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Portrait, Virginia Sandon, 'Tomás Ó Canainn'
Acrylic painting: 'Tomás Ó Canainn', portrait, c.1993, 67 × 57 cm.
Ref: UCCHS.2025.001 © University College Cork.
Provenance: Donated by the Ó Canainn family in 2025.
Tomás Ó Canainn (1930-2013) from Pennyburn, Co. Derry, was an engineer, author, lecturer, composer, singer, piper, and accordion player. He studied Electrical Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast and was later awarded a PhD by the University of Liverpool in 1960. In 1961 he and his wife Helen moved to Cork where he took up a lecturing position at UCC. He was subsequently appointed Dean of Engineering there, a position he held until his retirement in 1992. His deep love of Irish traditional music led him to study for a B.Mus. at UCC between 1968 and 1972 under Prof. Aloys G. Fleischmann and Seán Ó Riada in the Department of Music. When Ó Riada died in 1971, Tomás took over the Traditional Music Lectures until 1975, while continuing his lectures in Electrical Engineering. He also taught pipes and traditional music at the Cork School of Music. In the 1980s he was appointed member of the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs. At the 2004 Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, Ó Canainn was awarded Ard-Ollamh, or Supreme Bard by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. He was honoured in November 2008 with a UCC Alumni Achievement Award.[1]
The contribution of Tomás Ó Canainn to the traditional arts in Ireland manifested itself in a remarkable array of outputs, as an uilleann piper, accordion player, singer, poet, writer, composer, researcher, radio presenter and lecturer. In 1969 he was All-Ireland uilleann-pipes champion at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. He taught and played music in lived in Cork for over forty years. Dr Jessica Cawley interviewed Ó Canainn, amongst other traditional musicians, for her doctoral research and her thesis includes quotations from him.[2] In addition to his publications on Irish traditional music and its culture, he published a memoir about his musical life and travels. With a love and passion for the Irish language, Tomás wrote three Irish Masses. He performed and recorded with numerous musical groups over the years, including the Liverpool Céilí Band; the Cork Pipers’ Club; and Na Filí (1969-79), touring extensively in Europe and America. In 1981 Tomás toured the USA, performing and delivering lectures on Irish music, culminating with a St Patrick’s Day performance for President Ronald Reagan. He long held a membership of Comhaltas Ceolteóirí Éireann and, in 2004 he was made Ard Ollamh at that year’s Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.
Tomás lived in Glanmire, near Cork city, where he often performed at pub sessions and at home. From the 1990s he performed and ran a music and song session in O’Connell’s public house, Glanmire, every Tuesday evening. Friends unveiled a granite bench in his memory in Glanmire, near the Glashaboy river, in 2015.[3] He was survived by his wife Helen, and three daughters Niamh, Nuala and Úna (all also musicians). In November 2019, the Ó Canainn Family donated his archive to the Irish Traditional Music Archive, Dublin.[4]
Select bibliography
Three Masses in Irish: Aifreann Cholmcille (Dublin: Veritas, 1978), Aifreann Naomh Fionnbarra, and Aifreann Biosántac.
King, J. J. and T. O’Canainn, ‘Optimum pole positions for Laguerre-function models’ Electronics Letters 5 (1969), 60 1-602
Songs of Cork (Skerries, Co. Dublin: G. Dalton, 1978)
Traditional music in Ireland (London: Routledge, 1978); 2nd ed. (Cork: Ossian, 1993)
New tunes for old: fifty original Irish dance tunes suitable for all instruments (Cork: Ossian, 1985)
Home to Derry (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1986), ISBN 0862819326, autobiographical novel
Melos (Glanmire: Clog, 1987), ISBN 1870693000, poetry
With Gearoid Mac an Bhua [Gerald Victory], Seán Ó Riada:, a shaol agus a shaothar (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Gartan, 1993)
Traditional slow airs of Ireland (with 2 CDs, Ossian, 1995), a book of slow airs
A lifetime of notes (Cork: Collins Press, 1996), a memoir
Tunebook (Ossian, 1997), ISBN 1281946005, fifty original dance tunes
Fífeanna is feadóga (Indreabhán, Conamara: Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2001), novel
Seán Ó Riada: his life and work (Cork: Collins, 2003)
Dornán Dánta (Coiscéim, 2004), poetry
‘To the new world and back with pipes, fiddle and flute: the transmission of Irish traditional music’ in Tom Dunne and Laurence M. Geary (eds), History and the public sphere: essays in honour of John A. Murphy (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005), 176-85
‘The magic of traditional music’ in Joe Mulholland (ed.), The soul of Ireland: issues of society, culture, and identity. Proceedings of the Patrick MacGill Summer School, 2006 (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2006)
Select videography
‘Na Filí’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BbviqR4lsU (accessed 12 March 2025)
‘Tomas O’Canainn - The Pennyburn Piper presents Uilleann Pipes’, https://youtu.be/uOxhn9ivM3o (accessed 12 March 2025)
References
[1] ‘Distinguished UCC graduates honoured’, news release, 27 November 2008.
[2] Jessica Cawley, ‘The musical enculturation of Irish traditional musicians: an ethnographic study of learning processes’. PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2013.
[3] Barry Roche, ‘Riverside memorial to piper, composer and singer Tomás Ó Canainn’, Irish Times, 26 October 2015.
[4] ‘The Pennyburn Piper: the Tomás Ó Canainn Collection at the Irish Traditional Music Archive’,
https://www.itma.ie/blog/the-pennyburn-piper-the-tomas-o-canainn-collection-at-itma/ (accessed 12 March 2025).
Sources
‘Distinguished UCC graduates honoured’, news release, 27 November 2008, https://www.ucc.ie/en/news/archive/2014andbeyond/2008pressreleases/distinguished-ucc-graduates-honoured.html (accessed 12 March 2025)
‘Obituary: Pennyburn’s polymath piper: Tomás Ó Canainn’, The Irish Times, 21 September 2013
‘The Pennyburn Piper: the Tomás Ó Canainn Collection at the Irish Traditional Music Archive’, https://www.itma.ie/blog/the-pennyburn-piper-the-tomas-o-canainn-collection-at-itma/ (accessed 12 March 2025).
Jessica Cawley, ‘The musical enculturation of Irish traditional musicians: an ethnographic study of learning processes’. PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2013, https://hdl.handle.net/10468/1548 (accessed 12 March 2025)
Niall Murray, ‘Death takes place of trad musician and writer Tomás Ó Canainn’, Irish Examiner, 16 September 2013
Barry Roche, ‘Riverside memorial to piper, composer and singer Tomás Ó Canainn’, Irish Times, 26 October 2015
‘Tomás Ó Canainn’, webpage, http://homepage.tinet.ie/~tocanainn/ (accessed 12 March 2025)
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