David Kilpatrick wrote:
The sharpened note is not out of tune. It is imitative of the *correct*
sharp pitch of the appropriate note on (in this case) Border pipes. Each
type of bagpipe - great Highland, Scottish smallpipe, Border,
Northumbrian and to a lesser extent the more elaborate and almost
microtonal Irish inventions which look crossed with a clarinet - not
only has a traditional overall pitch which often isn't A=440, but also a
traditional relative pitch for each tone. To my ear the modern highland
bagpipe usually sounds most 'normal' and the conical bore Border pipe
the most extreme, but I've heard Northumbrian ones which are similar -
one local player has a vintage set which gives him space at sessions,
since no-one can join in with anything he does without retuning.
Many fiddle tunes are also pipe tunes, and fiddlers take great pride in
playing them in a manner which makes this ancestry audible. Part of the
skill in doing that lies in imitating the tones (sorry, I don't like
using the word 'note' instead of 'tone' in the context of a pitch) of
the pipes.
And that is one thing which can make a style sound 'Scottish' .........
My comment:
We need to define what is "in tune" . It is the absence of "beats" or
" roughness" or "dissonance", which is caused by a lack of unisons in
the low harmonics. Playing a note on the fiddle imitative of a pipe
note does not mean it is in tune. Further the human ear cannot measure
deviations from a "tuned" note, a tuned note as I have defined it.
Further still, as you and others have pointed out, the flatted seventh
note is a different pitch in different pipes and further still again the
intervals in the highland pipes have and are undergoing changes for
years. Even, then, were a fiddler able to accurately play the flatted
note, which one would be considered "authentic or "traditional" , the
modern one or the ancient one or the multiplicity that have existed
between the two, or even the multiplicity that now exist in the modern
pipes. [For more on this see Llewelyn Lloyd's quotes below]
Here are some quotes from others relevant to this discussion.
1. "The Bagpipe Scale", an essay by Llewelyn Lloyd published in the "The
Monthly Musical Record".
A. Quoting another source he says "....there was no scientific
principle adopted in boring the holes of chanters, and that only about
one in every six made turns out useful".
B. He reports that on tests conducted on eight chanters all eight
had significantly different pitch differences in at least one
interval.
2 ."The Strathspey, Reel, and Hornpipe Tutor" by William C Honeyman.
A." No one can be a good strathspey player who does not play
strictly in tune. There is even a scientific reason why a strathspey
player should in some cases be more strictly correct in his intonation
than any other violin player........Slovenly fingering of semitones is
at all times irritating to any one with a sensitive ear."
. B. "The Scottish bagpipes [are a] primitive and very imperfect
instrument." However he says its "eccentricities" and "peculiar school
of composition even when that music was intended for the
violin.......... will haunt purely Scottish and Irish music through all
time".
3. From "The Book of the Violin" edited by Dominic Gill "The violin is
one of the most perfect, as well as the most acoustically complex, of
all musical instruments".
Altering the intervals of "the most perfect instrument" to those of the
"primitive and very imperfect" one makes no musical sense nor any other
sense and so I conclude as I did in my last e-mail:
In summary a note whose pitch lies about half way between G and G# is
not in the equal tempered scale, is not in the just intonation scale,
and does not designate a tune as Scottish. It is simply out of
tune.
Alexander
P.S. I, Alexander, am the writer of these e-mails, not Suzanne Mac
Donald.
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