Shawm pictures

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Playing the Shawm A Spanish shawm - typical medieval/Tudor appearance.
(The shawm, not me. I'm definitely medieval in appearance here!)
Shawms and Bagpipes by Praetorius A page from a book of 1618 showing shawms and bagpipes. Spot the hummelchen pipes you saw earlier! The book's called Syntagma Musicum and was written by Michael Praetorius. Return to the Bagpipes and Shawms page
Bass Curtal old Bass Curtal This is a Bass Curtal. If you look again at the Praetorius picture above, you'll see how big the bass shawm became. In the end it was too big to play, so they folded it in half by having two holes running side-by-side through the piece of wood, and joined at the bottom end.The picture here shows front & back views of the same instrument.
The modern bassoon comes from the bass curtal.
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Version/Revised: 1.0; Sept 2000
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