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A hornpipe made of carved horn and turned wood sits next to a bagpipe with a brown leather pouch and pipes of carved horn and turned wood.

Photo by Zvonimir Bebek, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Image Description A hornpipe and bagpipe. The hornpipe consists of a section of light turned wood with small finger holes set between two lengths of white carved animal horn with natural accents of black and warm beige. The bagpipe has three turned wooden pipes—one small, one medium, and one long—extending from an oblong tear-shaped pouch of deep brown leather. Each of the three pipes features a series of curved and notched areas, along with small finger holes. The medium-length pipe ends in a curved section of deep, ebony black animal horn.

Welsh Instruments

“The point isn’t to recreate a sound from the Middle Ages or anything like that,” Ceri Rhys Matthews said about playing John Glenydd Evans’ traditional Welsh instruments at the 2009 Festival. “This is a modern movement. We make our own pipes and learn to play them because we like the sound.”

A renewed life for Welsh instruments and tunes

Wales is a dynamic and resilient nation located to the southwest of England. Its history is filled with upheavals, and its ancient traditions have often been interrupted—not least the creation and use of Welsh instruments and tunes. The fact that these traditions survive and the genre is thriving is a testament to a long process of adaptation, reimagining, and reclamation highlighted in the Wales Smithsonian Cymru program.

Religious reforms in eighteenth-century Wales sought to discourage the use of traditional Welsh instruments, including the harp and fiddle. At the same time, church hymns sustained choral music and Gypsy musicians kept some of the traditional tunes in circulation. Today older tunes and traditional instruments are played proudly and in innovative ways by the musicians who have been shaping a future out of the past.

The instruments shown here are two that have made a strong comeback: the hornpipe (pibcorn) and bagpipes (piban cŵd). Their history has been traced back to the fourteenth century, but contemporary musicians had to rediscover how to make and play them. Museum collections have helped fill in the gaps: the Welsh National Museum at St. Fagan’s carefully analyzed historic examples for correct measurements and hints at techniques in their creation.

Video
Ceri Rhys Matthews plays a John Evans bagpipe with Linda and Lisa Griffiths during the 2009 Festival.

For the 2009 program, our music advisors recommended John Glenydd Evans to represent instrument making. His instruments are considered some of the best made in Wales. His path to this skill was circuitous but perhaps ordained: he left school at fifteen and apprenticed as a carpenter. A serious accident in 1993 led him to reevaluate his life, and he decided to combine two of his loves in his work: traditional Welsh music and turning wood. The result is a catalog of in-demand instruments for the country’s finest musicians.

—Betty Belanus, program curator
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