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ing.113 However, it is not clear whether the reference is to piping without breath-pauses or just to piping that goes on for hours.114 Some of the sources that cite the phrase also quote a verse from some comic poet, |
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He charges a drachma to pipe, and four to stop. |
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One instrument that does play without breath-pauses is the bagpipe, developed from the old reed-blown pipe by the addition of a bag made from the whole skin of a small animal or the bladder of a larger one. This serves as an air reservoir supplying a constant flow of wind. The bag is kept inflated either by a blowpipe or by bellows; the player holds it under his arm and squeezes it to maintain the air pressure. Most bagpipes have two, three, or four sounding pipes, each equipped with its own reed. One of these (or sometimes two) is the 'chanter' or melody pipe which the player fingers, while the others are drones emitting a single continuous note.115 |
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The instrument is found over a large area that covers the whole of Europe, western Asia as far as India, and parts of north and east Africa, with many regional variations. It must certainly have had a wide distribution by the early Middle Ages. In Antiquity, however, it is only scantily documented, and it cannot be said to have played any significant part in the history of Greek music. It may not have appeared at all before the second century BC, and even after that it is doubtful how often it was seen. It seems to have been in the main an instrument of low-class urban mendicants and mountebanks, at first from the Near East.116 The antiquarian writers of the late second century AD, Athenaeus and Pollux, who are so industrious in listing all the different types of auloi and other instruments that they can find in previous literature, say nothing of the bagpipe. But we know it existed in the Mediterranean world before their time. |
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Perhaps the first clear evidence for it is provided by a Hellenistic |
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113 First alluded to by Cantharus fr. 1, where Kassel and Austin cite other testimonia. |
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114 The last movement of Holst's Beni Mora suite commemorates the composer's experience of hearing an Arab in Algeria playing the same phrase on a bamboo flute for over two hours non-stop. |
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115 See in general Baines, Bagpipes, and in A. Baines (ed.). Musical Instruments Through the Ages, 224-7; F. Collinson, The Bagpipe (London, 1975); NG ii. 19-32. |
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116 Cf. Baines, Bagpipes, 66f. |
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