Bagpipes

The other night as I was listening to various recordings of Celtic music on U-Tube I started listening to different bagpipe videos. I remembered a wonderful and revealing quote by C.S. Lewis. In one of his academic books, An Experiment in Criticism, he writes about the emotions aroused by music. Picture by Stephen Larson

What Lewis is trying to show is that to be a good critic one must go beyond both the emotions and what he calls the social or organic aspects of the music. That is there is something there that is beyond wanting to join in or feeling the emotion of the melody.

However, Lewis admits that when it comes to bagpipes he also was caught within the seductive sounds. He writes:

"As regards one instrument (the bagpipes) I am still in this condition. I can't tell one piece from another, nor a good piper from a bad. It is all just 'pipes', all equally intoxicating, heartrending, orgiastic."




Since I feel the same way, if I have picked badly or you just don't like bagpipes just ignore this video I have picked and go do something else.