After two years of learning and playing and listening to every recording I can find I’m trying to sharpen my listening skills, especially to the playing of those who are considerd the 'historical" masters of the instrument. The names repeatedly cited are Seamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome, Johnny and Felix Doran, Willy Clancy, Patsy Tuohey, Tommy Reck and many others I no doubt have left out. How are they “different?” What does their playing teach me that contemporary pipers do not? Maybe that’s the wrong question. Are the best of contemporary pipers a product of learing from the historic players? Is it fair to compare the two groups? Were the “originals” ground breaking in some ways that allowed later pipers to build on the earlier musical breakthroughs? Perhaps there were even better players preceding the ones mentioned but, absent recording technology at the time, we’ll never know. Did the earlier players cited have skills that are unequaled by later pipers? If so, what are they? Did they have “better” pipes? I get great pleasure listening to the best of cotemporary players but I feel somewhat uninformed when I listen to Forum disccussions about Ennis, Rowsome and other earlier pipers. Please forgive the long post. Thank you.
First and foremost, Ennis, Rowsome, the Dorans, Clancy and Reck are not “the originals”.
It’s important to understand that pipes and pipering were going on long before any of these gentlemen were living.
What the ARE rightly credited with is keeping the art alive when it was on the verge of dying.
I believe it is quite fair (and necessary) to compare the two groups, however. There are a number of pipers today that learned from one or more of these Masters… Gay McKeon, Liam Og Flynn, to name just two, are examples.
It’s fair to compare the two groups because that select group of pipers that you mention were responsible not only for keeping piping alive, but also in setting certain standards, and helping to shepherd young pipers along in the whole process.
There’s my tuppence.