Leo Rowsome documentary

my father was a Renaissance man that is for sure when he walked into room you knew Leo Rossum had arrived like you know the music was his life I think that leo Rossum and his pipes represented the the sound of the Irish pipes diva he was a star in recording terms and radio terms and in terms of live performance as well if you took Leo under the equation the piping world and the world of traditional music would be a different place he had a special way playing pipes he was he came to Paris the the origins of the Ilyn pipes or union pipes or Irish pipes depending on the time period you're talking to is interesting it seems to have come out of a European parlor instrument tradition rather a clock what we would now call the classical instrument tradition in some ways it could be thought of as the grafting of a Barack Obama the Olympics are intriguing for lots of highly skilled engineers in the sense of their and the amount of work that goes into them and their their their detail when captain Francis O'Neill of the Chicago Police Department wrote Irish minstrels and musicians I think that he had in mind that he was documenting a tradition that was under threat and certainly the pipes which he prized above almost all other instruments were one that he felt was going to become extinct if not in his lifetime shortly thereafter certainly the instrument was in decline and had been for a long time I was interested in the pipes I fascinated by the sound and it's like one of those things you you're if you're bitten you're bitten and again most pipers will tell you that and many people are not playing pipes would have envied you want because they want to emanate the instrument because we excelled I've been a follower of Illin piping since the 50s I've never had an ambition to be a pipe of patients every wouldn't rise that high but the first time I would have heard the sound of the Olympics and that'd be long before I actually saw a satyr Sanyal plane would have been in the 1950s and they would have been records of Lea Rossum years a lot of cliches used about music in general MIDI Irish music figure so if you're talking about the pipes Ilan pipes I think if you look at the history of where the instrument has come in in a couple of hundred years from the 19th century and what happened in the 20th century I think that it's fair to say that as a single most seminal influence in piping Leo it would be probably the most similar influence in the 20th century my father was included in the London Times list of the 100 most influential Irish people of the last millennium the older I get the more mesmerised I am at the fact that Anna man will be at my fall they did so much going back to my great-grandfather's time Seba Sammy will roast some the family were originally Hugo knows who were actually because of religious persecution were how to leave France and our lot settled in Farren's County Wexford three brothers arrived in to expert around the end of this sixteen hundreds and are now buried down in MX ridge near Ference and that's where the Rosen's actually came from and the family lived in the same house from about 1770 until 1930 my grandfather that's William Rossum moved to Dublin I'm on set up a pipe making business in Dublin William Rossum was better known in the faron's area as a violinist or Fiddler's of the day he was very very good musician but it was only really when he went to Dublin that he was known as a piper William Rosen who was Leo Rosen's father had virtually rediscovered the art of pipe making partly inspired by possibly the work of the Taylor brothers in Philadelphia who were by then 20 years dead my fault was born in 1903 my my great-grandfather then that handed that tradition down to his his son and in the process he and his son developed an instrument that was more suited to the modern conditions the louder dance halls and concert stages and also the pitch of instruments the contemporary instruments of that time that people were playing an ensemble with the pipes if there were very few people playing the pipes in his time in the 20s or 30s it was down to quite a minority and I think it possibly would have ended up in a museum only four are the oils Leo was the fourth member of family so and my dad was the sixth member so Leo was the older brother and obviously got learning the pipes much earlier my father played the pipes as well Tom Rosen he played the pipes also and they they played regularly together and after effect I mean that literally they played the one instrument from time to time for my dad played the regulator's they were very much a team when it came to the musical aside but Leo was definitely the performer in the family and in the sense that he was you know a very professional on the pipes and decided to make a lifetime career my father when my grandfather died in 1925 had to seriously take on he already was doing helping my grandfather I've been very fortunate to have such a colorful life living in a house with a father like him and my mother of course as well and it was always very vibrant lots of people coming and going lots of interesting people and I met an awful lot of people well we had a wonderful childhood in 9 Belton Park Road Dublin which was on Dublin's Northside but 2 miles from Dublin Airport and my father because of his music business being in the house lots of people called and I would always say that I'm used to that social background and so used to sitting at a at the table at for example even if I was with my father on my own we would have wonderful chats and great just talking and chatting all the time he was almost very happy person there's sometimes perception that the Ilyn types are a folk instrument and there seems to be a sense among more naive newcomers to the instrument that is something that could be made quite simply the whole thing about pipes in the reed and the custom you have to be crazy to play these not to try and get a reed and get things work it's it's not like going into a shop can I have a set and they're there in June for the rest of their life it doesn't work that right leo as well as being a an inspirational musician was a pipe maker and his pipes were the kind of Stradivarius at the time in terms of concert pitch pipes what's so distinctive about Leo's pipes is that there's a strong vibrant sound for very melodic it can get several sounds for tones from the same note it would chicken cross finger and the bright notes are bright the bass notes or bass they sound like they should and the balance between them and what's really remarkable about his pipes are almost like an orchestra the pipes present a particular challenge for an instrument maker because in order to make a set of pipes you have to have skills as a metal worker leather worker woodworker you have to be able to make your own tools the parts can't be easily bought in fact most parts cannot be bought at all and that would have been doubly true in Leo's day so virtually every component of which there would be upwards of 200 in a full set of pipes would have to be made by hand by the maker and that represents a very daunting challenge he had a workshop at the back of the house it was really a big shed which on the roof he kept a lot of rushes he never at the beginning yeah he didn't bring anybody into his little workshop it was just a small very small room I don't know how he knew where everything was and the workshop was like an Aladdin's cave of piping so there were lots of equipment and parts of the pipes lying around and instruments that he was using for cutting and reeds and all that kind of stuff I was just like a magical place there was a massive anvil to his right and it was on the anvil that he'd beat out the staples for the reeds and when we were little children up playing upstairs we could hear him hammering on this anvil and was a lovely feeling because we knew he was there ivory was very difficult to get and I remember particularly he went to London one time and he went to antique he used to go to antique shops and buy any little bits of ivory that he could and in fact he bought things like a box of six ivory billiard balls and we were what I was always wondering why is my daddy buying billiard balls we don't have a bigger table our house wouldn't have been big enough for a billiard table anyway so it happened that he would cut these that down and he would use them to embellish the chapter at the top of the chapter and the the end of the drones and regulators of the pipes you see him working when you would be out playing in the garden just go through the workshop sometimes and he'd he'd give you a look to say mmm you know keep our little girl you know I used to really like the smell of oranges in the workshop which sounds absolutely outlandish but I learned afterwards that he bought these Jaffa oranges with the beautiful orange tissue paper this wrapped around them so that he could use the tissue paper to wrap around his very delicate cane Reed's to send to Australia South Africa New Zealand all over the world you wouldn't have a micrometer on everything this has to be exactly this and especially in his read Megan the the essentials that the eye of the stable is really critical in read Megan and that was always perfect and the staple and basically the inside tube of a read and that that was always perfect because that would affect the tuning of the chanter so I'd go into the workshop and he'd be looking through the chanter very thoroughly very carefully and you if he wasn't happy with it he'd be you know do another one or whatever and people used to come to the door constantly people coming with reads and reads and reads asking him to repair them I hate other sets approach there are excellent pipes but having me every element has to be perfectly in June there's a little bit of forgiveness in Leo's pipes and they're a bit like an artistry like I mean each day they did the instruments can be slightly off or another and they just sound just right the best concert pitch pipes inland pipes that are playing in the world today were made by Leo Rossum and some people maintained that his best sets were turned out in that time 19 the late 1920s to the early 1950s a dream come true from eg was to get a set of pipes and I remember playing in school and school were Marino and there was a school band there and Leon his son Leon was playing the pipes my goodness you know I was just fascinated by this and went back to my mother I said look you've got to get me a set of pipes and that was a week's way just to get just the bag bellows enchantra you know for her and what got around her a my father and when dr. leo and he made me the bank dogus enchanter five pounds of cost in those days irish pounds I was looking that how I came fled pipe was a my parents have a sweet shop from Thomas Street about six seven doors down from the Pipers Club when my father was he was from Milan so he was mad into the music so he ended up being part of the Pipers Club committee as well and the Dublin Piper's Club goes back to the 19th century and my great uncles had a part in keeping that going in fact the formation of the club and in 92 it was due to the civil war in Ireland it was it had stopped to be in to be in existence and my father and his brother Tom resurrected that club revived as I should say in 1936 the club became an absolute hive of activity and that is where it was a went from ultra Street illai play smooth were straight and then to Thomas 14 Thomas Street Thomas Street like was really Dublin you know the liberties of Dublin a very very old part of the city surrounded by Christchurch Cathedral and Patrick's Cathedral desserts a history in that area and if you were on your way into the slope you know we used to walk barely at 7:00 or half and we'd be learning and piping and my tionary act in the park we were going to be going to me all that play together you know and when we'd be finished we'd just be around the older people at common data obsessions and if you went oh into Thomas tree but used to strike me with the bosses would be passing and stop when I see a man chrome dome was an instrument and say it's the Piper's club around to you and he direct them you know they'd be from Mayo they'd be from go away they'd be from Donegal like all of the country they seem to know if you're in Dublin go up to Thomas reach know the number which was a hub where people from the country and people from England abroad anywhere who wanted to hear Irish music came the real traditional music came to 14 Thomas trees on a on Saturday night ahead music it was rather close to a guinnesses brewery we'd all be some get a whiff of the the hops as you went down and course the local pubs were always very handy lubricating holds for loved Piper's I started going to the Piper's Club because then in collage there was a famous concertina player mrs. Crotty and she four years before that she had been coming to Dublin she had they owned a pub in Cairo sure self and her husband and she had a heart condition and she would come to Dublin for a few weeks every year or maybe more often and on the pretext of coming to a nursing home for respite but I think she spent most of her time playing music every night and she got to know she knew all the clubs and she got very friendly with Leah awesome so and you know before I came to Dublin she would have told me about her that and told me about the Piper's Club so when I came to Dublin I was one of the first places I went to it was I thought was very good to see country people and city people all together playing fabulous Irish music you know and this benign gentleman seemed to be over the whole thing you know he'd always dress up you know course that was on very unknown for traditional musicians especially you know maybe for classical musicians to Drake it a bit you know address he was already kibo and he would play in shows that were weren't strictly for a traditional audience you know for mainstream people you know so he'd have to adapt his music for that I was fascinated by Leo and he's playing you know I would go to the Pipers club on a Saturday night and he would always hunted classes were over not with myself but other pupils he would he would then give a performance people were just seemed to be always fascinated at the way he could play them and to me he pretty performed like an orchestra and - was it always magic to me he's brilliant Piper my father was a different type of individual he was more interested in the organization and Paddy mcaveeney who is one of the founders of the Quartus he told us that he'd see it saw him as the architect of the coldest first Lea was the star of the cordis he was the performer my Uncle Tom Tom Rosen who was an amazing man and he had across the road from the Pipers job he owned a gents clothing shop he did his training in the clothing business and then eventually opened up two shops there are quite well-known shops in the day there were gents Outfitters in Thomas Street and when his second shop was a boys Outfitters which was one I think the only one or one of two in the whole of the city possibly the country at the time and he did an awful business with Guinness for Guinness records would buy suits and they were encodes so the clothing was made to measure so in fact the first plan Mullingar does a wonderful photograph of a line of pipers in their lovely suits and those suits were made by my Uncle Tom in that line of pipers is one girl he called Betty Nevin and she was the only girl piper at that time my father was under committee and they were at amazing and they said to Heidi gosh a song that the song could go to the pipe or my father said yes his son was only two at that time but he said I have an older girl have a daughter who was all of nine I think I'm talking 1946 or seven and they I had to go up to see mr. Olson and have an interview with him to shown that to spread my hounds to see where my fingers love enough to fit the pipes you know I was the only girl and 50s and Doc complained pipes I don't think I was the first going to ever played them I think maybe in raishin before the most been some I was the only one a dublin play it's very shy at that time I wasn't you know was not right nowadays there's so many festivals and music things going on but the flower in those days was unique in the there wasn't a festival every weekend in different town so that was the major gathering from my memories particularly the 1960s where people look forward to it you know as a weekend for people came home from all over the country major thing there was they were swapping tunes which was fantastic for bringing the traditional movement further like all the families and in the club to Piper's Club we'd all meet down found that was a big that was our socialize you know social life gone to flowers yeah yeah and my Uncle Tom of course his car was known as the club car because he tried he brought all this the young students around for fishes and flowers and all this sort of stuff big pack cars 9 and 10 in the car and go he wouldn't be allowed to it now aged 4 to 14 we wrote every single flat hole and even for this day it gives me great understanding of the geography of Ireland with all the various little towns that you're brought to when we were small you know I have memories of sitting in little places and being Mullingar and laying it flat holes and hearing musicians musicians music music traditional music all the time it was for us as children it was it was a freedom it was really a freedom for her first to run wild around a town like Listowel and nobody was worried about you you know just come then do this bit of a structure to the weekend because you go to competitions decide which competitions are going to see and that's a very intense who lasts and who won at that stage you not come to a pretty competitive leg so if they weren't kind of predominating in pubs that sort of thing they used hardware stores and drapery stores and see the owners watch and take their stock out and put in seats and people were going and play their instruments every room you went into every pub they were all playing traditional music you know it was absolutely a brilliant family time you know that I've spoken to people in my own travels to work around the country and they would say that in when Leo played in the village the entire village it might seem my grandfather and he he laid down the foundations to my father's tutor for the Olympics my grandfather William he started to rise a tutor and very very sadly because he died in 1925 and he was only 50 yard 50min in his mid-50s and he didn't he couldn't complete the tutor but he formed how the foundation of it so obviously my father then took us on hand and added to us and finished it off absolutely massively important is the teaching that he did my father came to teach in the municipal school of music at a very early age of would you believe 17 and the reason was that he was well known he had already become well known in the Dublin area he could write music proficiently he was an excellent in the theory of music all right for me I mean he was the only teacher I had problems with teachers and from day one anyway you know so the idea that I had at one teacher anyway that I liked was school Danone well the first occasion that I met him was to get from him that practice said that he had made for me I had written to an address in Dublin it turned out to be his brothers tailor's shop in Thomas Street looking to start on the pipes and eventually I got a letter back from Leo st. call into the College of Music in the central Dublin and he would have a practice that ready for me and I could sign up then for the lessons so long you had that 30 minutes a week you know and that was it and so you know he would recognize and then you either it's just going to happen or it wasn't going to happen you know I mean there's a lot of Piper's sort of went in including incidentally the great really can't see will he went into into Leo for lessons as well he would go under just to get his style now he you know will he had his own style appointment but he won't he was fascinated by Leo you know you go in through the front door and it was kind of mostly play kind of a kind of an old building as well but you went upstairs into the back room and you queued on these forms like we're all in short rows and you know and you just listen to the lesson as you know it wasn't a private you know we all sat together 10 or 15 of us listening to each one's lesson and you get the lesson and part of the lessons was that you're listening to other people lesson you know I don't know how he was able to write music every every every week he wrote tunes individuals no photocopying so every week you got written Tunes and he could write somebody asked him for a tune he could sit down and a back room factor cigarettes and right to hold two notes you know I mean never seen anybody like that before like it was like writing for him like you know it was gorgeous right in his world like his my father Rose had rose all his music for his pupils they never had by music we have manuscripts in Rio Rosen's own hand because as you know when he taught a class or tossed pupil on an individual basis he would teach them by example and so on but then he would write her to churn for them and see me was very fluent he would just sit down and in a few moments he would have he would have transcribed a tune and the pupil would take that away as an age to memory further for the next class where he was privileged in the oral transmission but giving the notation as a reminder so we have we have quite a number of those in the archive that have come to us from various pupils that he had over the years he had the thing that he was very fond of having achieved with parts and if you like the to Nutella found the counterpart melody and he would write her at the counterpart melody and the tune on my copybook and he get me want to play the one part and he would he would play the other and he did that several times Hollywood you know what all the pupils remember I was 12 or 14 playing the fish or clear the Dublin competition you know that took place in the mansion house and I won I couldn't believe that over 26 by first under 16 and he carried me down down the middle of them who trusts me so you can imagine for me it is whippersnapper who Sparta came on the scenes all of the people who came to learn from my father became became his friend became our family friends I think I got to know Leo's son Leon first if we were about the same age and we got friendly and I did be invited out to the house my wife then taught in the same school as Leo's wife and so then they wouldn't they got very friendly so we had from both sides and we would go there and I be playing with the with Leon and Liam and Alena as well she was learning the whistle at a time and Leo if he wasn't too busy in the workshop but he usually was too busy but sometimes he'd come in and join us leo was based in Dublin he was a professional musician and he played and presented himself as a professional level so he was quite often on Irish radio and that brought the sound of the instrument and his name into many many houses around the country he was from the 1920s he was just the music of the day he was actually three times a week sometimes he would have actually broadcast from from 2 or n later called Radio Aaron the Leo Rosen pipes quartet was rather became rather famous it broadcast on radio Aaron about once a week for quite a while they also went to Glasgow to do broadcasts and concerts I perhaps knew Leo from listening to his pipes quartet and every Sunday night I was allowed to stale as always go to school the next day but I would never miss the pipes quartet and just the sound of that instrument was wonderful you know it was amazing the amount of of interest in those days I mean recently met a medical man who when we got talking about music of course and he said to me Oh your name he says gosh I I remember my father because we were the only ones in in West Galway having a radio set in our kitchen on the Saturday evening when your father was playing all the local people would gather in our kitchen and listen to your father on the radio says he was highly regarded by RT like is very professional he could be relied on injured hard was put on a good show you know and he was always well turned out in normally war or good clothes in the dickey-boy you know which would be kind of unusual for a traditional musician in those is most weekends he wouldn't be certainly in the 50s and early 60s he wouldn't have been at home he would have been recording for the BBC he is reputed to be at the first Irish artist to appear on BBC television in 1933 there was a kind of services between the gramophone industry and the radio industries of radio as today just rebroadcasts and amplifies the recordings made and then people quote hear about them and and buy them and so on well Lea Rossum was the most prolific recorder on the Olympics on the discs called seventy-eights and they were old discs they're obsolete no that revolved at 78 revolutions per minute Lee Rosen recorded these seventy-eights in London and in Dublin and the earliest recorded in London he was a regular visitor to London usually around patrick's day and that and became known to the recording companies there who wanted to put material on the market for the new Irish Free State so he almost started recording in the same period but 1925 in his case so that it was for a new markers that British manufacturers were supplying and he made about 40 in all he made them for different companies Columbia winner Imperial broadcast and so on he was a very prolific recording artist in London those years and they were of course manufactured and sold sent over to Martin and sold here in Ireland when the 70-80 era ended around 1960 Elia Rosen was still recording he transferred to the new technology of vinyl recordings microgroove recordings and he made an early EP for the clatter records and in mid 60's and then he made the first LP of piping clad records came about by the Honorable Gareth Brown who was part of the Guinness family and Gareth was originally a pupil of my father's used to learn the pipes for my father and he was very interested fascinated by all things Irish so Gareth on ebay very very cleverly decided that right let's do this and the first LP was the for me the first one it was cc1 the king of the pipers he called us and that was my father to start of cata records up with a very very first disc I suppose the main difference between the modern recordings of in piping and Lea Rosen's recordings it is that his were largely unaccompanied so it was himself no his company himself with the regulator's all the harmonic possibilities of the LM pipes whereas no the pipes are very much integrated into larger ensembles or groups so they would be interacting with maybe fiddle with maybe baron or keyboards or something like that whereas he was much closer to its origins i think as a solo instrument in in his recordings he didn't have a narrow-minded outlook in any way as far as music was concerned he he that is another dimension to him and I think something people tend to overlook I mean I was the first in the house to bring in a pop record but he didn't say get out you know in fact he enjoyed them at one of the ones he liked listening to was Cliff Richard the bachelor boys on one occasion I went into the class in Chatham Street and Leo the first thing that he said to me was Terry did you hear the latest Beach Boys record aren't the harmonies wonderful in it so I think he was open to any kind of well-made music would have pleased him and he would share his interest in it he would actually play something or find some piece of music that would suit you word that you'd like I find at home with he would play in the mood for some of my teenage friends you know to be trendy keep me happy you you should love coming home with him on the bus because we had a great chat we come home and he'd sit in one side of the fire and I'd be in the living room beside him my mother would have gone up to bed at this stage and she we'd be talking away and have great fun and she'd started buying the CBC come off to bed you too I left home when I was 24 years of age for it because I only moved away because was getting married my husband was teaching in Northern Ireland myself and my twin sister were married and my mother told me how sad he was that one of us was going to Belfast 11 the other was going to County Clare and he was kind of quite upset about that you know because my brothers had more or less grown up and and they had that fled the nest anyway I was married on the 10th of August 1970 six weeks later my father dropped dead I was devastated when he died I can still remember the day that he died and I can still remember when I was removed don't carry any Church in what the day and the evening was like him and he was huge house I suppose his that really had a big effect you know because he was such a presence in the world of piping that he when when he died it was he was the only full-time maker in in the country he always said he wanted to m die with the pipes on and virtually newly did you know I honestly feel that the most important thing from leo you know he believed in Indy's pile of them to him he was a pipes man you know that was it that was his life and and he loved passing it on he wasn't holding anything back you know I think Leo would be absolutely delighted to have known that in the decades immediately following his death there were others to take up the torch and that some of his students would go on to become very well renowned Piper's in their own right his role as a teacher and instrument maker as well as performer help keep the instrument alive during that period and even after his death the interest in the pipes was just grew and grew in different countries night like pick for instance Japan and they now have a Peabody iliyan Japan to the whole society of Indian papers and does 12 pipemakers and when I was there five years ago they they honored me with the honorary chairman of the Japanese Indian papers Association I still mean I'm playing the place nearly 40 years now and I have a lot of recordings of Leo's and I still can pick things out that I haven't heard him do before I'm still learning things from listening to him even now and sometimes it take me a couple of spins listen to one Jill and I won't try to figure out what he's doing when I hear Piper's on the radio and I sometimes mistaken for Leo initially because they sound like the pipes that he made I can hear him playing when I hear the likes of say Liam O'Flynn I mean Lima Flynn is just plays so like him I think he has had an amazing effect on the traditional movement in Ireland not just the Olympics because the flower and the coldest movement brought forward every instrument not just the other pipes Leo is still be referred as the benchmark in terms of if you make a set us go to the or resin pipes and you have it made for somebody to actually make the instrument teach the instrument and perform the instrument that's the whole package of survival so he was everything he was everything for the LM pipes he had a huge impact and then you know I bid it have grateful I haven't had the opportunity to meet him because he had a huge impact you know he's an inspirational you know but I learned more now they can look back and I learnt you learn more you think you're learning music what you're learning and what lot more from the man you know but without any words being spoken like you know you get get you're learning a lot about he's passing on more than just the music too you know and I appreciated that now really more than ever you know I mean I know that's fabulous papers now and they put the feeling interpret he was just a master you know of course in my estimation he was king of the Pipers and he always will be you

Channel: Peter Lyons

Views: 12,348

Rating: 4.9802957 out of 5

Keywords: Uilleann Piping, Irish Traditional Music, Leo Rowsome

Id: Eqzs7m3JS7c

Length: 42min 0sec (2520 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2016