The torupill () is a traditional

bagpipe Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Nor ...

from

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

Place in Estonian folk music

It is not clear when the bagpipe became established in Estonia. The instrument was known throughout Estonia. The bagpipe tradition was longest preserved in West and North Estonia where

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

retained archaic characteristics for a longer time. Later when the

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, th ...

was taking over folk music a lot of bagpipe tunes were transcribed for it. Very often the bagpipe was used for playing dance music; other instruments served this purpose only in the absence of the bagpipe. Some old ceremonial dances, such as the Round Dance (''Voortants'') and the Tail Dance (''Sabatants'') were performed together with a bagpiper who walked at the head of the column. Ceremonial music took an important place in the bagpipers' repertoires in the 17th century, as seen from the literary sources of that time. For instance, the presence of a bagpiper was considered essential during weddings, where he had to take part in certain ceremonies. There were special tunes,

marches In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a national "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which diff ...

or riding melodies that were performed in the wedding procession, etc. The bagpiper was an indispensable participant in dances and social gatherings. He accompanied

minstrel A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...

s during

Martinmas Saint Martin's Day or Martinmas, sometimes historically called Old Halloween or Old Hallowmas Eve, is the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours and is celebrated in the liturgical year on 11 November. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, ...

and

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

. No pub could manage without a good musician. Torupillimängija

One of the most popular players in history has been considered

Juhan Maaker Juhan Maaker ( – 21 September 1930) nicknamed ''Torupilli-Juss'' was an Estonian folk musician, a player of the Estonian bagpipe. He was considered one of the most popular players at the time called the king of bagpipe players. During his lif ...

(1845–1930) at the time called the king of bagpipe players in Estonia. Another notable players include Juhan Maaker's nephew Aleksander Maaker (1890–1968). After his death there was only one surviving bagpipe player alive in Estonia: Olev Roomet who became the revivalist of bagpipe in the country by training 25 new players in the 1970s. In modern times bagpipe playing is a part of the

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...

at University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy's Traditional Music faculty and in a number of regular music schools around the country.

Construction

The Estonian bagpipe has a bag, a mouth-pipe (blow-pipe) for inflating the bag, a melody-pipe (

chanter The chanter is the part of the bagpipe upon which the player creates the melody. It consists of a number of finger-holes, and in its simpler forms looks similar to a recorder. On more elaborate bagpipes, such as the Northumbrian bagpipes or the ...

) and 1 or 2, rarely 3, drones.

Bag

The bag ("tuulekott", "magu", "lõõts", "kott", etc.) was usually made of the stomach of a

grey seal The grey seal (''Halichoerus grypus'') is found on both shores of the North Atlantic Ocean. In Latin Halichoerus grypus means "hook-nosed sea pig". It is a large seal of the family Phocidae, which are commonly referred to as "true seals" or " ...

in the western and northern parts of Estonia and on the islands. Most valued were the stomachs of large old seals. The bag that was made of a seal's stomach, was not spoilt either by aridity or by humidity. A bagpiper of the Hiiu island is known to have said that if his bagpipe (made of a seal's stomach) became wet, it sounded richer because the seal is a sea animal. The bags were also made of the stomach of an ox, cow,

elk The elk (''Cervus canadensis''), also known as the wapiti, is one of the largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The common ...

or dog, but sometimes they were sewn of the skin of a dog, cat, goat or seal (with the fur outward) or even of the skin of a

Lynx A lynx is a type of wild cat. Lynx may also refer to: Astronomy * Lynx (constellation) * Lynx (Chinese astronomy) * Lynx X-ray Observatory, a NASA-funded mission concept for a next-generation X-ray space observatory Places Canada * Lynx, Ontar ...

. In bag-making certain superstitions were observed. In South Estonia, for example, some thought that the more a dog howled when being hanged, the better the sound of the bagpipe later.

Blow pipe

The blow pipe ("puhumispulk", "naput", "naba", "puhknapp", "napp") was made of wood.

Chanter

The chanter ("sõrmiline", "putk", "esimik", etc.) was made of

juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' () of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the Arcti ...

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...

ash Ash or ashes are the solid remnants of fires. Specifically, ''ash'' refers to all non-aqueous, non- gaseous residues that remain after something burns. In analytical chemistry, to analyse the mineral and metal content of chemical samples, ash ...

or, more seldom, of a tube of cane. It had 5–6 holes. The chanter was single-reeded, generally with a parallel rather than conical bore. The bottom end of the chanter sometimes had 1 – 2 holes in the side bored obliquely into the pipe, so that some straws or twigs could be put in to control the pitch. The chanter was placed in an oval wooden stock ("kibu", "kloba", "torupakk", "käsilise pakk"). The stock-end of the chanter contained a reed ("piuk", "keel", "roog", "raag", "vile").

Drone

The drones ("passitoru", "pass", "kai", "tori", "pill", "pulk", "toro") were made of wooden pipes, different in shape and diameter. The number of pipes determined their length. If there is only one, it is quite long, if two, they are both shorter. In some rare cases bagpipes with 3 drones could be found. The drone consists of 2 – 3 separate joints. In the lower end there is a wooden bell. The joints can be pulled out in order to tune the drone. The drone is placed in an oval or round stock.

Repertoire

Although they can be quite long sometimes (with 3 passages or more), they remain simple in their structure. The music for the bagpipe has much in common with the melodies of old Estonian so-called

runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

songs. A number of tunes, like the instrument itself, are of foreign origin. Supposedly they chiefly derive from

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. The Swedish influence is suggested by the texts of dance songs for the bagpipe, and the dances themselves also seem to come from Sweden. ''From the English translation (b
Kustas Tiivas
) of Igor Tõnurist's texts.''Torupill
/ref>

Notable players

Jaakko Lemmetty Jaakko is a Finnish male first name, etymologically rooted in the Biblical names Jacob or James. The name day of Jaakko in the Finnish calendar is July 25. Jaakko may refer to: *Kings who are in English named ''James'' are in Finnish named ''Jaak ...

* Aleksander Maaker *

* Lauri Õunapuu * Olev Roomet *

Ants Taul Ants Taul (born 7 March 1950 in Tõrva) is an Estonian musician and instrument-maker who played a prominent role in the revival of the Estonian bagpipe, the ''torupill''. As early as 1976 (when he was 26), Taul was recognised as one of Estonia's p ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Torupill.ee
by hereditary pipemaker Andrus Taul
Estonian Bagpipe
archive of Taul's earlier site Bagpipes Estonian musical instruments