the instrument by stopping the end of the chanter on his knee; this doesn't work for the Pastoral musical instrument because of the side tone apertures. Numerous later Pastoral pipes, though, have a dismountable foot joint; when this is taken they can be performed as union pipes. The surviving musical instruments show that the Pastoral pipes had two or three drones and commonly one regulator.

The accepted view was that the musical instruments were tough to move between the lower and top registers. Modern day reconstructions and refurbishments have shown that this is not the case. In the modern day Uilleann pipes, the player of the instrument will move from the lower to the top list by halting the chanter momentarily while expanding the bag force, making the reed to double-tone. However, in the pastoral pipe, the same effect can be gained by expanding the bag pressure while playing an apt grace note.

For demonstration, to proceed from first octave A to second octave A the contestant can use an E gracenote. Surviving Pastoral pipe manuscripts have numerous tunes that leap vigorously between registers. The proficiency to halt the chanter does help, though; it furthermore devotes the musical instrument much better dynamics, as the chanter can be increased and let down from the knee to modulate the volume. This may have inspired the evolution into the Union pipe by eliminating the foot joint from the Pastoral pipes.
The Pastoral pipe had a slender throat bore of 3.5 - 4mm and an exit bore seldom larger than 11mm. Its bore was very analogous to later flat set Union pipe chanter bores produced in the early parts of the 18th century. The reeds had a head breadth of 9.5mm to 10.5mm and staple bores of 3.6mm. The chanters were made in a variety of pitches with a calm pitch and an E flat pitch being very widespread amidst surviving musical instruments. Later demonstrations encompass a skid on the foot joint to change the smaller leading note from flat to sharp as needed and on a further set an on/off means is fixed to command the drones with the two controllers fixed neatly to the peak of the general stock and the addition of key in "e" to increase the compass of the chanter in the second octave.

The Pastoral chanter is use to perform the tune and is analogous to subsequent flat set Union pipe chanters in pitch. It has eight digit holes giving middle C, D, E♭, E, F♯, G, A, B, C♯, D' using open fingering in the first register. Most of the accidentals can be got by cross-fingering and a second register is available by expanding the bag force. With an apt reed, a couple of third-octave remarks can also be performed. Subsequent sets encompassed fully chromatic chanters that are using as many as seven keys. The chanter uses a convoluted double-bladed reed, analogous to that of the oboe or bassoon. This must be home made so that it can play two full octaves unquestionably, without the fine tweaking permitted by the use of a player's lips; only bag force and fingering can be used to sustain the correct throw of each note.

The Pastoral pipes step-by-step developed into the amalgamation pipes as Baroque musical flavors highly rated a more expressive kind of musical instrument. The foot joint may have fallen out of use as early as the 1746-1770's as oboists of the time span, who usually played Pastoral instruments, would often remove or invert the base joint in alignment to remove the reduced C# foot joint to perform the chanter upon the knee. The drop from grace of the open chanter was slow to take effect as Pastoral instrument with removable foot joint were still being made till the 1850s and performed until after the World War I. In time the musical instrument would be tuned for performance on the knee instead of off it, and the foot junction remnant today is the tenon slash around the foot of the up to date uilleann chanter.

Some of the ancient surviving musical instruments dates from the 1770-1790s, especially James Kenna of Mullingar, Hugh Robertson of Edinburgh and subsequent Robert Reid of North Shields. Pipe makers started the optimization of the musical instrument for performance on the knee rather than off it, so that players could take benefit of the better dynamics this gave. It is possible that the entertainer community diverged for a while into ‘union’ pipers playing without the foot joint, and old method Pastoral pipers who retained it and could play in both patterns. In any case, both "long" and "short” pastoral/union chanters were documented in both Scotland and Ireland until round World War 1. The evolution of the Union was also driven by affray between makes; all through the late 18th and early 19th century, pipe makers in Aberdeen, Dublin, Edinburgh and Newcastle contested and copied each other's ideas and innovations. It is now thought that the reality of controllers, currently a common feature of the Pastoral pipes, an attribute keyed halted ended system, was the inspiration for the keyed Northumbrian smallpipes, likely first made by John Dunn, who made both Pastoral and Northumbrian pipes in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Historical demonstrations of diverse concepts have turned up over a broad geographical locality, and some pipe makers have suggested reconstructions. They are not broadly performed, though research and interest in them is actually increasing.