Cathal Gannon

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.

[2] A love of music and the arts had been encouraged by two maiden aunts – his parents subsequently bought an upright piano and he learned to play it at the Read Pianoforte School[3] – and consequently, when his apprenticeship was completed and he was on the dole for some years, he spent much of his spare time buying pictures, books, antiques and old clocks and watches in the various auction rooms and antique shops in Dublin[4] During the mid-1930s, Gannon became a member of several Dublin-based societies, most notably the Old Dublin Society, and there befriended well-known people such as Grace Plunkett (née Gifford), the widow of Joseph Mary Plunkett (who had been executed after the Easter Rising of 1916).

[13] Whilst on holidays in Glengarriff in the West of Ireland during August 1936, Gannon met his future wife, Margaret Key from Harrow in London; they married in 1942.

[14] In London with Margaret, who was visiting her parents, Gannon went to the Benton Fletcher collection of keyboard instruments, which was then in Chelsea, and measured a harpsichord by Jacob and Abraham Kirckman (1777).

[17][18] Beckett subsequently persuaded the authorities in the Guinness Brewery to provide Gannon with a special workshop, in which he made five harpsichords and restored several antique pianos.

[26] 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.

[34] He befriended a great many people, including the artist, writer and conservationist Peter Pearson,[35] and regular musical evenings were held at the family home in Bryan Guinness's grounds in the suburbs of Dublin.