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 36<br />
... in many passages she [a stage singer Miss Broadhurst] reminds<br />
us of Courtenay, on the <strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>, who certainly commands the<br />
greatest power, and produces the most bewitching and various<br />
sounds on that Instrument which possibly can be conceived. His<br />
ingenuity seems to have made a new discovery in Instrumental<br />
<strong>Music</strong>... 102<br />
Courtney in Ireland 1793<br />
By early January 1793, a month in which France would declare war<br />
on Britain and Ireland, Courtney’s successes in Oscar and Malvina<br />
had brought him across the <strong>Irish</strong> Sea to Dublin and he is noticed<br />
there as an arriving celebrity: ‘Yesterday morning, Mr Courtney, so<br />
famous for playing on the pipes at the Theatre Royal, Covent<br />
Garden, arrived from Holyhead.’ 103 He had been brought over by<br />
Richard Daly, manager of the Theatre Royal, Crow Street, ‘at a very<br />
considerable sum’ 104 to appear there in a roadshow version of the<br />
piece, one of two productions that had been running in Dublin from<br />
late 1792:<br />
Hitherto its success has been unprecedented, and the Manager...<br />
has, to encrease its attraction, brought over at a considerable<br />
expence, Courtney, whose performance on the bagpipes, at Covent<br />
Garden, has established his pre-eminence on that favourite<br />
instrument. —His first appearance will be tomorrow evening...<br />
when a very crowded audience is expected’. 105<br />
102<br />
[Pigott] 1792: 261. The reference is also found in the 3rd ed. of 1793 and the<br />
4th ed. of 1794.<br />
103<br />
Public Register, or, Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 1–3 Jan. 1793. He arrived on<br />
2 January. Holyhead is a Welsh port of embarkation for Ireland.<br />
104<br />
Hibernian Journal, Dublin, 4 Jan. 1793.<br />
105<br />
Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 1 Jan. 1793. Courtney seems to have been the<br />
only one of the original London cast to have transferred to Dublin – a testament<br />
doubtless to his unique talent and to the attraction his art would have for <strong>Irish</strong><br />
audiences. A well known <strong>Irish</strong> actor who was already part of the Dublin cast, as<br />
one of the ‘Principal Bards and vocal Performers’, was Robert MacOwen or