{"id":4674,"date":"2020-11-17T14:09:12","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T14:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientmusicireland.com\/?p=4674"},"modified":"2023-11-12T15:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T15:58:09","slug":"fipple-pipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientmusicireland.com\/fipple-pipes","title":{"rendered":"Fipple Pipes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A ‘World Premier’ of a musical discovery and what it might mean to the story of where modern European music originated.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2003 a set of six wooden pipes were recovered in an archaeological dig at Charlesland, Co. Wicklow.\u00a0 Carbon dating established their age at 4,150 years old.\u00a0 Ancient Music Ireland were asked to look at them and identified them as parts of a musical instrument.\u00a0 An initial prototype was made in 2004 by Dr. Peter Holmes of London.\u00a0 Peter’s paper can be read here –\u00a0https:\/\/www.ancientmusicireland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Holmes_Molloy_paper_Wicklow_Pipes.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Subsequently, professional fipples were designed by low whistle maker Ian Lambe.\u00a0 He used three D printing to make six new fipples.\u00a0 They were fitted to the pipes by uillean\u00a0pipe maker Eugene Lambe.\u00a0 The results were astounding.\u00a0 \u00a0 These pipes which were made in Ireland over 4,000 years ago were playing a modern scale from G to E.<\/p>\n

What makes this most exciting and ground-breaking is that until now the accepted theory of the origin of European music is of Pythagoras writing down the mathematics of our modern scale circa 500 BC.\u00a0 Yet here is an Irish instrument with a similar scale some 1,700 years earlier.\u00a0 \u00a0We know the approximate tuning of the complete originals, we know their age, location of deposit, what they are made of and how they were made.\u00a0 The possibility exists that the musical tradition at the time extended back into Neolithic culture and the great civilisation that built Newgrange.<\/p>\n

Now the question is posed; what is the origin of European Music?\u00a0 Is it Greece and Mesopotamia even earlier or perhaps the Western European Islands where complex melody was being played so long ago?\u00a0\u00a0 We believe that the release of this amazing discovery may cause a great deal of interest and a radical rethink among scholars of the origins of Irish Music and its influences around the world.<\/p>\n