Cathal Gannon

Instrument maker, Literature Subject

1910 – 1999

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Who was Cathal Gannon?

Cathal Gannon (1 August 1910 - 23 May 1999), was an Irish harpsichord maker, a fortepiano restorer and an amateur horologist. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a craftsmen family of carpenters, many of whom worked in the famous Guinness Brewery. His education, in two local schools, was rudimentary and at the age of fifteen he started working as an apprentice carpenter in the Brewery.

His apprenticeship involved learning to make office furniture and attending evening classes in nearby colleges, where he was able to improve his education in a more congenial atmosphere. A love of music and the arts had been encouraged by his two maiden aunts.

Cathal’s interest in harpsichords began in an unusual way. While reading a series of articles about Tibet in a magazine, he stumbled across an article, which, he believed, was by Violet Gordon Woodhouse, a famous British harpsichordist and clavichord player of the period. The article was about the revival of the harpsichord, which interested young Cathal greatly. He asked permission to examine the harpsichords on display in the National Museum, Dublin, but was given no encouragement by the staff, who regarded the fourteen-year-old boy as a nuisance. He was finally allowed to see the instruments when he was in his early twenties. Dismayed, he concluded that they were too expensive to buy and too complicated to make.

Many years later, when he was married, Cathal went to London, where he visited the Benton Fletcher collection of keyboard instruments, which was then in Chelsea, and measured a harpsichord by Jacob and Abraham Kirckman (1777) that had taken his fancy. Back home, he managed to make a copy of the instrument in a tiny conservatory at the back of his house, in the Dublin suburb of Rialto. The harpsichord was played by John S. Beckett for the first time in public in 1959 as the continuo for Bach's Saint Matthew Passion and was praised in the national press. John subsequently persuaded the authorities in the Guinness Brewery to provide Cathal with a special workshop, in which he made five harpsichords and restored several antique pianos. The first harpsichord made in the Brewery was donated to the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin, the second was sold to Harrods of London and the third was sold to Ireland's national radio and television station, RTÉ. This third instrument was used regularly by the RTÉ Symphony and Concert orchestras and also by the well-known composer and performer of Irish traditional music, Seán Ó Riada.

Cathal retired in 1970. He continued making harpsichords and restoring early pianos in a workshop that he built for himself at his home, and finally stopped working in his early eighties. He had been the subject of several RTÉ radio and television programmes during his career. In 1978, Trinity College Dublin gave Cathal an honorary MA degree for his contribution to the authentic performance of early music in Ireland. In 1989, a second honorary MA was given to him, this time by NUI Maynooth.

A series of minor strokes eventually led to dementia and ultimately his death when he was 88 in May, 1999.

For more information, see 'Cathal Gannon - The Life and Times of a Dublin Craftsman' (Lilliput Press, Dublin, 2006).

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Born
Aug 1, 1910
Dublin
Profession
Lived in
  • Dublin
Died
May 23, 1999

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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