Swedish bagpipe
The Swedish bagpipe (Swedish bagpipes), Swedish säckpipa , pôsu (påse), bälgpipa , drommpipa or pipsäck , is a bagpipe that is traditionally found in Sweden, among other things, in military music and which is used today primarily in folk music . The Swedish bagpipe is small compared to the Scottish highland bagpipe and is mouth-blown. The Swedish bagpipe tradition was almost completely extinct when some old instruments were found in a museum in the 1930s and the last Swedish bearer of tradition was found in West Dalarna . During the last few decades, expanded variants of the Swedish bagpipe have been produced, with more pipes and more possible keys than the traditional ones.
origin
Few Swedes know that their country has a tradition of playing bagpipes, as most people associate the word “bagpipe” with Scotland . Medieval church paintings, however, suggest that the bagpipe was common in Sweden and appeared in different models, both cylindrical and conical shaped pipes. The historian and geographer Olaus Magnus reported at the beginning of the 16th century about the bagpipe as an instrument for shepherd and dance music. Other direct evidence of the use of the instrument is scarce - only a few writings from the 16th and 18th centuries mention the bagpipe in passing. From this the researchers conclude that the instrument was not an exotic appearance at the time, but rather commonplace and therefore widespread.
The bagpipe tradition in West Dalarna was almost unknown in the rest of Sweden until the ethnologist Mats Rehnberg came across a reference to such an instrument through a word in a dialect of the region in 1937. The theory was confirmed when, in 1939, during the evacuation of part of the collections of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, some unusable bagpipes came to light. As part of his research on the subject, Rehnberg succeeded in locating the last living bagpipe player, Gudmunds Nils Larsson, in Dala-Järna . After he and the music teacher Ture Gudmundsson had visited and interviewed him, Gudmundsson was able to build a functioning bagpipe. With this he recorded two songs for Swedish radio. Few instruments were built during the following decades.
The Swedish bagpipe only became available in larger numbers when the sawmill worker and carpenter Leif Eriksson began to develop and mass-produce his own model at the suggestion of the Dalarna Museum in the early 1980s. Leif Eriksson constructed his bagpipe as a compromise between the design of the dozen or so historical specimens that could be found in museums and modern requirements, such as the ability to tune the instrument so that it works well with other instruments, especially the violin, harmonizes. The instrument only became well known when the popular violinist Per Gudmundsson began to use the Säckpipa in his performances. Gudmundsson even brought out an entire album of songs played on the bagpipe.
Design
Leif Eriksson's traditional bagpipe
The traditional Swedish bag pipe has a blowing pipe , called a mundocka , through which the player blows air into the bag. The mundocka is equipped with a non- return valve so that the air cannot escape through the mouthpiece as soon as the player stops blowing. The chanter, which has finger holes and on which the musician can play melodies, is cylindrically drilled with a diameter of six millimeters. The pipe is provided with a simple reed made of native reed ( phragmites australis ) and has carved indentations for the fingers, which make it easier to cover the finger holes and hold the instrument at the same time. The bagpipe has a drone whistle , tuned to the lowest note on the chanter - the crossed e '. The wooden parts of the instrument - chanter, drone, mundocka and the sticks with which they are connected to the sack - are made of birch wood. The sack is usually made of calfskin, which has been vegetable tanned to make the sack tight enough. To play, you hold the bagpipe under your left arm. The drone pipe is on the right. When the bag is filled with air, the drone on its side points straight out.
The pitch range of the Swedish bagpipe extends from the e 'to the two-bowed e ". The instrument is tuned melodically in A minor, and the root key A is in the middle of the scale. The sixth and seventh steps of the scale are raised (F sharp and g sharp).
Extensions
The Swedish bagpipe has been modernized over the past few decades. The tone scale of the traditional bagpipe is extremely limited, and there are more tones on more modern instruments so that one can play more scales . The most common extension of the scale is a c sharp ". The finger hole for it lies in the same indentation as the finger hole for the c", just like double holes in modern recorders. By covering or uncovering the c sharp "hole, you can switch between the keys of A minor and A major. The key is usually determined before playing, either with wax or a rubber ring that is pulled over the tone hole It is possible to switch between c "and c sharp" while playing, but this requires a special (and unusual) finger technique. Another common addition is a g '. The hole for this tone is placed on the back of the chanter and is served with the right thumb. The tone d (d 'or d ") is also a common extension, sometimes also a d flat. Skillful players can even achieve the f "with correctly adjusted instruments by increasing the pressure in the sack, a technique similar to overblowing on other wind instruments.
There are even instruments where the manufacturer has added additional chanter. The most common here are chanter in G, and sometimes F. The G whistle sometimes has a key that allows the player to play the note f "without having to increase the blowing pressure. It is also not uncommon to have bagpipes with several drone whistles can be equipped, which can sometimes be turned off.
The pitch of the instrument changes quickly due to moisture on the reed. Therefore, a bagpipe with natural reed leaves, which is blown by mouth and has several drones, is difficult to tune in practice. In order to get around this problem, today sack pipas are often played with a bellows instead of the blowpipe, which is fastened with a belt under the right arm. This technique is very old and is traditionally mainly used with the smaller European bagpipe types (e.g. the Irish Uilleann Pipes , the North English Northumbrian Smallpipe , the French Musette de Cour and many others).
Reed and voices
The reed, which is used to make sound in the Swedish bagpipe, is a simple reed with a tongue that vibrates when the air pressure in the bag has become strong enough. Tuning the instrument is very time-consuming and relatively difficult because many parameters can be adjusted on the reed that influence the sound properties. The tongue of the reed is pried open by a razor blade that plunges vertically down into the reed. In order to be able to make sounds, the tongue has to be bent, either with the help of heat or with a wire that is inserted under the tongue. The length of the instrument determines how much the tongue is bent . H. the distance between the highest and lowest notes. A strongly bent tongue has a narrower length, sounds stronger and at the same time is harder to blow. The strength of the tongue mainly affects the tone. A thin tongue gives a quieter sound and an instrument that is easier to blow. The weight of the tip of the tongue affects the pitch of the scale fairly linearly. This is used to tune the whole scale up or down. To increase it, some of the tongue is filed down; if it has to be lowered, beeswax is used as the weight. The tongue length also influences the scale length; a short tongue is narrower, but blocks more easily than a long tongue. In addition to all of these various variables, the instrument is negatively affected all the time by the humidity in the breathable air. In order to make the instrument easier to tune, pile reed ( Arundo donax ) is often used today instead of the native reed.
Playing technique
Breathing and melody are not synchronized with a bagpipe, which clearly distinguishes it from other wind instruments . So that the sound of the bagpipe does not weaken, the air pressure through the pipe must be constant. Since the air flows directly from the sack into the pipe, this means that the air pressure in the sack must be constant. The player does this by pressing on the sack with his left arm. It only blows in new air when the pressure in the sack noticeably decreases. The player then usually takes a full breath into the sack. This needs to be coordinated with decreased pressure on the left arm to maintain constant pressure in the sac.
The construction of the Swedish bagpipes with a cylindrical bore and single reed means that the uppermost open finger hole (both in terms of pitch and height above the bell of the chanter) determines the tone. On a recorder, for example, there is a tone difference between the fingering combinations too-open-closed and too-open-open, but that is different with the Swedish bagpipe. This makes it possible to play with open fingering (no holes covered under the uppermost open finger hole). By having the player use covered (all but one finger holes are always covered) or semi-covered (a mixture of the other two) fingering, some effects can be achieved. Since the bagpipe sounds all the time, it can be difficult to highlight individual notes. The player can simulate a break by quickly covering all the holes, because then the chanter sounds like the drone.
Music for the Swedish bagpipe
The music that best suits the Swedish Säckpipa is traditional Swedish folk music. Due to the limited range of notes, only certain melodies can be played. Some pieces fit perfectly if the player transposes them to a different key . A large part of Swedish minstrel music has a smaller ambitus , mostly pieces in a D key that are only played in the first position on the A or E string of the violin. These go well with the Swedish bagpipe when transposed a fourth lower.
Manufacturer of bagpipes
Today there are a small number of professional or semi-professional bagpipe designers. These of course include Leif Eriksson as well as Börs Anders Öhman and Bengt Sundberg , who represent the traditionalists, while Alban Faust in particular is driving the development of more modern instruments. Besides them, there are of course a large number of amateur designers.
Well-known bagpipe players
- Erik Ask-Upmark - national player on the bagpipe and member of the groups Svanevit, Dråm and Falsobordone (Sweden)
- Anna Rynefors - national player on the bagpipe and member of the groups Svanevit, Dråm and Falsobordone (Sweden)
- Alban Faust - bagpipe maker and member of the Faust group (Sweden)
- Per Gudmundson - pioneer of the Swedish bagpipe (Sweden)
- Olle Gällmo - (Sweden)
- Göran Hallmarken - among other things a member of the Bordunverkstan group (Sweden)
- Anders Norudde - member of the Hedningarna group (Sweden)
- Jan Winter - bagpipe connoisseur and member of The Dancing Masters group
- Leif Eriksson (instrument maker) - a great pioneer of the Swedish bagpipe, is one of the few in Sweden who make bagpipas the traditional way. (Sweden)
- Ralf Gehler - among other things a member of the Malbrook Group (Germany)
- Matthias Branschke - Member of the Bilwesz Group (Germany)
literature
- Per-Ulf Allmo: Säckpipan i Norden , AllWin hb., Stockholm / Uppsala 1990
Web links
- Olle Gällmo's page about the Swedish bagpipe , with further information, pictures and sound samples
- Björn Mittmessers bagpipes page , with the first textbook for the Swedish bagpipes and a blueprint for a chanter
- North Sackpipa Association of the Americas (NSAA)
Individual evidence
- ^ Mats Rehnberg, Säckpipan i Sverige (Nordiska Museets Handlingar: 18), Stockholm 1943
