Other names | Union pipes |
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Classification | |
Playing range | |
2 octaves | |
Related instruments | |
The pastoral pipe (also known as the hybrid union pipes, organ pipe and union pipe) was a bellows-blown bagpipe, widely recognised as the forerunner and ancestor of the 19th-century union pipes, which became the uilleann pipes of today.[1][2][3] Similar in design and construction, it had a foot joint in order to play a low leading note and plays a two octave chromatic scale. There is a tutor for the "Pastoral or New Bagpipe" by J. Geoghegan, published in London in 1745.[4][5] It had been considered that Geoghegan had overstated the capabilities of the instrument, but a study on surviving instruments has shown that it did indeed have the range and chromatic possibilities which he claimed.[6]