14 May 2012

A Chairde / Dear Friends,
Below are links to the two latest additions to the ITMA Digital Library, both connected with uilleann piping.

COURTNEY'S UNION PIPES

First is a specialist essay on the terminology of the Irish bellows-blown bagpipes, the native Irish bagpipes now called the 'uilleann pipes'.

These pipes have been known by a variety of names over the three hundred and more years of their existence, and especially in the past as 'union pipes'. The story of how the term 'union pipes' came into public use begins with a concert performance in London on 14 May 1788 (225 years ago today!) by an Irish bellows piper named Denis Courtney. He went on to enjoy a brief but highly successful career in London and Dublin, and become a favourite of King George III and the future George IV, before he died in his thirties. Courtney's activities form a significant early chapter in the globalisation and professionalisation of Irish traditional music. He and his union pipes are at the core of the essay, which is by Nicholas Carolan and is available as a searchable PDF which can be freely downloaded here.http://www.itma.ie/digitallibrary/pdfdownloads/

A version of the essay – 'The Union Pipes: Their Birth and Death' – was given by the author as the 2011 Breandán Breathnach Memorial Lecture of Na Píobairí Uilleann on 3 December 2011, and transmitted as a simultaneous webcast by NPU.


TUNES OF THE MUNSTER PIPERS

The second addition is the next tranche of Score music files from the ITMA publication Tunes of the Munster Pipers, edited by Hugh Shields: tunes nos 101–200 which are available here. http://www.itma.ie/digitallibrary/score/goodman2/

With best wishes,
M.