Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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35 eSTABlIShMenT OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ 1792 Courtney and Weippert are together again in Oscar and Malvina during the new theatrical season in Covent garden. 101 At this time Courtney was beginning to be noticed in books as well as in newspapers: ... in many passages she [a stage singer Miss Broadhurst] reminds us of Courtenay, on the Union Pipes, who certainly commands the greatest power, and produces the most bewitching and various sounds on that Instrument which possibly can be conceived. his ingenuity seems to have made a new discovery in Instrumental Music... 102 Courtney in Ireland 1793 By early January 1793, a month in which France would declare war on Britain and Ireland, Courtney’s successes in Oscar and Malvina had brought him across the Irish Sea to Dublin and he is noticed there as an arriving celebrity: ‘yesterday morning, Mr Courtney, so famous for playing on the pipes at the Theatre royal, Covent garden, arrived from holyhead.’ 103 he had been brought over by richard Daly, manager of the Theatre royal, Crow Street, ‘at a very considerable sum’ 104 to appear there in a roadshow version of the piece, one of two productions that had been running in Dublin from late 1792: hitherto its success has been unprecedented, and the Manager... has, to encrease its attraction, brought over at a considerable expence, Courtney, whose performance on the bagpipes, at Covent garden, has established 101 The Diary or Woodfall’s Register, london, 1 nov. 1792. 102 [Pigott] 1792: 261. The reference is also found in the 3rd ed. of 1793 and the 4th ed. of 1794. 103 Public Register, or, Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 1–3 Jan. 1793. he arrived on 2 January. holyhead is a Welsh port of embarkation for Ireland. 104 Hibernian Journal, Dublin, 4 Jan. 1793.
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 36 his pre-eminence on that favourite instrument. —his first appearance will be tomorrow evening... when a very crowded audience is expected’. 105 The country in which Courtney had arrived was in a state of increasing political and sectarian tension which would result before the end of the decade in armed rebellion and parliamentary union with Britain. Its Protestant ascendancy parliament was continuing its efforts to become a sovereign assembly free from Westminster control, at the same time as a Catholic Committee was in london suing for relief from legislative disabilities suffered by Catholics. Animated by the example of the French revolution, radicals were secretly contemplating violent separation from Britain; Courtney’s six months in Ireland would see a government crackdown on the United Irishmen movement in Dublin and Belfast. But native instrumental music and song had been providing one of several temporary cultural bridges between Protestants and Catholics since the 1780s; just six months earlier, in July 1792 (to coincide with the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille) the Belfast harp Festival had been held in an effort to preserve the threatened harp tradition. As one classical instrument of Irish traditional music was slowly disappearing after being in use for the best part of a thousand years, another was finally coming into its own in the capital city with maximum publicity after a hundred years of obscure development. A fanfare notice for Courtney’s Dublin debut on 4 January, headed ‘national Music’, seems to imply that Irish rather than Scottish music will be heard, but without actually saying so: 105 Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 1 Jan. 1793. Courtney seems to have been the only one of the original london cast to have transferred to Dublin – a testament doubtless to his unique talent and to the attraction his art would have for Irish audiences. A well known Irish actor who was already part of the Dublin cast, as one of the ‘Principal Bards and vocal Performers’, was robert MacOwen or Owenson, an Irish-speaking singer from Mayo and father of the future novelist and harpist Sidney Owenson, lady Morgan.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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