Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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5 COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS players and listeners here for over three centuries now. They currently enjoy an unprecedented worldwide level of popularity. There is no reason to think that the different insular bellows-pipes traditions did not arise independently of one other, nor is there any evidence that they had an early influence on one other. But in 1743 the first english-language publication on the bellows pipe – The Compleat Tutor for the Pastoral or New Bagpipe – alludes to the existence of several contemporary makers of a developing bellows bagpipe. 7 The instrument was sold in his music shop by John Simpson, the london publisher of the Tutor, and is described in the Tutor by its Irish author John geoghegan; but it is not known whether the makers referred to were British or Irish. geoghegan’s tutor is for a twooctave-plus chromatic bellows pipe with a lowest chanter note of middle C, the second octave achieved by over-blowing (exerting increased air-pressure on the chanter reed by squeezing the bag harder). It is not at all certain that the instrument described by geoghegan is a brand new one, in spite of his title; possibly he had only coined a new marketing term for an established bellows bagpipe. 8 his book would be obscurely republished and sold into the early nineteenth century in england and Scotland, and possibly sold in Ireland 9 and the United States 10 – an indication of the continuing if low-level popularity of the instrument itself, which is now well represented in museum collections. The instrument must have had a general influence on the course of bellows-pipe development in both Britain and Ireland. 7 ‘This day is publish’d The Complete Tutor for the Pastoral or new Bagpipe... by Mr. John geoghegan...’, Daily Advertiser, london, 29 Sept. 1743 ff. See also Donnelly 2008a: 26–7 for the assignment of this publication to 1743. 8 The instrument illustrated in the Tutor closely resembles one illustrated in a london publication of 1728 (see note 14 below). 9 Dennis Connor, a musical-instrument maker and seller of little Christ-Church yard, Dublin, is advertising either ‘bagpipes’ or a tutor for the bagpipes (the wording is ambiguous) in 1759 (Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, Dublin, 17–21 July 1759, see Carolan 2006: 23). 10 An anonymous tutor for bagpipes is advertised in Philadelphia in Stephen’s Catalogue of Books etc. for 1795.
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 6 Introduction of ‘Union Pipes’ long processes of invention and experimentation normally leave no surviving trace before a musical instrument and its terminology emerge onto the public record. This is true of ‘union pipes’. It is not now known for certain who invented the term. But it is known when ‘union pipes’ first emerged onto the public record, and the piper with whom the term was first associated (and who may very well have coined it) is also known. The term is first found on 5 May 1788, in a front-page advertisement in the london newspaper The World for a general concert to be held in the Free Masons’ hall in the city on 14 May: ‘For the Benefit of Mr. Courtenay, Performer on the Union Pipes’. 11 Although the venue and the occasion are english, as will be seen below the piper is Irish and his pipes are Irish pipes, and, insofar as it was introduced by him, the term is also Irish. 11 earlier instances of the term may yet be discovered.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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