# Is bagpipe considered classical?



## DeanClassicalTchaikovsky (May 13, 2014)

I think it is, but not quite sure. Could someone verify this? Thanks.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I am no authority on the subject, but I believe it is music that is classical, not the instruments. If a composer wishes to write a piece for the bagpipe, or transcribe one, then it will be classical music.

Also, I looked at a list of art musics on Wikipedia a few months back. Music for the Scottish Highland bagpipe has a written form that is considered to be art music, so, barring further information, it is classical on this count, too.


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## DeanClassicalTchaikovsky (May 13, 2014)

brotagonist said:


> I am no authority on the subject, but I believe it is music that is classical, not the instruments. If a composer wishes to write a piece for the bagpipe, or transcribe one, then it will be classical music.
> 
> Also, I looked at a list of art musics on Wikipedia a few months back. Music for the Scottish Highland bagpipe has a written form that is considered to be art music, so, barring further information, it is classical on this count, too.


You're right about that. I didn't consider that. Thanks.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

The French bagpipes - musettes or chalumeaux - was a staple of French Baroque pastoral music by Lully, Rameau and so on. This link tells you about the actual instrument:

http://www.mim.be/baroque-musette-with-three-chanters-chalumeaux?from_i_m=1


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

An interesting aspect of this is, say the classical music of India, Iran or Japan, is often labeled by Westerners as "World Music" not "Classical Music", hence in the not so well read world average Joe and Judy, many thinks of it as a form of Folk Music when really it is highly refined form of Art Music..

I believe that the same thinking often apply when discussing fx. Bagpipes, we lazily define the instrument with most known common denominator of the music that is played on it, when I took composition (for fun) at University on of my classmates wrote a "concerto" for Tin Whistle, Hardanger Fiddle, Jazz Drummer and Electronics (Performed once AFAIK), it was nor folk music or Jazz despite loaning most of its sonorities and tunes for these two genres. As Mr Brot writes, the instrument does not define the musical genre, the composer or player (when playing by ear) does!

/ptr


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Most of the music for the instrument, passed down via oral tradition and / or tabalature notation (also traditional), is from the folk genre. There are bodies of 'traditional' folk-like literature which are in some cultures considered _like classical_, but as far as what is thought of as western classical art music, there is a distinction between the genres.

As already mentioned, it is used directly in some classical music when the piece, or movement, is of a _pastorale_ nature, where often a reed instrument, or reeds in pairs, are also found playing something 'rustic' or folk-like. If the bagpipes are used in that context, they are like an 'embedded sound object' used to directly evoke that rustic / pastorale quality.

Since there is a small body of more eccentric pieces by classical composers for solo harmonicas, banjos, accordions, etc. -- sometimes solo and other times as a solo instrument in a concerto-like vehicle, there may well be a more 'purely' classical piece or two for one or another types of bagpipes.

Baroque ~ Vivaldi concerto for bagpipes





Charpentier





Corelli





Johann Heinrich Schmelzer ~ Polish Bagpipes


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

That would be interesting! The Scottish bagpipe is loud & *skirling*  and 'an instrument of war', so it might be difficult to arrange with orchestral instruments; Northumbrian or Uilleann pipes are more blendable though.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ingélou said:


> That would be interesting! The Scottish bagpipe is loud & *skirling*  and 'an instrument of war', so it might be difficult to arrange with orchestral instruments; Northumbrian or Uilleann pipes are more blendable though.


Scottish Bagpipe is a field instrument, often for martial accompaniment, parade or battle. It / They -- sound best out of doors, where they were designed to sound.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I can imagine some stirring modern work* performed out of doors, with four pipers holding a three-way conversation with an energetic symphony orchestra & a coterie of drummers (of varied international sorts). I think it would be very exhilarating for an audience. 

(Entitled, in the Scots idiom, 'Giving it Laldy!')


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## Guest (May 13, 2014)

In response to the OP, I'm afraid I must first ask if the bagpipe is considered a musical instrument at all.
[_You realize you will now have a ton of opprobrium to deal with, don't you, Talkin'? I have no sympathy. You're fired. Ed._]


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Is a strangled wailing dervish cat with flailing legs considered classical by anyone other than dearly departed HR Giger


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

PetrB said:


> Scottish Bagpipe is a field instrument, often for martial accompaniment, parade or battle. It / They -- sound best out of doors, where they were designed to sound.


The bagpipes sound best outdoors for no more than 4 or 5 minutes at most. Anymore and the squealing accompanied by the mind-numbing drone become excruciatingly unbearable, which is why they're mostly played for dead people.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Very witty, but completely untrue. There's nothing more stirring than the pipes. We've danced the eightsome to the Duke of Atholl played on the pipes and it's fabulous. But maybe you do have to have tartan blood...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

trazom said:


> The bagpipes sound best outdoors for no more than 4 or 5 minutes at most. Anymore and the squealing accompanied by the mind-numbing drone become excruciatingly unbearable, which is why they're mostly played for dead people.


It really is a shame that people can't listen to bagpipe music without making silly noises. I quite agree that the squealing of the audience and the way they drone on about their incontinence* is very annoying. If people paid more attention, then they would find the bagpipes a most pleasing instrument.

*Merchant of Venice Act IV Scene 1

And others, when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose,
Cannot contain their urine.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

But is it possible to be in the presence of bagpipe players and not pay any attention? :devil:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Ingélou said:


> But is it possible to be in the presence of bagpipe players and not pay any attention? :devil:


Being a gentleman, I am able to quote Hitchcock on bagpipes -- but won't.


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## omega (Mar 13, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Being a gentleman, I am able to quote Hitchcock on bagpipes -- but won't.


... even though, on that point, Hitchcock was perfectly right !


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Taggart said:


> It really is a shame that people can't listen to bagpipe music without making silly noises. I quite agree that the squealing of the audience and the way they drone on about their incontinence* is very annoying. If people paid more attention, then they would find the bagpipes a most pleasing instrument.
> 
> *Merchant of Venice Act IV Scene 1
> 
> ...


I agree, I love the sound of bagpipes. They can sound very sublime. There's a piece for string quartet and bagpipe that I particularly like by a composer named "something" Lamb (I forgot his first name) called "Langdans Efter Byfans Mats". Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere on Youtube but it's on the Kornos Quartet album "Early Music".


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

Ingélou said:


> Very witty, but completely untrue. There's nothing more stirring than the pipes. We've danced the eightsome to the Duke of Atholl played on the pipes and it's fabulous. But maybe you do have to have tartan blood...


I live right next door to someone who wins contests at the highland festivals for his bagpipe playing and no matter how good he gets at the instrument, by itself, it still sounds expressionless and unmusical to me. How many who like the bagpipes actually listen to them for more than an hour or two every day for years? It's almost always because the context/setting the bagpipes are played in, like at memorials, that people find them moving, or because they're accompanied by other instruments. By themselves, the actual range of sound is so limited/samey.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Taggart said:


> It really is a shame that people can't listen to bagpipe music without making silly noises. I quite agree that the squealing of the audience and the way they drone on about their incontinence* is very annoying. If people paid more attention, then they would find the bagpipes a most pleasing instrument.
> 
> *Merchant of Venice Act IV Scene 1
> 
> ...


I'm also a fan of the bagpipe. Particularly in Scottish folk. Even the unofficial Scottish 'anthem' - Scotland the Brave - sounds good to me. Maybe I just have some Scott in my blood, well at least plenty of Scotch… from time to time.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Found this ! 
Kevin Weed (b. 1962)
Concerto for Highland Bagpipes and Orchestra (1989)
Cornemuse : Kevin Weed
Dir : Edward Peterson


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ah thanks, PetrB - just listening now, and it's charming.
The orchestra spoils it a bit, of course.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

The bagpipe is more like a SCOTTISH instrument but it can be put in orchestral music though.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Is the pope considered a protestant


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I have a copy of "The Brendan Voyage" by Shaun Davey, a wonderful orchestral piece featuring a solo bagpipe. Actually uilleann pipes, played on my recording by the great Liam O'Flynn.

I heard it live in Edinburgh Scotland many years ago and have always remembered it. 

I cannot find the whole thing on youtube but many bits and pieces of it are there for the tasting.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

For anyone who does like the combination of pipes and orchestra, look to Graham Waterhouse's _Chieftain's Salute_. There is a CD of Waterhouse's music on Meridian (?) with the English Chamber Orchestra.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> The French bagpipes - musettes or chalumeaux - was a staple of French Baroque pastoral music by Lully, Rameau and so on. This link tells you about the actual instrument:
> 
> http://www.mim.be/baroque-musette-with-three-chanters-chalumeaux?from_i_m=1


Ha - had forgotten all about this thread.

Just found this example of baroque music with musette on YouTube - it's pretty, but the instrument seems a bit subdued, like a camel humming to itself at dawn, not a stag braying proudly over the heather. 
Nope, I say, if you're gonna have a bagpipe, *have a bagpipe!*


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## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

JeffD said:


> I have a copy of "The Brendan Voyage" by Shaun Davey, a wonderful orchestral piece featuring a solo bagpipe. Actually uilleann pipes, played on my recording by the great Liam O'Flynn.
> 
> I heard it live in Edinburgh Scotland many years ago and have always remembered it.
> 
> I cannot find the whole thing on youtube but many bits and pieces of it are there for the tasting.


I have that recording too. I heard it at Celtic Connections a couple of years ago as part of a concert which introduced Bela Fleck's Banjo Concerto. A marvellous night! Liam O'Flynn is a friend of Bela Fleck.
The whole thing is on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsgaZvgdgc3TD7wWQ3k3rD09vZpsXtVEm

but you have to access each track separately


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I am not qualified to say whether the bagpipes are classical, but I do believe that the sound of the pipes, especially Scottish pipes, works directly upon the limbic system to trigger--in some such as myself--a delicious chill/thrill response. The _cor anglais_ and also the _been_, the traditional snake-charmer's instrument, can have a similar effect. There may be some evolutionary factor here; the response may harken back to our early days afield, naked and afraid, when the howling of certain beasts meant hunters were abroad. There is a scene in Kipling's Mowgli tale, Red Dog, that describes the repeated call of the jackal warning of danger afoot, as the red dogs begin to invade the territory of the Seeonee Pack. I get goosebumps just reading that passage.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I've never seen nor heard of a concerto for bagpipe and orchestra, nor have I ever heard of or heard any sonatas for the bagpipe. These are two forms that are classical in nature that are commonly written for instruments.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

JeffD said:


> I have a copy of "The Brendan Voyage" by Shaun Davey, a wonderful orchestral piece featuring a solo bagpipe. Actually uilleann pipes, played on my recording by the great Liam O'Flynn.





LezLee said:


> I have that recording too. I heard it at Celtic Connections a couple of years ago as part of a concert which introduced Bela Fleck's Banjo Concerto. A marvellous night! Liam O'Flynn is a friend of Bela Fleck.
> The whole thing is on YouTube:
> https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsgaZvgdgc3TD7wWQ3k3rD09vZpsXtVEm
> 
> but you have to access each track separately


We normally think of pipes as an aggressive sound, war pipes, yea that chill/thrill response mentioned earlier. But the pipes in the Brendan Voyage work differently.

Those of you familiar with the story of St. Brendan ("Brendan moccu Altae"), it is kind of like The Odyssey where Brendan goes off in a tiny boat and experiences great and terrible adventures out in the unexplored ocean, trekking to the Island of the Blessed. Shaun Davey's work really brings home the small lonely bagpipe holding on to dignity and faith in the gigantic almost infinite orchestra.

It is a wonderful piece musically and emotionally. It does all the things we want classical music to do for us, and I would recommend it highly.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

All I know is I loathe the sound of bagpipes. Its the worst thing about living in Scotland (apart from the lack of Summer).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Merl said:


> All I know is I loathe the sound of bagpipes. Its the worst thing about living in Scotland (apart from the lack of Summer).


I remember being in Scotland but I missed summer ... I was having a bath.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

just for the good of the order..."bag pipes" (and I'm guessing you mean the highland pipes) are not chromatic instruments and the range is only about one octave and a note.



...so what I'm saying is that there is a good reason you are having a hard time finding ensemble pieces for bag pipes


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## Rach Man (Aug 2, 2016)

I went to a concert where Rachel Barton Pine was the soloist. For her encore, she told the audience that she was going to Scotland in a week or two. I believe that this is when she recorded the Beethoven and Franz Clement violin concertos with Jose Serebrier.

She also told a little story about how the bagpipes were originally used as a war instrument, to be carried while marching in a war. But at one period of time, the bagpipes were outlawed and they were not permitted to be played so as not to instill a revolt against the rulers. So the local musicians started to use the violin instead of the bagpipes. She then proceeded to play the violin to sound as a bagpipe. It was amazing. The sound was so close to the sound of a bagpipe that the music mesmerized the audience. I couldn't believe how wonderfully she mad those sounds.

BTW, I really like and admire Rachel Barton Pine.

I know that this wasn’t what was originally asked, but it has to do with bagpipes and a classical musician.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

I remember listening to Peter Maxwell Davies "An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise" when it was premiered by John Williams and the Boston Pops. I was pleasantly surprised when the sunrise section of the piece featured a bagpipe solo. I later purchased the recording which also featured a great arrangement of "Scotland the Brave" for bagpipes, drums and orchestra.

Sunrise section starts at about 12:30 on this video.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

James MacTavish's Triple Concerto for Accordion, Bagpipes, Harmonica, and Busker Band was performed once on an Island in the Hebrides before an audience of seagulls -- that all flew away. The musicians retreated to the mainland and took new names.

The bagpipe soloist started a new career playing the steam calliope.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Merl said:


> All I know is I loathe the sound of bagpipes. Its the worst thing about living in Scotland (apart from the lack of Summer).


Midges. You forgot the midges.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Bagpipes are a part of Paisiello's opera, Nina. Here is a YouTube queued to where the bagpipes come in. Not that it proves bagpipes to be classical, but it is a nice touch to have in an opera.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Becca said:


> I remember being in Scotland but I missed summer ... I was having a bath.


Shame. I bet that was the year of the 'Great Scottish Heatwave'. It was June 22nd 2010 and it started at 12.30pm and finished at 12.35. Temperatures reached a sweltering 13 degrees. The hot spell was broken by 4 weeks of continuous snow from 12.36pm the same day. It's rained every day since then. Primark in Edinburgh sold 200 pairs of flip-flops in that 5 minute period. I've never worn mine since.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

As a scot and a former piper I can categorically state that bagpipes are not a classical instrument. I do have a chuckle imagining a bagpipe quintet - two violins, viola, 'cello and bagpipes. Good luck hearing the strings there!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

My favourite bagpipe music is Louis McNiece's poem, Bagpipe Music.
Favourite lines are
"And it's no go the yogi man
And it's no go Blavatsky.
All we want is a bank balance,
And a bit of skirt in a taxi!"

Well worth a read is Louis!


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Svelte Silhouette said:


> Is a strangled wailing dervish cat with flailing legs considered classical by anyone other than dearly departed HR Giger


Definitely would be classed as classical by Some guy particularly if played in a derelict factory on an ipad.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Svelte Silhouette said:


> Is a *strangled wailing dervish cat with flailing legs* considered classical by anyone other than dearly departed HR Giger


What a delightful description of the bagpipe! I like it! And I suppose if one tries to play the bagpipe they will feel as if they are wrestling with such a cat.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Hold the phone here people. Only native born Scots are allowed to bad-mouth the bagpipes, the rest of you can keep shtum or you'll make me angry. And you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!!:lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I have nothing against bagpipes but do recall the horror story of a fatal lung disease that you can get if they are not properly cared for.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

The Irish and Greek pipes are fine just those wailing scots


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Fritz Kobus said:


> I have nothing against bagpipes but do recall the horror story of a fatal lung disease that you can get if they are not properly cared for.


Don't believe everything you hear Fritz, you are more likely to be done over by an irate Scot who feels that his national instrument is taking unwarranted stick from sassenachs and other foreign types of that ilk.

Fair warning for those of you out there that post any more scurrilous posts about the divine bagpipes. In the immortal words of Liam Neeson, "I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you."


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Fritz Kobus said:


> I have nothing against bagpipes but do recall the horror story of a fatal lung disease that you can get if they are not properly cared for.


Is that just wishful thinking :devil:


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