Musette de cour

The musette de cour or baroque musette is a

musical instrument of the bagpipe family. Visually, the
musette is characterised by the short, cylindrical
shuttle-drone and the two chalumeaux. Both the
chanters and the drones have a cylindrical bore and
use a double reed, giving a quiet tone similar to the
oboe. The instrument is blown by a bellows.

The qualification "de cour" does not appear in the

An 18th-century musette de cour on display at the
name for the instrument in original musical scores;
Berlin Musical Instrument Museum, Germany
title-pages usually refer to it simply as a musette,
allowing occasional confusion with the piccolo oboe,
also known as the (oboe) musette.

Contents
History
Chalumeaux (chanters)
Bourdons (drones)
Repertory
Footnotes
Further reading

History Gaspard de Gueidan playing the

musette de cour, painting by
First appearing in France, at the very end of the sixteenth century, Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1738, Musée
the musette was refined over the next hundred years by a number Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France
of instrument-making families. The best-known contributions came
from the Hotteterre family:[1] Martin Hotteterre added a second
chanter, the petit chalumeau, extending the instrument's range by six semitones. The bourdon, originally
designed to accompany essentially modal music, became simpler as the chalumeaux became more
complicated. The final form of the musette is fully chromatic, with a range of an octave and half starting
from F above middle C; the bourdon provides drones for C, D and G.

The qualification de cour refers to the instrument's connection with the French court and aristocracy of the
early seventeenth century. "Exotic" - in the sense of imported or out of place - elements were fashionable,
resulting in the appearance of traditional instruments such as bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy and galoubet in
compositions for professionals and amateurs alike. The musette may well have benefited from being a
bellows-blown instrument, too; it was generally considered unseemly for women to play any mouth-blown
instrument. Borjon de Scellery, however, does explicitly identify grimacing and pulling faces as a habit of
ill-trained musette-players.
At the height of its popularity, the musette (like the hurdy-gurdy)
was used not just for chamber-music but also in larger-scale
compositions such as operas, where it was associated with
shepherds, peasants and other pastoral elements. After the French
Revolution, the musette seems to have fallen rapidly out of favour
while simpler forms of bagpipe remained popular as folk-
instruments. As a result, musicologists examining French baroque
music at the end of the 19th century found it difficult to imagine
that what they took to be the same as a simple folk bagpipe could
ever have had a place in highly sophisticated music for the court.

The "authentic performance" approach generally familiar from the

1970s onward, plus skillful restoration of original instruments by
makers such as Rémi Dubois (Verviers, Belgium), has made it
possible to hear works such as Chédeville's "Pastor Fido" (based
on Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons"), chamber-music by Boismortier
and even Rameau's opéra-ballet "Les Fêtes d'Hébé" in their
Drawing of the parts of the musette
original form.
de cour from the Encyclopédie by
Diderot and d'Alembert, ca. 1770
Chalumeaux (chanters)
The frontispiece in Borjon de Scellery's Traité (1672) shows a shepherd surrounded by a number of
instruments. They include an early musette, with a single chalumeau that appears to have six finger-holes
and no keys. The first full-page plate then illustrates a chalumeau with seven finger-holes and three keys,
giving a range of one octave.

The second full-page plate illustrates a more developed form of the musette, where a grand chalumeau
with five keys is complemented by a petit chalumeau with six keys. Jacques Hotteterre's Méthode (1738)
illustrates the most usual final form of the instrument; the six-key petit chalumeau is the same as de
Scellery's, but the grand chalumeau now has seven keys.

The petit chalumeau, as already mentioned, was added by Martin Hotteterre; though physically connected
to the grand chalumeau, and sharing the same wind-supply from the bellows, it has its own double reed and
functions as a separate instrument. The lowest note on the petit chalumeau is an A flat a semi-tone below
the higher A on the grand chalumeau, and keeping the two chalumeaux in tune and in balance is one of the
difficulties of the instrument.

Range of chalumeaux on a Hotteterre-style musette

The grand chalumeau is open, so it always sounds. The petit chalumeau is closed, like the Northumbrian
smallpipes, so it sounds only when a hole is opened or a key is pressed. The fingering system on both
chalumeaux is "closed", meaning that (except while playing some ornaments) only one hole at a time is
opened.

Bourdons (drones)
Following the principle of the rackett and the bassoon, the short cylinder of the musette drone contains
airways that double back on themselves. Openings in each airway (the equivalent of finger-holes) are
uncovered by moving layettes (sliders) fixed in four coulisses (runners). The two lowest notes use the same
airway, so cannot be played together.

The earliest musettes had up to nine coulisses and twelve layettes, so that you could play music in a range
of modes and always have a drone using the home-note of the mode. As the chalumeaux developed and
became fully chromatic, it became possible to play music in different modes but starting on the same note;
fewer possible drone-notes were needed, and the bourdon was simplified. Even so, the bourdon still
contains four or more separate reeds that have to be kept adjusted and in tune.

Repertory
The musette was an instrument both for professionals, members of ensembles and orchestras in the court or
noble households, and for amateurs. As a result, the music written for the instrument ranges from simple
transcriptions of popular tunes – folk-dances in Borjon de Scellery's Traité, songs from current operas in
Hotteterre's Méthode – to quite demanding pieces by the best-known composers of the day. The bulk of
music written for the musette is not solo music; duos are the most popular form, followed by trio-sonatas.
Much of the music available for the instrument was described as suitable for musette, hurdy-gurdy, recorder
or transverse flute; or for all these plus oboe or violin. Modern editions, usually for recorder, give people the
chance to discover a lot of musette music, though it needs the drone(s) to be heard as the composer
intended.

Composers (in alphabetical order) include Bâton, Boismortier, Buterne, Chédeville (l'Ainé and le Cadet),
Corrette, Delavigne, Hotteterre "le Romain", Naudot, and Rameau. Interest in the musette seems to have
been confined almost exclusively to French composers, though the tranquil dance-form with the same name
is more widespread. There are both Lyra (hurdy-gurdy) and Musette movements in Telemann orchestral
suites, for example, and a Musette in the Anna Magdalena Bachbüchlein.

The Traité by Borjon de Scellery, while mentioning the petit chalumeau and including it in the illustrations,
concentrates on the grand chalumeau and includes [mostly] dance-tunes and popular songs in its examples.
The Méthode by Hotteterre covers the full range of the developed form of the instrument, and as well as
examples taken from popular operas includes a number of original compositions designed to extend the
player's skill in specific areas. Both these works also teach how to read music, de Scellery providing
examples in standard notation and in musette tablature, and advice on basic maintenance. It is clear that
they are expecting their readers to live in Paris or one of the largest provincial towns, where they will
readily find instrument-makers and tutors to help them.

Footnotes
1. chiefly Martin, responsible for the petit chalumeau, and his son Jacques who published a
complete Méthode

Further reading
de Scellery, Borjon (1672). Traité de la musette. Lyon.
Hotteterre, Jacques (1738). Methode de la musette. Paris.
Boone, Hubert (1985). "Muséße". l'Orgue, la chanson, la cornemuse, la vielle à roue: un
patrimoine européen (12): 54–89.
 Maillard, Jean-Christophe (1997). CD booklet for Boismortier, "Ballets de village et
Sérénade". Naxos. 8.553296.
Maillard, Jean-Christophe (1996). CD booklet for Corrette, "Concert et concertos comiques".
MPO/Adòs. 205432.
The musette page on Oliver Seeler's site the Universe of Bagpipes (http://www.hotpipes.co
m/pipe0025.html)
Naoki Ueo's Musette de cour (https://web.archive.org/web/20060424063159/http://homepag
e.mac.com/muzette/) site
The Baroque Hurdy-Gurdy web-site including information about works written for the
musette and its historical context. (http://www.richardhaynesmusicservices.com)

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