Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

5

7 5 25 20111214 25 7 John Cheny, An historical list of horse-matches run, and of plates and prizes run for in Great Britain and Ireland in 1744 … (London, 1744), pp. 36, 37, 50, 71. 8 B. Walker, An historical list of horse-matches, plates and prizes, run for in Great-Britain and Ireland in the year 1769. … vol. I (London, 1770), p. 174. 9 John Cheny, An historical list of all horse- matches run, and of all plates and prizes run for in England (of the value of ten pounds or upwards) in 1738 (London, 1738), p. 31. 10 Donnelly, ‘Ecstacy in eighteenth-century Kil- dare?’, online edition, pp. 14–15. 11 Milo M. Quaife, ‘A Picture of the First United States Army: The Journal of Captain Samuel Newman’, The Wisconsin Magazine of History ii, 1 (September, 1918), pp. 40–73. 12 ibid., pp. 42–3. 13 ibid., p. 52. 14 ibid., pp. 45, 47, 51–2, 56, 60. 15 Ecclesiastical Titles Assumption Bill — Ad- journed Debate (Fifth Night). House of Com- mons Debates, 21 March 1851. Hansard, vol. 115, column 355 @http://hansard.millbanksys- tems.com/commons/1851/mar/21/ecclesiastical- titles-assumption-bill#column_355 [Accessed 1 October 2011] 16 E. Cobham Brewer (ed.), Dictionary of phrase and fable. … (Philadelphia, 1898). Online @http://www.bartleby.com/81/ [Accessed 6 October 2011] 17 Note 15 above. 18 ibid. 19 Dublin, National Library of Ireland, Genealogi- cal Office Ms.108, pp.249-50. Copy of grant of arms to Edward Grogan of Moyvore, co. West- meath, B.L., M.P., eldest son of John Grogan, B.L., of Dublin and grandson of Edward Gro- gan with mention of descent from Grogan of Johnstown Castle, co. Wexford, April 21, 1859; Sir Bernard Burke, A genealogical and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the British Empire … (31st ed., London, 1869), pp. 515–16. 20 A later Larry Grogan died at an advanced age in Dublin in January 1785. He seems also to have been quite a character, but he is not said to have been related to the Johnstown family: Faulkiner’s Dublin Journal, 19 January 1785. ~ TECHNICAL ~ A Foot Joint for the Uilleann Chanter I N INTERNET FORUMS dealing with the uilleann pipes, the pastoral pipe has often been dis- cussed. And within those discussions, some commentators have lamented the loss of the ‘low C’, the note below the ‘bottom D’, or the ‘leading note’, in the modern uilleann chanter’s evolution from the pastoral chanter. On pastoral chanters, this leading note, most often C natural, more rarely C sharp, was vented not by the chanter’s open end, but by two holes, one on either side of an extended lower section of the chanter which usually took the form of a detachable foot-joint. The current speculation is that at some point in the mid to late 18th century, pipers or pipe mak- ers discovered that by removing the foot-joint, the chanter could be played on the knee in a ‘closed’ style as well as open. Being able to close the end of the chanter might also have been found help- ful in playing up into the second octave. The gen- eral consensus seems to be that giving up the low C was an unavoidable sacrifice in the evolution of the uilleann chanter and its ability to be played in a closed fashion. As I read through such discussions, being of a perverse turn of mind, I often mused that there must be a way to accommodate both a closed playing style and a low C on the modern uilleann chanter. As it turns out, there are several ways, but I’d expect all of them, except for possibly one, to be generally unacceptable to pipers and pipe mak- ers. The first impulse, of course, would be to rein- troduce into the chanter’s construction an extension to allow for the lower pitch, either as

7

25

[Periodical]

2011-12-01T00:00:00

anonymous,guest,friend,member