Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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31 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES favourite air of “Moggy Lauder” on the Union Pipes, by the celebrated Mr. Courtney’. 86 This venue could also hold 2,000; it was owned and managed by the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In the same theatre two nights before Courtney’s appearance on 20 May, a group of Scottish Highland pipers appeared in a ... new Divertisement, consisting of Dialogue, Singing and Dancing, The Union: Or, St. Andrew’s Day. In the Divertisement will be introduced, The Highland Competition Prize, Exactly as represented annually in the City of Edinburgh, by M’Lane, M’Gregor, M’Tavish, and several other celebrated Pipers, who will perform several Strathspeys, Laments and Pebruchs. 87 Ironically, given his opening up of the London stage for Scottish pipers, Courtney’s own biggest stage success would be playing the union pipes in a Scottish role. James Byrn or Byrne, a dancing master, had choreographed a ballet pantomime ‘taken from Ossian’ entitled Oscar and Malvina, with ‘the new Music composed, and the ancient Scots Music selected and adapted, by Mr. Shield. The Overture by Mr. Reeve’. 88 Courtney played in the new piece accompanied at first by a German harper Charles Meyer, 89 but thereafter and regularly by another German harper John Erhardt Weippert (1766–1823). 90 In this presentation he would reach the pinnacle of his career. The spectacular production opened in the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on 20 October 1791. It had a resounding success, and had been performed over forty times before the season ended on 31 May 86 The World, London, 16 May 1791. 87 Diary or Woodfall’s Register, London, 18 May 1791. 88 Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, London, 20 Oct. 1791. 89 Hogan 1968: 1399. Byrn danced the role of Oscar. 90 For Weippert see Highfill et al.: 15, 335–7.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 32 1792. 91 The published libretto and score went into a third edition in 1791. 92 The piece would be revived at intervals over the next thirty years, in Ireland and Germany and in the United States as well as in London. Courtney was frequently singled out as one of the main attractions of the first and other early productions. He would play music from it in his general stage recitals until his death, and over the years several professional bellows pipers, following his lead, would feature music from it in their concert performances. Music from William Reeve’s score of Oscar and Malvina would frequently be published in sheet-music form and in anthologies of melodies: in London from 1791 and into the nineteenth century; in Dublin in 1793; and in the United States from the second half of the 1790s. These publications were aimed at the general body of musicians and arranged generally for instruments other than the union pipes, but among them a rondo marked for the ‘Union Pipes’ and harp in duet shows that a range of two octaves was required of the pipes. 93 The pipes stave also calls for several three-note chords, but these must have been supplied by the harp as they are not chords that could be played on the then new keyed closed chanters or ‘regulators’ of the pipes, which only sound when their keys are depressed to add harmony notes to the chanter and drones. While a single regulator was in use on Irish bellows pipes by 1789 94 and three regulators have been standard on the instrument since the nineteenth century, there is no evidence that Courtney employed any. If however he did, it would explain further the success of his playing. 91 Hogan 1968: 1384. 92 Airs, Duets, Choruses, and Argument, of… Oscar and Malvina… 93 [Reeve] n.d.: 4–5. 94 ‘A regulator’ is mentioned by William Beauford in a description of the uilleann pipes written in August 1789 but not published until 1790. He made no mention of this feature in a similar description which he wrote in 1785 (see Carolan 1984: 61).
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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