Country Dancing - Instruments

Instruments

Shawms and sackbuts or the bagpipe were popular instruments for outdoor dancing because of their loudness. Every European country, not just Scotland, used their own local variant of the bagpipe for country dancing. From the late 17th century fiddles began to take over, and dancing moved indoors. The main impetus for the development of the concertina, the melodeon and the accordion in the nineteenth century was to satisfy the market for a loud instrument for country dancing. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy all loved country dancing and put detailed descriptions into their novels.

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