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MEMBERS' CORNER => Members' wish lists & requests => Topic started by: Toby Esterhase on July 19, 2013, 12:51:17 am



Title: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on July 19, 2013, 12:51:17 am
Please could you suggest any title?


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: kyjo on July 19, 2013, 01:34:50 am
Interesting topic! The only piece written for the combination of bagpipes and orchestra that I am aware of is Maxwell Davies' An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise (available on Naxos), but it's not really a concerto.


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Christo on July 19, 2013, 08:48:43 pm
There are some Google hits for "bagpipe and orchestra", including concertos by Kevin Weed and Matthew Welsh, apparently: http://www.google.nl/?gws_rd=cr#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22bagpipe+and+orchestra%22&oq=%22bagpipe+and+orchestra%22&gs_l=hp.3..0i30.3293.8874.0.9083.23.23.0.0.0.0.193.2922.0j23.23.0....0.0..1c.1.20.psy-ab.fBKTrt7fjf0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.49478099%2Cd.bGE%2Cpv.xjs.s.en_US.c75bKy5EQ0A.O&fp=bfafcdd6538ee023&biw=1024&bih=653

I think there's a bagpipe in MacCunn's popular Concert Overture Land of the Mountain and the Flood too, if I'm not mistaken?


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on July 20, 2013, 12:15:34 am
Only two composers? Maybe?However thanks.


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Dundonnell on July 20, 2013, 01:10:09 am
Oh...Johan!

I really don't think that MacCunn included a bagpipe in "Land of the Mountain of the Flood" ::) The scoring is for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons
2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba,timpani, cymbals, strings.

He was a very bold and talented 18-year old when he wrote this tremendous overture but even he would not have gone that far ;D

Incidentally...as a Scot, I really cannot stand the sound of bagpipes :( :(


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Christo on July 20, 2013, 08:40:25 am
Incidentally...as a Scot, I really cannot stand the sound of bagpipes :( :(

For this you don't have to be a Scot.  ;D Fortunately, bagpipes are found in many European countries. Perhaps someone can come up with bagpipe music from Romania, Portugal, one of the Russian Federation's dozens ethnicities, Turkey or Lithuania or ...

Oh...Johan! I really don't think that MacCunn included a bagpipe in "Land of the Mountain of the Flood" ::)

Sorry! Must have heard a didgeridoo then.  ::)  ;D


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Dundonnell on July 20, 2013, 10:48:20 am
I would probably like the sound of bagpies from these other countries :)


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: shamus on July 20, 2013, 06:36:40 pm
If you don't mind lighter music, try Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage. I enjoyed it a lot. The Spanish word for the bagpipe cousin is "gaita", so you might try putting that in the search box of YouTube, I can't recall the composers exactly but I know I have heard some bagpipe concertos by Galician composers.


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on October 11, 2016, 01:52:04 am
It isn't on cd meanwhile has been recorded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtXO3cBz1oQ


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Neil McGowan on October 12, 2016, 05:20:52 am
Bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies were a regular standing ensemble at the Court of Versailles, where the ensemble was known as the Grand Ecurie.  The corps of full-time musicians numbered several dozen, although - in keeping with the spirit of the times - they were all expected to "double" on a number of different instruments.  The drum and fife corps was particularly advanced, and even composers like Lully were involved in writing drum breaks, flams, and other drill patterns of great technical virtuosity.  We assume much of this music was intended for miitary use.  However, the bagpipes, musettes, and hurdy-gurdies made quite frequent appearance in the opera house - usually when introducing some pastoral or bucolic moment. Rameau, the various members of the Philidor family, and their numerous contemporaries all scored these instruments into conventional orchestral compositions.

Of course, the sound of shepherd bagpipes was imitated by many composers in the baroque era - particularly in connection with Christmas celebrations. The simplicity of shepherd music - in the hands of a fine composer - made a neat foil to the sophisticated music which accompanied the Three Kings when they turn up a bit later in the story. The particular shepherds who are referenced here are not just any old local sheep-minders, but Italian shepherds - who would tour the whole of Europe as buskers throughout the winter season. They played in groups called "zampogna bands". The minimum line-up would be at least a musette (a kind of sweeter-sounding shawm, often with the ability to overblow into the second octave), plus at least one "zampogna" - the huge Italian dual-chanter bagpipe that's played with one hand on each of its two melody pipes. The number of fingers available doesn't really run to much of a melody, but this wasn't the zampogna's role - it accompanied the musette player by chugging along in parallel thirds at tenor/baritone pitch. It was, for most of Europe, the traditional sound of Christmas. Like sad lonely dinosaurs, zampogna bands survived in rural Italy until the middle of the C20th - still playing the old traditional tunes. Often the musette player would leave off playing to sing a verse or two.

https://youtu.be/FUtd-p_9hQI (https://youtu.be/FUtd-p_9hQI)
The old guys here are probably the 'last embers of the tradition'

This line-up of one or two musettes (shawms), plus tenor or baritone accompaniments, and a drone bass, is adroitly copied (with a string ensemble) by Handel in Messiah, where it announces Christ's birth. Yet a closer timbral copy of the zampogna band appears in JS Bach's Christmas Oratorio - where he has two oboe lines in parallel thirds and sixths, two tenor oboe lines clunking away below in parallel-third accompaniment, and a bassoon honking-out the drone.

https://youtu.be/ZHA-tJGOXtk
The shepherds come in around 29:00


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: autoharp on October 12, 2016, 06:00:06 am
Many thanks for the interesting post! I'm reminded of the 3rd movement of Berlioz's Harold in Italy, which, I assume, refers to a similar bunch of chaps?


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Neil McGowan on October 12, 2016, 01:21:53 pm
Many thanks for the interesting post! I'm reminded of the 3rd movement of Berlioz's Harold in Italy, which, I assume, refers to a similar bunch of chaps?

Very probably!  But I've not listened in any detail to the Berlioz for a long while, so I must refresh my memory of the piece!  I'm glad you liked the zampogna guys :) Somewhere on YouTube there used to be some vintage recordings of zampogna bands from the pre-WW2 era, in which the virtuousity of the top-line playing is much more vivid than in the clip above. But clearly the basic tonic-dominant lilt has changed little since Bach's day :)

I wonder how the Leipzig congregation felt about the use of the shepherd music in the Christmas oratorio? For me it has a very vivid and rather moving appeal - pulling the real-life shepherds into the musical telling of the tale?  And more than likely the congregation would have been approached by the very same shepherd buskers as they left the Thomas-Kirche? ))  It's clearly an effect which Bach was keen to pull off - as it must have involved him in extra time and expense in mustering extra orchestral players who don't feature elsewhere in the composition. With the front-line oboists already busy on the top lines, it seems very unlikely that the tenor oboe parts would have been doubled by other instrumentalists... more likely Bach recruited town bandsmen for this bucolic moment?  :)


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on October 12, 2016, 10:48:20 pm
Zampogna's sound is similar but not the same of bagpipe and at present is still played in rural areas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFdjNhfpMqQ
http://www.festivaldellazampogna.it/new/
http://www.zampognaridelmatese.it/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYMY2Thbpsc


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Gauk on October 15, 2016, 10:12:42 pm
The best piece I know is the symphonic poem "Calgacus" by Eddie McGuire. As the composer said to me, the problem with incorporating bagpipes into orchestral music is that the pipes have to tune up immediately prior to their first entry. So in Calgacus, he put in a huge orchestral climax just before the bagpipes entry to drown out the sounds of the tuning up.


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on November 09, 2016, 11:25:41 pm
It seems new:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WewAlfH8mGs


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Gauk on November 10, 2016, 08:10:28 am
The performers there left the bagpipes out!


Title: Re: Cd concertos of bagpipe and Orchestra
Post by: Toby Esterhase on November 10, 2016, 02:33:56 pm
The performers there left the bagpipes out!
Yes! I can't understand reason.
This is complete version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sffqsNKaiDY