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CHAPTER III. |
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MILITARY MUSIC (1500-1700).
I
T is not everyone that will assent to the dictum of the author of the "Garb of Old Gaul," that "the . pipe breathes the true martial strain." Shakespeare makes a very " unkind cut" in " Much Ado About Nothing" when he says : " I'll devise thee brave punishÂment for him. Strike up ' pipers.'"
But Shakespeare was an Englishman, and it would be almost as reasonable to expect him to respond to a pibroch as for an Austrian to get excited over " Rule Britannia." Yet Englishmen had responded to a pibroch long before Shakespeare's day, for the pipe was highly popular in this country during the Middle Ages, and many a mile had our sturdy footmen trudged to its music. A large number of tunes to be found in Chappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time" bear evidence of being of a bagpipe character.2
The pipe was a regular marching instrument with the Swedes, Germans and French. The latter, says
' Stainer and Barrett, "Dictionary of Musical Terms," 1898.
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