Pipe and tabor

Early descriptions

The flute disappeared from Europe for thousands of years before returning from Asia through North Africa, Hungary, and Bohemia, with illustrations of it appearing by the 11th century. The pipe and tabor duo is depicted in a 13th-century plate from the Cantigas de Santa Maria. In the 1600s, Mersenne wrote about the virtuoso John Price, who could play up to the twenty-second note on the galoubet. Praetorius, in his 1618 work De Organographia, described and pictured three sizes of Stamentienpfeiff: a treble 20 inches long, a tenor 26 inches, and a bass 30 inches, the last requiring a crook about 23 inches long. A bass example at the Brussels Conservatory museum has middle C as its lowest note. Medieval carvings and illuminated manuscripts from the 13th century also show the pipe and tabor.

English tradition and comparison with fife and drum

The fife and drum, and the pipe and tabor, both combine a high-pitched wind instrument with a drum. However, the fife is a side-blown flute that needs both hands, so a separate person must play the drum. Military marching is the main association for fife and drum. The pipe and tabor, by contrast, has a much older history linked to civilian life, court manners, dancing for everyone, ceremonies, processions, folk traditions, and street shows.

Bone pipes with three holes from the early Middle Ages have been dug up in England. Medieval images of tabor players appear in several cathedrals and chapels, including York Minster and Rosslyn Chapel. In Shakespeare’s era, clowns would perform between acts, often dancing to pipe and tabor music. In some regions, the instruments go by the names whittle and dub or whit and dubb.

The playing tradition lasted into the 1900s, nearly vanished early that century, then saw a revival and continues today in morris dancing, early music, and cultural events. During the 1900s, the Generation pennywhistle company made an affordable English tabor pipe from metal with a plastic mouthpiece. The English tabor’s shape has shifted over time, and now comes in many sizes and forms based on the player’s choice. It was traditionally played with a snare on the top face, but today it is sometimes used without one.

European tradition

The pipe and tabor appears in various local forms across Europe. In the Basque region, the txirula (high-pitched) and txistu are three-hole tabor pipes tuned to the dorian mode, often played by groups. In the Iberian Peninsula, the flauta and tamboril are used in León, Castille, Extremadura, and Andalucía; in Huelva, the flauta or gaita with tambor or tamboril accompanies celebrations, Cruces de Mayo, sword dances, and romerías, and around the Romería of El Rocío it is called flauta rociera, gaita rociera, or pito rociero. In Provence, the galoubet is a tabor pipe whose scale begins a third below the English tabor pipe, accompanied by a deep tabor called the tambourin.

American tradition

From Spain, the pipe and tabor reached the Americas and persists in some folk traditions. The Yaqui nation in Arizona and Mexico have Tamboristas; the Tarahumara of Chihuahua play a three-hole whistle (no back thumb hole) made from Arundo donax cane, with a large-diameter double-headed skin drum whose wood frame is very narrow. In the Andes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, the one-handed Pinkillu flute and Tinya drum are used together, and the drum also accompanies the antara panflute. The English pipe and tabor revival spread through the Anglophone world, including the United States and Canada; a major manufacturer is the Kelischeck Workshop in North Carolina, maker of the Susato line. A similar US tradition paired panpipes with a tambourine.