Le Voyer, Dorig

A member of the Breton art movement Ar Seiz Breur, he began in 1932 to manufacture the Great Highland Bagpipe called Binioù Braz (big bagpipe). First with two drones (1 tenor and 1 bass) called biniou nevez (new binioù). He soon added a third drone (tenor). It is said that he patterned the internal dimensions after a J & R Glen bagpipe. After his internship in Paris with an oboe maker, he moved to Rennes and Ploërmel, where he manufactured binioù kozh series and bombardes, intended to be played in the bagadoù. Overwhelmed by the influx of orders, he resigned himself to abandoning the bagpipes and focus solely on the bombard, which he made from  ebony imported from Mozambique. The research he conducted, the organological choices he made during this period (for example, the use of B flat as a single tone of bombardes, the adoption of “modern” scales) influenced the Breton movement for decades.

During the Second World War, he was the musician of Bagadoù Stourm and formed with Polig Monjarret a duet binioù-bombarde. In 1943, in Rennes, he created with five Bretons Bodadeg, the “Assembly of the Bellmen of Brittany “. This association met immediate success in these years of occupation. He was president from 1943 to 1963 and the main supplier of bagpipes and bombards. During the war, he also made several veuzes in boxwood. From 1975 to 1983, in collaboration with Roland Becker, he brought his latest improvements to bagad instruments.

Following the WWII, members of the Seiz Breur were convicted of collaborating with the Nazis, Le Voyer among them.