I super enjoyed that music just now. I was reading up on him as I listened )twice!). His life was remarkable. He's been gone for decades but I just heard him clear as day. Rest in Peace Seamus.
What an elegant-looking man and when he spoke you knew that you were listening to a genius a master of his trade. Seamus Ennis was the rock star of his time, he was the Phil Lynott of brilliant music and storytelling, the music of both brilliant men will last forevermore.
Splendid. RTE have much unrepeated Seamus in their TV archive, including this clip from (I'm guessing) the hour-long early 70s talk & performance show, in Irish, about his life and music. (More details of Seamus' surving RTE appearances in my book 'The Wheels of the Word' - not to hand as I type!)
They all influenced each other! Liam Og O Floinn was actually taught by Leo Rowsome, and his style was quite "correct" and stately, with a lot of closed-fingering (where, you probably know, you keep all the fingers down and only raise the one you need for that note: when taken to extremes, this is a bit of a tough listen, and is often known rather unkindly as "pippity-pop") whereas you can play a lot more freely and legato: Paddy Keenan and Finbar Furey were influenced particularly by Johnny Doran, who was really wild! But all pipers pick up techniques and styles as they go along. FWIW, I always had a bit of trouble with Seamus Ennis, who never sounded properly in tune to me and used really raspy chanter reeds, but the recording techniques of the time may have had something to do with that. And his regulator work seemed a bit ropey too. But light years better than me :-)
@@fanorydberg2424 I'm so glad you said that, because I was thinking was it just me that thought a lot of the older recordings of uilleann pipers were a bit.. well... crap (or at least, I wouldn't say 'legendary' etc. the way everyone goes on about them) I wasn't mad about a lot of it, I find many of them a bit to fast and skippy and jumbled. I know the recording equipment wasn't great and speed of it, but even allowing for that, I find I am hearing better piping today
@@fanorydberg2424 One thing to note, Ennis in his final years was in fairly poor health. Tuberculosis, an automobile accident, a couple of severe heart attacks, and frequent episodes of pneumonia, certainly hampered his piping capabilities. Another thing that has been observed, is that Ennis seemed to change his attitude slightly with regard to what he wanted from his music. He seemed to be more intent on absolute expression as opposed to keeping a steady musical rhythm, also his style got tighter as he got older too, no doubt this will certainly put a casual listener off. Besides the health problems of Ennis, his old Maurice Coyne pipes were not working their best either. At some point his preferred reed-makers, Mulchrone and McFadden, passed away, and after he ran out of their reeds, no one could really properly reed up his chanter and get it going as well as it used to, indeed that chanter was known to have problems. His chanter throat was found to have been abnormally large, which caused many problems which he'd alleviate by having a piece of paper matchstick in the throat held in by a reed IIRC. As I said even though his piping may be a bit much for certain people, I always liked the "rougher" playing myself, as I find it can give the music some character and spontaneity, full of life, grit, and guts. The Japanese have a term known as "Wabi-Sabi" which consists of accepting and finding beauty in imperfections. Of course, you would like to work towards perfection, but if there is a slight blip or a mistake, accept it and move forward... All this said, I'm not trying to change your opinion, or make you like him, I just thought I'd share my perspective as someone who loves Ennis and other old ITM recordings, if anyone is curious about it. Cheers
@@Goetterdaemmerung86 I was watching it and thinking he must have been annoyed as all hell that the chanter was acting up again during a video recording, which was quite the thing back then I'd imagine. That set is bliss and horror in the same package. lol
