Pipe and tabor is a pair of instruments played by a single player, consisting of a three-hole pipe played with one hand, and a small drum played with the other. The tabor (drum) hangs on the performer's left arm or around the neck, leaving the hands free to beat the drum with a stick in the right hand and play the pipe with thumb and first two fingers of the left hand.
The pipe is made out of wood, metal or plastic and consists of a cylindrical tube of narrow bore (1:40 diameter:length ratio) pierced with three holes near one end, two in front and one in back. At the opposite end is a fipple or block, similar to that used in a recorder.
Tabor pipes are widespread throughout the globe, found on most continents and in many countries. Each culture has developed a different style of pipe, so a different method of playing and a different range of notes. The smallest of the family is the Picco pipe, while the largest is the Fujara.
In Europe there are many variations of instrument. The pipe and tabor is depicted in illuminated manuscripts, carvings on ecclesiastical buildings in stone and wood, stained glass windows and early printed books.
Read more about Pipe And Tabor: Early Descriptions, English Tradition and Comparison With Fife and Drum
Famous quotes containing the words pipe and and/or pipe:
“I am dead against art’s being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author—detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower’s pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl’s lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Pan’s Syrinx was a girl indeed,
Though now she’s turned into a reed;
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A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it, as the pipe of Pan;”
—John Lyly (1553–1606)