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musette
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Musette, late 17th or 18th century; in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford
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Jacques Hotteterre
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bagpipe
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Musette, late 17th or 18th century; in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford
Musette, late 17th or 18th century; in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford

musette

musical instrument
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History

musette, small, elegant bagpipe that was fashionable in French court circles in the 17th and 18th centuries. The bagpipe was bellows-blown, with a cylindrical double-reed chanter beside which the instrument-maker Jean Hotteterre, about 1650, placed a short stopped chanter with six keys giving notes above the main chanter compass.

The musette employed a “shuttle” drone: a short cylinder with about 12 narrow channels variously connected in series to supply four drones, each sounded with a double reed and tuned or silenced by slider keys moving in the slots through which the bores vented to the exterior. The bag was typically covered with silk or velvet, and the pipes were of ivory.