An Uilleann piping is a type of bagpipe (known as the 'Uilleann', 'Irish', or 'union' pipe) used to play Irish music. It is a highly developed instrument that has deep roots in a tradition dating back many generations.
With practitioners throughout the world, the greatest concentration is found in Ireland and the Irish communities abroad. Several different types of bagpipes have been played in Ireland, but the first mention of the Union Pipes appears in a newspaper advertisement from 1788.
Union pipes were first produced by makers in Ireland, England, and Scotland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, their production and development were led by Irish makers in the early nineteenth century.
The earliest configuration of a bellows-filled bag, chanter, three drones, and a regulator has lasted for several decades. Through development and experimentation, the configuration has expanded to two regulators and then to three, four, and five, all of which are designed to provide ever-more elaborate harmonic possibilities for the player.
Due to the burden of maintaining more elaborate sets, they were eventually abandoned, and a standard configuration was adopted of sets with three regulators. While this configuration is considered standard, each set is custom-made and hand-crafted, and no two sets are ever identical, even from the same maker. Sets continue to be manufactured according to other designs, with different numbers (and pitches) of drones and with more or fewer regulators, as manufacturers cater to the needs of various pipers.
An Uilleann piping performance and lesson provides an effective way of socializing and contributes to significant life events such as marriage and funerals. This instrument represents a sense of rootedness and connection to the past. Most commonly, one-to-one master-to-student instruction is used to transmit the instrument. However, more modern methods such as DVD and video tutorials as well as the internet can also be used to transmit the instrument.
Most prominent among the organizations involved in maintaining Uilleann piping is Na Píobairí Uilleann (NPU), which was founded in 1968 by pipers. Throughout the past few decades, the NPU has been working to stop the decline of the instrument through research, publications, tuition, and training.
To remedy a bottleneck in the supply of instruments, NPU set up a training centre for the art of pipe-making; the graduates trained full-time for three years and have now found work catering to the increasing demand for pipes. This demand is not restricted to the sector that has historically enjoyed using the instruments—adult Irish men.
Both male and female young people are taking up piping as an unremarkable choice among the vast variety of musical choices they can make. One result of this has been the expansion of modern Uilleann piping, which is evident in the number of players in comparison with previous eras.