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Proposed Pub. Date:
Autumn 1999
Size: 178 x 124mm
Pages: 80
Format: Hardback - with case cover and jacket
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The Book Of The Bagpipe
In a short, readable and highly informative text, Hugh Cheape presents the story of the pipes from their origins in ancient times right up to the present day. The illustrations, many of them not published before, are from his own collection.
In its origins . . . the bagpipe was never the property of one people or one nation but was a universal musical instrument. This powerful instrument has a long pedigree and derives from earlier and prehistoric reeded pipes such as 'shawms' and 'hornpipes', known and played in Near Eastern and Egyptian civilisations from before about 2,500 BC. These are the names conventionally given to the first pipes; the shawm was usually a turned wooden wind instrument with a double reed and a sound tube in the form of a long narrow cone opening out from top to bottom. It was once widely played in Asia and Europe and survives today, for example, in the vigorous and strident bombarde of Brittany."
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