The musette de cour or baroque musette is a musical instrument of the bagpipe family. Visually, the musette is characterised by the short, cylindrical shuttle-drone and the two chalumeaux. Both the chanters and the drones have a cylindrical bore and use a double reed, giving a quiet tone similar to the oboe. The instrument is blown by a bellows. The qualification "de cour" does not appear in the name for the instrument in original musical scores; title-pages usually refer to it simply as a musette, allowing occasional confusion with the piccolo oboe, also known as the (oboe) musette. History First appearing in France, at the very end of the sixteenth century, the musette was refined over the next hundred years by a number of instrument-making families. The best-known contributions came from the Hotteterre family: Martin Hotteterre added a second chanter, the petit chalumeau, extending the instrument's range by six semitones. The bourdon, originally designed to accompany essentially modal music, became simpler as the chalumeaux became more complicated. The final form of the musette is fully chromatic,...