The Calabrian bag-pipe has a bag of goatskin with the hair left on, and is inflated by means of a blow-pipe. There are two drones and two chaunters, all fixed in one stock. Each chaunter has three or four finger-holes and the right-hand pipe has the fourth covered by a key enclosed in a perforated box; both drones and chaunter have double reeds.
The ancient Greek bag-pipe (see Askaules), and the Roman tibia utricularis, belonged to this class of instrument, inflated by the mouth, but it is not certain that they had drones (see below, History).
II. The second class of instruments, inflated by means of a small bellows worked by the arm, has as prototype the musette (see fig. 1 (3)), which is said to have been evolved during the 15th century;[[16]] from the end of the 15th century there were always musette players[[17]] at the French court, and we find the instrument fully developed at the beginning of the 17th century when Mersenne[[18]] gives a full description of all its parts. The chief characteristic of the musette was a certain rustic Watteau-like grace. The face of the performer was no longer distorted by inflating the bag; for the long cumbersome drones was substituted a short barrel droner, containing the necessary lengths of tubing for four or five drones, reduced to the smallest and most compact form. The bores were pierced longitudinally through the thickness of the wood in parallel channels, communicating with each other in twos or threes and providing the requisite length for each drone. The reeds were double "hautbois" reeds all set in a wooden stock or box within the bag; by means of regulators or slides, called layettes, moving up and down in longitudinal grooves round the circumference of the barrel, the length
the eight holes of the grand chalumeau.
the seven keys of the grand chalumeau.
