MüSing On The MüSa When you cast your eyes over the pictures of bagpipes in the previous 800 years the variety of pipes depicted shows clearly that makers and players have been constantly experimenting and developing new variations on the basic idea of a bagpipe. In the current bagpipe revival of the past 40 years there appears to be an interesting tension of two opposites. At one end of this spectrum there are pipers who have consciously revived regional pipes and are cherishing their individuality and the music that may have originally been played on them. And at the other end of the spectrum there are those who are pressing forward making new innovations and additions to the bagpipe to play whatever music they wish to play today. It was the article on the Piva Emiliane by Jane Moulder in the last edition of Chanter that prompted me to reflect on this, in the context of one of the first bagpipes that I used to make. It is called the MüSa and was played in the north of Italy, but fell out of use in the early 20 th century. I only made them for 5 years, but a legacy remains from the MüSa in the designs of one of my English chanters. I attended St Chartier for the first time in July1985, where the Italian band La Ciapa Rusa were playing. This band played the music from their region of Alessandria. The leader of the band, Maurizio Martinotti, came to my stall and commissioned me to copy a MüSa. The background to this order was that he had previously met my brother John when the band played at Cecil Sharp House and was impressed by our creation of the Leicestershire Smallpipe. Maurizio wanted to have the MüSa to play in the band and no one then was making them in Italy so he asked John if he though that I would be prepared to copy a surviving one, which he believed was in store at the The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. When I returned it took a while to locate it in the museum collection as it was catalogued as a 'Piva'. Maurizio always referred to this type of bagpipe as a MüSa and I happily adopted the name and its quirky spelling. This MüSa is part of an amazing collection of bagpipes made by Alexander Duncan Fraser at the end of the 1800's which formed the basis of his book Some Reminiscences and the Bagpipe (1907). Anyone who is not wanting accurate facts about the history of bagpipes should certainly search out this book! The photographs are excellent, but the text is a mish-mash of incorrect information and a jumble of dubious assertions attempting to place the Great Highland Pipe at the very pinnacle of bagpipe evolution. I think the text is
available online and I do not recommend that you spend your money buying the current reprint of the book. Though the book is not of great interest, Duncan Fraser did amass this splendid and well preserved collection of over two dozen British and European bagpipes which after his death his family donated to The Royal Scottish Museum in 1948. A unique feature is that when he was preparing for the book he wired two dozen reeds from some of these pipes onto a stout card to display them for the photo which appears in the book. This card was never dismantled and forms part of the collection. Thus we have well preserved reeds from Spanish, Irish, French and Italian bagpipes. The Museum curator Hugh Cheape arranged for me to measure up and make plans of this MüSa. It is in very fine condition and has some distinctive features that Maurizio told me were common to all surviving MüSas. The bag is a goatskin with a thin paisley cotton cover. The wooden parts are all made of walnut. It has a single two piece drone, played across the arm. The end section has eight side holes drilled in it, not in line, but apparently at random. I worked on the assumption that the drone note was G, but the side holes in the drone end gave possibilities for other tunings. The conical chanter, which shows signs of a lot of use, has a staple which is not removable; it is fixed into the top of the chanter. The reeds, two of which survive on the reed display card, are made of cane bound with a 'turks head' of thread and look like minute bassoon reeds. The sixth finger note of the chanter appeared to be C, though the notes of the chanter are tuned to key of G. This is because the MüSa was never a solo bagpipe, but was intended to accompany the Piffero; a loud shawm that plays in G. (ie lower pitched than the MüSa). There are two tuning holes beneath the 7 finger pinkie holes which could be waxed over to lower the bottom leading note to B flat. The chanter had no thumb hole. I made various modifications to the MüSa design to turn it into a solo instrument. The most basic being altering the chanter finger hole positions so that it played in the key of C natural, rather than G. I made some sets with a mid section to the drone to allow it to play C, the six finger note. I also developed a chanter in D. At first I made a few reeds of the original design, by using drastically cut down and modified highland cane reeds. I removed the highland staple and used a binding of copper wire in place of the original thread 'turk's head'. I was not skilful enough to make a success of this and soon began to supply chanter reeds
each made on their own individual staples. The one feature on the chanter that I never abandoned was the fact that it had no thumb hole. Maurizio had alerted me to this and explained how it was played. It is like a penny whistle; when you have 6 fingers on the chanter you just lift the top finger and it shoots up to the top octave note. It's great; you can pop up and down without needing any alteration in pressure! And that top hole, which is fairly small, is also used for playing the flattened and sharpened seventh, so you get a full octave. I have seen pipers who reacted at first with horror at the thought of not being able to use their thumb. Yet it is such an instinctive and easy fingering system that they then pick it and find that they can play it straight away. BASIC FINGERING GAMUT FOR MY VERSION OF THE MüSa CHANTER ( no thumbing involved!) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 B C D E F G A Bb B C Between 1985 and 1990 I made 10 MüSas. Two went to Italy. I even made a bellows blown one. I was aware that there were makers in Italy that were beginning to make them. My involvement was really only based on the fortunate fact that I had access to such a perfectly preserved example. And looking back I now see how far I had wandered from making exact copies. But it has left a legacy; I was very pleased with the D chanter that I had developed and this became the inspiration for my high D English Great Pipe; a bright conical chanter that is fully chromatic within one octave and uses a modified highland cane reed. And, thanks to the MüSa, it has no thumb hole. It was Pete Stewart who first really explored the possibilities of this chanter and
he has always been an enthusiast for the stable way it can jump the octave so effortlessly. He developed his own distinctive style of playing which was a foundation of The Goodacre Brothers sound. I was under the assumption that this chanter could not go over the octave and Pete never really explored its overblowing potential. It is only in the last year that Callum Armstrong has demonstrated that it can play right up to high B in the upper octave. John- Francis has now taken over from Pete in The Goodacre Brothers and takes advantage of soaring into the upper octave with seeming ease. So I was interested to read in Chanter about the Piva Emiliane, which outwardly has some similarities to the MüSa chanter, though I have no idea about its internal dimensions or its original reed. I note that the original had no thumb hole and that the pipe maker Franco Calanca has added two thumb holes to his modern copy of the Piva. The article referred to an old player recalling that the stress in the melody would be created with a snap. Could this be a description of the use of the distinctive octave jump that one can play so easily on a chanter without a thumb hole? I wonder if the modern makers of the MüSa have abandoned the joys of the thumb hole-less chanter? I hope not. I believe there are some other piping traditions that used to have no thumb holes on their chanters but have gained a thumb hole in the last century. I am not certain about this, but I think there are some surviving old Breton Biniou chanters and Galician gaita chanters which do not feature the thumb hole. I would welcome information from anyone about this. There will have been reasons for adding a thumb hole to a chanter, but I wonder what they were? Certainly the use of a thumb hole can change the way a piper graces the music. Perhaps it was motivated by an unquestioned assumption that a thumb hole is a 'good idea'? It can sometimes prove fruitful to question an 'unquestioned assumption'! FINAL MüSINGS I relish the current bagpipe revival for the sheer variety of pipes that are now being made and played with no attempt at global standardisation. Historically the one exception, of course, is the Highland bagpipe which is a fairly recent arrival on the scene. It became standardised in the late 1700s and for a couple of centuries appeared to have gained evolutionary dominance and be supplanting other regional bagpipes. It certainly is amazingly successful and adaptable but an annual visit to St Chartier shows that the tradition of experimenting and innovating with bagpipes is carrying on unabated!
Tradition or Innovation? There is nothing 'wrong' with either of these approaches; it is a creative tension. At the extreme 'traditional' end of the spectrum I have been working for 15 years with Barnaby Brown to make exact copies if the Highland Iain Dall chanter; resisting any temptation to compromise the original design. And at the 'innovative' end of this spectrum I have recently been working with Callum Armstrong to develop a modern three octave Scottish smallpipe chanter that only has four metal keys. Most of us, as I did with the MüSa, work somewhere between these two extremes; blending traditional features and modern innovations. It is all good! Julian Goodacre. May 3 rd 2014 Photo captions My copy of the MüSa with the C chanter and 2 piece drone.
A modern Piffaro made in by 'Bani' (Ettore Losini). Detail of the fixed staple with one of my first attempts at making the traditional style of removable reed.
The original MüSa from the Duncan Fraser collection, which is stored in The National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. The drone reed and two chanter reeds taken from the original MüSa. One of the reeds is on a bone mandrill the same dimensions as the staple and must have been used when forming the 'Turk's Head'.