Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
- maki
- Posts: 1441
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:56 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: L.A. California
Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
What book or books do you recommend for the n00b/general reader?
Why?
Sorry if this has been covered, but I've searched without good results.
Thanks.
Why?
Sorry if this has been covered, but I've searched without good results.
Thanks.
- kkrell
- Posts: 4835
- Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:00 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Tell us something.: Mostly producer of the Wooden Flute Obsession 3-volume 6-CD 7-hour set of mostly player's choice of Irish tunes, played mostly solo, on mostly wooden flutes by approximately 120 different mostly highly-rated traditional flute players & are mostly...
- Location: Los Angeles
- Contact:
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
Not sure what exactly you're looking for. Maybe Fintan Vallely's "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music"? A new edition is supposed to be forthcoming.
- maki
- Posts: 1441
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:56 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: L.A. California
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Irish-T ... 0814788025kkrell wrote:Not sure what exactly you're looking for. Maybe Fintan Vallely's "The Companion to Irish Traditional Music"? A new edition is supposed to be forthcoming.
And that maybe exactly what I'd like, Thanks!
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
I'd recommend these:
A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music http://www.amazon.co.uk/OBrien-Pocket-H ... 129&sr=8-1;
The Rough Guide to Irish Music http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Guide-Iri ... 250&sr=1-2;
and.
The Story of Irish Dance http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Irish-Dan ... 294&sr=1-1.
A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music http://www.amazon.co.uk/OBrien-Pocket-H ... 129&sr=8-1;
The Rough Guide to Irish Music http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rough-Guide-Iri ... 250&sr=1-2;
and.
The Story of Irish Dance http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Irish-Dan ... 294&sr=1-1.
- LorenzoFlute
- Posts: 2103
- Joined: Sun Oct 01, 2006 7:46 am
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: Berlin, Germany
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
I read Fintan Vellely's book (first edition), but it's more like an encyclopedia on irish music. Lots of names of musicians you never heard of, put in alphabetical order, and then some more interesting articles. But not an intuitive reading IMO, although very valuable and probably the most complete...
Antique 6 key French flute for sale: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=102436
youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LorenzoFlute
youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LorenzoFlute
-
- Posts: 913
- Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:11 pm
- antispam: No
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
Depending on what you're looking for, "Irish folk music: a fascinating hobby, with some account of allied subjects ..." by Francis O'Neill might be worth reading. If you're in the USA it's on google books for free.
It seems to be more a memoir than a history. I've only read bits and parts of it.
It seems to be more a memoir than a history. I've only read bits and parts of it.
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
here is a historical tome itself on the history of the music ......
qui jure suo utitur neminem laedit
- maki
- Posts: 1441
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:56 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: L.A. California
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
Thanks Highland-piper and Talasiga!
I love free books!
Linky for the Irish Folk Music book;
http://books.google.com/books?id=QggtAA ... &q&f=false
I love free books!
Linky for the Irish Folk Music book;
http://books.google.com/books?id=QggtAA ... &q&f=false
- Mr.Gumby
- Posts: 6625
- Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 11:31 am
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: the Back of Beyond
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
It is probably useful to realise Grattan Flood is considered totally unreliable. His work is full of made up facts and strange notions with no grounding in reality. I believe I have seen him described as 'a notorious crank'.
My brain hurts
- MTGuru
- Posts: 18663
- Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:45 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: San Diego, CA
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
Grattan Flood is a fun read, but as musicology and history it needs to be taken with a large grain of salt - as the intro to the 1970 reprint apparently suggests. His tone and style remind me of the classic "history" by Seamus MacManus, "Story of the Irish Race" from the same period. Both heavily biased by the mythologizing, nationalist agenda of the Gaelic League, Celtic Twilight, etc., with a fixation on "ancient" this and that.
This post on Mudcat summarizes some of the objections:
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=105562#2174253
This post on Mudcat summarizes some of the objections:
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=105562#2174253
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
- MTGuru
- Posts: 18663
- Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 12:45 pm
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: San Diego, CA
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
Another article to the point:
Barra Boydell (NUI Maynooth), History, myth and invention: Grattan Flood and the creation of Irish music history, 4th annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 5-7 May 2006.
Abstract: The roles of music in the establishment of national traditions and identity and of music history as an agent of nationalism, in particular during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are widely acknowledged. Within the British Isles, in Ireland, Scotland and Wales in particular, 'ancient' musical traditions were identified, revived or reinvented as characteristics of distinctive national identities. In Ireland the defining mythologies of the Irish harp and folk music traditions played a significant role in the emergence of nationalism, while the invention in the 1890s of modern 'traditional' Irish dance illustrates Hobsbawm's concept of 'the invention of tradition'.
W.H. Grattan Flood (1859-1928), organist and prolific amateur historian and musicologist, contributed to Musical Quarterly, Music & Letters, SIMG and other internationally-recognised journals. He is best known today for his History of Irish Music, first published in 1905, which combines much factual but often unreliable information with invention and unsubstantiated myth. In the absence of any extended local tradition of art music composition, previous writers on Ireland’s musical past, writing for the most part from a strongly nationalist perspective, had concentrated almost exclusively on 'folk music' and 'minstrelsy'. Espousing the nationalist cause, Flood sought to establish Ireland’s credentials within the wider European art music tradition. He claimed Irish origins for composers including Lionel Power and John Dowland, and the theorist Johannes de Garlandia; he dismissed Sumer is icumen in, recently raised by Charles Grove in his dictionary to iconic status in English national musical history, as 'merely a harmonised arrangement of a phrase taken from [an] old Irish tune'. In this paper Flood’s writings are assessed within these contexts of local music history, nationalism, and contemporary historiography.
Barra Boydell (NUI Maynooth), History, myth and invention: Grattan Flood and the creation of Irish music history, 4th annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 5-7 May 2006.
Abstract: The roles of music in the establishment of national traditions and identity and of music history as an agent of nationalism, in particular during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are widely acknowledged. Within the British Isles, in Ireland, Scotland and Wales in particular, 'ancient' musical traditions were identified, revived or reinvented as characteristics of distinctive national identities. In Ireland the defining mythologies of the Irish harp and folk music traditions played a significant role in the emergence of nationalism, while the invention in the 1890s of modern 'traditional' Irish dance illustrates Hobsbawm's concept of 'the invention of tradition'.
W.H. Grattan Flood (1859-1928), organist and prolific amateur historian and musicologist, contributed to Musical Quarterly, Music & Letters, SIMG and other internationally-recognised journals. He is best known today for his History of Irish Music, first published in 1905, which combines much factual but often unreliable information with invention and unsubstantiated myth. In the absence of any extended local tradition of art music composition, previous writers on Ireland’s musical past, writing for the most part from a strongly nationalist perspective, had concentrated almost exclusively on 'folk music' and 'minstrelsy'. Espousing the nationalist cause, Flood sought to establish Ireland’s credentials within the wider European art music tradition. He claimed Irish origins for composers including Lionel Power and John Dowland, and the theorist Johannes de Garlandia; he dismissed Sumer is icumen in, recently raised by Charles Grove in his dictionary to iconic status in English national musical history, as 'merely a harmonised arrangement of a phrase taken from [an] old Irish tune'. In this paper Flood’s writings are assessed within these contexts of local music history, nationalism, and contemporary historiography.
Vivat diabolus in musica! MTGuru's (old) GG Clips / Blackbird Clips
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
Joel Barish: Is there any risk of brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.
- Mr.Gumby
- Posts: 6625
- Joined: Mon Jun 07, 2010 11:31 am
- antispam: No
- Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
- Location: the Back of Beyond
Re: Best Irish Music history Book(s)?
He was the 'inventor' of the name 'uilleann pipes' which he based on totally spurious reasoning (Shakespear's 'Woollen pipes' anyone?). There's no base in history for the use of 'uilleann'. But it was became accepted and as Breathnach said 'it would be pedantic to object to it's use'.
De-bunking his work kept a generation of scholars busy but some of the myths he generated still linger on.
De-bunking his work kept a generation of scholars busy but some of the myths he generated still linger on.
My brain hurts