Did Seamus make any recording playing any other pipes apart from the Coyne set he his most famous for?
RORY
He has been recorded playing other sets on a rare few occasions but not commercially.
I have a set of recordings of him playing Brother Gildas’ B Egan that are interesting in the sense that he ‘does’ Gildas, using different cranns for example and playing some of Gildas’ tunes( Munster Buttermilk, Miss Wallace, Gander in the Pratie Hole etc) . When I submitted them for ‘The Book’ JOBM thought it wasn’t Ennis, based on ‘un Ennis-like’ cranns, and Pat Mitchell came around only once he managed to identify the source of the recording. I don’t think any were used in the book in the end, which is a shame as he made a nice job of Miss Wallace.
Any chance those recordings could be posted? I’d love to hear them.
Pat left out all the 40 Years LP for some reason - that’s the big mystery to me. Surely he knew about it. The 1948-1951 sides are about his greatest music ever, if you ask me. And the Broken Pledge is about the strangest.
Didn’t he leave out Boys of Bluehill from the Wandering Minstrel LP, too? Don’t feel like cranking out my forklift to get the thing down from the shelves…that’s one of his most distinct settings.
Not that it applies here but the book also says you can acquire the recordings in question from NPU.
Hi Kevin,not sure I understand,are you saying Seamus plays different pipes on the recording you mention.
RORY
Not at all, just that these tunes weren’t transcribed. Never heard Seamus play anything but the Coynes.
It would be interesting to have heard him play some other sets.
RORY
Liam O 'Flynn, in RTE’s ‘Séamus Ennis story’ tells how Séamus played his (Flynn’s) pipes and how immediately ‘the unmistakeable Ennis sound’ was there. Essentially he sounded exactly like himself, no matter what set of pipes he played. Like anyone would really. I have told here before how people were getting excited during the eighties when Flynn brought out the Ennis pipes for the first time for a gig, expecting how he’d sound more like Ennis now. When asked after the gig how it sounded they said ‘like Flynn playing a flat set’.
That reminds me of another oddity, the take of the Ivy Leaf from the Bettsytown 1980 tape, which Pat also transcribed. Pretty certain that’s someone else playing his pipes; on the tape you can hear Séamus telling the story about his father composing the Morning Thrush while this duffer noodles around. It’s interesting to hear someone else have at them before O’Flynn; I’m guessing Liam had new reeds made? They sound very different on the Fine Art record, like you say, it’s just a very nice flat set on there; whereas, on the Drones and Chanters 2 he’s much closer to the Ennis sound, somehow. Been practicing, or yet another set of squeakers?
I played them briefly some time around 1990 (one of the tionols in Ennistymon), they had just come back from Alain Froment. Fine art was recorded well before that. The ‘other job’ was done before D&C2 I believe. Someone I’ll leave unnamed reeded them during the seventies when Ennis had them and had a fierce go at some of the holes according to folklore, the back D’ hole was so large you could see through the chanter when you looked at the c hole. Made the fingering pretty awkward too.
I remember Breandan Breatnach telling how Ennis handed the pipes around at one tionol with Clancy and others (Seán McKiernan was named I believe) playing them, all ciotogs awkwardly holding the pipes upside down. I believe he played a tape of that too but it’s more than 25 years and some of these things are becoming muddled in memory.
I suspect that the Coyne set had been significant modified long before the 1970s.
If the chanter is anything to go by, it seems to have originally been a lefty set. The bag and mainstock were probably replaced to allow the drones and regs to be fitted for a right-handed player. The set was supposedly in bits when Ennis Sr bought it. There were at least two major changes to it while he had possession of it - the double-bass reg disappeared and the chanter top changed (if the early photos of Jimmy Ennis playing it are anything to go by). So it’s fair to assume that the set was far from pristine when Seamus got it.
Then there’s Seamus himself. Here’s a quote from Neiligh Mulligan’s website, the page which refers to James Mulcrone:
[James Mulcrone] lived in 40 St. Peter’s Road, Phibsborough, Dublin … It was a calling house for many pipers including Tom Mulligan, Séamus Ennis, Tommy Reck … New sets and sets in for repair were generally passed around the piping company to play or comment upon. Séamus Ennis would often test sets of pipes for correctness in tuning. My father Tom used recall Ennis calling for the > ‘rat-tailed file’ > or ‘beeswax’ for minor surgery on occasion!
It seems Seamus himself was not shy of permanently altering chanters. Who’s to say he didn’t do it to his own set.
If the chanter is anything to go by, it seems to have originally been a lefty set.
I am not sure you have that right, the keyblocks are those of a right handed chanter, look at the f nat key for example, photo in the tutor. The G sharp and B flat keys are placed for a right handed player as well.
I don’t have the tutor with me right now but I found a partial photo of the chanter on NPU’s Source page (it’s not easy to find unobstructed photos of that instrument !! ):
I think I see (going from right to left in the photo) is a high D key running through two blocks, then the Cnat key, then a Bb key, a G# and finally the block for an Fnat ring-key (I can see the key).
It looks like on Ennis’s Coyne chanter the high D key would be played with the left (lower hand) index finger, instead of the right index finger. The Bb key would be played with the right (upper hand) pinkie finger instead of the left pinkie. Also, the G# would be played with the left (lower hand) thumb, instead of the right thumb. This is why it looks more like a left-handed chanter to me.
You’re actually right, I visualised it inside out. Weird.
Yes I have for few years now as being a left hand pipers myself that the Seamus Ennnis Coyne C# chanter looks like a left handed chanter. The block mounts and also the brass keys on the C# chanter for very similar to my left handed chanters.
I will get a few up to date photos of my left handed ‘C’ and ‘B’ Andreas Rogge chanters and a scanned photo of C# chanter from book The Master’s Touch A Tutor for the Uilleann Pipes to show that my Rogge chanter and the Ennis chanter are lefthanded.
Cheers
Ferg
C and B left handed chanters by Andreas Rogge
Seamus Ennis C# set
I played Seamus’ pipes for hours. I recall that the bellows leaked like a sieve and the bag was shot. They were very hard to play. I made him a bag out of Vinyl (Naugahyde) and he played that for quite a few years. Seamus used to joke about hunting the wild Nauga. Until I came along Seamus’ reed maker was McFadden of Belfast. I made many reeds for Seamus (and Tommy Reck) for chanter and regulators. The reeds for his drones were waxed in permanently by his father, 40 years previous. There was definitely something wrong with his chanter, producing a kind of honking bottom D which can be heard on many recordings. I suspect the the throat was too large. I heard that years back that Rogge fixed that problem for Liam O’Flynn.
Pat Sky
[open]can of worms[/open]
tk