Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
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COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 32<br />
1792. 91 The published libretto and score went into a third edition in<br />
1791. 92 The piece would be revived at intervals over the next thirty<br />
years, in Ireland and Germany and in the United States as well as in<br />
London. Courtney was frequently singled out as one of the main<br />
attractions of the first and other early productions. He would play<br />
music from it in his general stage recitals until his death, and over<br />
the years several professional bellows pipers, following his lead,<br />
would feature music from it in their concert performances.<br />
<strong>Music</strong> from William Reeve’s score of Oscar and Malvina would<br />
frequently be published in sheet-music form and in anthologies of<br />
melodies: in London from 1791 and into the nineteenth century; in<br />
Dublin in 1793; and in the United States from the second half of the<br />
1790s. These publications were aimed at the general body of<br />
musicians and arranged generally for instruments other than the<br />
union pipes, but among them a rondo marked for the ‘<strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’<br />
and harp in duet shows that a range of two octaves was required of<br />
the pipes. 93 The pipes stave also calls for several three-note chords,<br />
but these must have been supplied by the harp as they are not chords<br />
that could be played on the then new keyed closed chanters or<br />
‘regulators’ of the pipes, which only sound when their keys are<br />
depressed to add harmony notes to the chanter and drones. While a<br />
single regulator was in use on <strong>Irish</strong> bellows pipes by 1789 94 and three<br />
regulators have been standard on the instrument since the nineteenth<br />
century, there is no evidence that Courtney employed any. If<br />
however he did, it would explain further the success of his playing.<br />
91<br />
Hogan 1968: 1384.<br />
92<br />
Airs, Duets, Choruses, and Argument, of… Oscar and Malvina…<br />
93<br />
[Reeve] n.d.: 4–5.<br />
94<br />
‘A regulator’ is mentioned by William Beauford in a description of the<br />
uilleann pipes written in August 1789 but not published until 1790. He made no<br />
mention of this feature in a similar description which he wrote in 1785 (see<br />
Carolan 1984: 61).