Musicology in Ireland

Musicology in IrelandAuthor(s): Harry WhiteSource: Acta Musicologica, Vol. 60, Fasc. 3 (Sep. - Dec., 1988), pp. 290-305Published by: International Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/932755 .

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290

Musicology in Ireland* HARRY WHITE (DUBLIN)

I. Introduction

The purpose of this report is to survey the range and development of musicology in Ireland, effectively from the publication of Aloys Fleischmann's Music in Ireland

(1952) onwards. Music in Ireland offered, among much else, an incisive and detailed

history of higher music education in the country, and a gloomy report on the

impoverished state of research which recorded vacant or reduced professorships in Dublin and Cork, an almost complete lack of funding for research throughout the

country, and an absence of any major research project in music with the notable

exception of the field work even then undertaken in music, by members of the Irish Folklore Commission.

Much has changed since 1952, as this survey clearly demonstrates. Many of the material developments in musicology, in fact, are extremely recent, and readers of this report will be forcibly struck by the dearth of scholarly publication in most areas of enquiry before 1970. (Irish folk music is an important exception.) There is, of course, good reason for this. The phenomenal increase of Anglo-American scholarship in music was essentially a post-war development, and as late as 1980 David Fallows could observe that "relatively few of the authors mentioned in the

preceding pages [of the report on musicology in Great Britain which appeared in vol. 52, p. 38-68, of this journal] hold positions in British universities, and even fewer of them hold positions in music departments" (p. 55). Musicology in Ireland,

by contrast, developed almost entirely through the agency of university departments of music, notwithstanding the independent development of ethnomusicology in this

country. (More recent reports in this journal strongly suggest that the bulk of recent

musicological research in Britain also originates in universities and colleges.) In

Ireland, we follow rather than lead in some (by no means all) areas of the humanities. That is inevitable, given our social, economic and political history, but it

does not mean that Irish musical education, for example, has simply or slavishly replicated conditions and programmes in Britain. Nevertheless, it is as well to clear

our debt to British musicology at the outset. Frank Ll. Harrison, for example, took his doctoral degree in Dublin, but thereafter the greater part of his outstanding career was spent in Kingston, Ontario, Oxford and Amsterdam. He has been rightly claimed as a major contributor to British musicology and ethnomusicology in vol. 52

of this journal, and so we have included here only those aspects of his work not

available in earlier reports. We have likewise devoted less attention to the

* My thanks are due to Professor Aloys Fleischmann and to Janet Harbison for their assistance in the compilation of this

report. A detailed letter of enquiry was sent to some 40 individuals and to all institutes concerned with research in music in Ireland. Although there are, inevitably, some omissions (largely due to the failure of a few to respond to requests for

information), bibliographical sources have otherwise helped to safeguard the general accuracy and comprehensiveness of this survey.



H. White: Musicology in Ireland 291

achievement of John Blacking in Belfast than would be the case if this achievement had not already been surveyed by Professor Blacking himself in this journal (vol. 52, p. 62-68). Much work undertaken in Northern Ireland, of course, had to be omitted from earlier reports on musicology in Great Britain: some of this research is included here. The recent establishment of an Irish chapter of the Royal Musical Association (see II. below) has encouraged the view that there is much to be said for ignoring political distinctions in the pursuit of musical scholarship in this country.

What follows here is a survey, not a chronological narrative. (In a forthcoming paper, I trace the development of higher music education in Ireland and its impact on musicology: I regard this as an issue separate from the matter in hand.) Nor is it intended that the publications mentioned in each section should together amount to an exhaustive bibliography of musical research in Ireland. Nonetheless, I have tried to represent as generously as possible the spread of research activities and achievements in Ireland, partly to justify the conclusions to which I have been led as a result of having undertaken this work.

The field of musicology in Ireland is a small one: only three universities in the south of the country offer degrees exclusively in music, although research degrees in music to doctoral level can be pursued at six universities throughout Ireland, and some departments now offer courses of regular graduate training in musicology, notably at the University of Ulster and the Queen's University, Belfast. Graduates of music of Irish universities have begun also to seek training in Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States, where resources and funding are so obviously much more available than at home. Much remains to be done before the discipline of musicology finds the recognition it needs in order to justify regular funding of graduate programmes and research. In the present climate of stringency, such recognition may prove elusive.

II. Domestic and Foreign Meetings; Society Memberships

Conferences in musicology have been to date a comparatively infrequent phenome- non in Ireland: Patrick F. Devine (Maynooth) organised a meeting of university teachers and students which took place at St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, in March, 1979. The conference took as its theme the place of musicology in higher education, and staff from university colleges and other institutes in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Maynooth were represented. Contributors included David Greer (then Hamilton Harty professor of music at Belfast), Aloys Fleischmann (professor of music at Cork, now professor emeritus), Brian Boydell (professor of music at Trinity College, Dublin, also now emeritus) and Noel Watson (professor at Maynooth from 1968-1985). Given that each of these chairs is now newly occupied (by Adrian Thomas at Belfast, Nick Sandon at Cork, Hormoz Farhat at Trinity and Gerard Gillen at Maynooth), the time would appear to be opportune for a fresh assessment of the impact of musicology on music education and the changes which it has wrought in certain aspects of Irish university teaching. This question is addressed in brief at the close of this report.



292 H. White: Musicology in Ireland

Hilary Bracefield (Jordanstown) has been responsible in large part for the establishment of an Irish chapter of the Royal Musical Association: the first meeting of this chapter was held at the university of Ulster in May, 1987. Participants included Brian Boydell on aspects of research in the history of music in Dublin, and David Rhodes (Waterford) on Franz Anton Pfeiffer. A second meeting took place at

University College, Dublin, in May of 1988. Membership of the R.M.A. is by no means as widespread as it might be in Ireland, membership of the International

Musicological Society is still rarer. There are, nevertheless, R.M.A. members of long standing in Belfast, Dublin, Cork and Maynooth, and a former occupant of the

Harty Chair, David Greer, is editor of the association's Journal. Scholars working in Ireland, moreover, have contributed in the past to the Proceedings of the R.M.A.

(see III, 6., below), and Hilary Bracefield has been on the Proceedings committee since 1987. Nick Sandon is a life member. He is also on the council of the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society.

Other contributors to conferences have included Barra Boydell (Dublin) on the use of documentary and iconographical evidence in Renaissance organology at Exeter in

1978; Ann Buckley (Cambridge) on the relevance of literary sources in the

investigation of musical instruments at Cambridge in 1982, and Maire Egan-Buffet (Dublin) on aspects of rhythmic interpretation and notation in the chansons of Claude Goudimel at Tours in 1977 and at Durham in 1978. Ann Buckley is a

prominent member of the International Council for Traditional Music. Among several conference papers and study-reports by Paul Everett (Cork), the survey of a

baroque Roman repertory of concertos given at the annual R.M.A. conference at

Birmingham in 1984 and a paper on chronology in the works of Vivaldi (which introduced a round-table on this subject) at the International Vivaldi conference in Venice in 1987, are of particular note. Gerard Gillen's most recent overseas address was a paper on chorale settings in the organ music of Buxtehude, delivered at the

faculty of music, Oxford, in November 1987. Geoffrey Spratt (Cork) has

participated at many of the seminars on contemporary choral music held at

University College, Cork, from 1978 onwards. This seminar has taken place annually since 1962, and it has occasioned several important works by Irish, British,

European, American and Canadian composers. Harry White delivered a paper on Handel in Dublin to the second annual conference of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society at University College, Dublin, in 1987. A version of this paper subsequently appeared in the society's journal.

In the field of ethnomusicology, John Blacking (Belfast), Nicholas Carolan

(Dublin), Hormoz Farhat (Dublin), the late Breandin Breathnach, Hugh Shields

(Dublin), Tom Munnelly (Clare), MicheMl O S6iilleabhaiin (Cork) and

Diithf 0 hOg ain (Dublin) along with others, have all contributed regularly to conferences in

Ireland and abroad. Janet Harbison, curator of music at the Ulster Folk Museum,

organised a conference on ethnomusicology in Ireland in May, 1986. Nicholas Carolan has been secretary of the Folk Music Society of Ireland since 1977, and administrator of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (from 1987). During his tenure as professor of music in Teheran, Hormoz Farhat participated in several




conferences and seminars on aspects of Persian and Indian music, and he represented Iran at UNESCO seminars on music in Florence and Paris. Michel 0

Suiilleabhain, lecturer in ethnomusicology at Cork, presented a paper on bodhrdn technique at the 1981 conference of the U. K. chapter of the International Council for Traditional Music. As sometime president of the Society for Ethnomusicology, John Blacking is pre-eminent among scholars of this discipline. As professor of social

anthropology at Belfast, and in his numerous conference-papers and addresses national and international, Blacking has been the single-most influential advocate of ethnomusicology to work at length in Ireland. The department of Irish Folklore (music archive) at University College, Dublin, has been another important source of contributions to meetings (especially in Ireland) on folk music, and in particular on Irish song. Foremost in this area of research are the collector Tom Munnelly (a scholar attached to the music archive and the department of Folklore at U.C.D.) and Hugh Shields, a prominent committee member of the Folk Music Society of Ireland, and a regular participant in discussions on song and singing in Ireland: Shields is currently editing the proceedings of a conference on the ballad, held in Dublin in 1985. Finally, it is useful (and perhaps significant) to note that the vast majority of scholarly work in Irish folk music is undertaken by persons not attached to departments of music.

III. Publications

1. Works of Reference; Catalogues and Bibliographies; On Library Sources

A number of Irish scholars contributed to The New Grove (1980), most obviously on the history of Irish music. The extensive article on Ireland by Seoirse Bodley and Breandin Breathnach is worthy of note, as are articles by Bodley on Sean 0 Riada, by Brian Boydell on Dublin and on Aloys Fleischmann, and by Aloys Fleischmann on Cork and on Gerard Victory. Anthony Hughes provided an article on Seoirse Bodley. Barra Boydell (Dublin) contributed a number of brief entries on composers to the 1973 edition of MGG; his main contribution of reference material, however, comprises the articles on windcap instruments (crumhorn, cornamusa, dolzaina, etc.) which he wrote for The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (London 1984). Other Irish contributors to this work include Ann Buckley (on the Tiompin), Lasairiona Duignan and Miche~l O Sfiilleabhiin. Other contributors to Grove from Irish universities are Martin Cunningham, Hormoz Farhat (the article on Iran), John Blacking, Anthony Carver and David Greer (then in Belfast). Brian Boydell examined music and society to 1850 in A New History of Ireland, vol. IV, ed. T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (Oxford 1986), and Anthony Hughes provided several short articles on music for Ireland, A Cultural Encyc- lopedia, ed. Brian de Breffny (London 1982). Anthony Hughes also served as chairman of the advisory committee which aided in the compilation of Edgar Deale's Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Composers (Dublin 1968, rev. and enlarged edition 1973). An attempt to systematise information on all aspects of Irish music is represented by the Irish Music Guide, an intermittently published information sheet




which originates in a computer database devised by Bernard Harris of the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin.

The series of bibliographies prepared by Hugh Shields and Nicholas Carolan in the journal Irish Folk Music Studies (1973, 1975, 1981 and 1984) affords scholars of Irish music an extremely valuable (and apparently exhaustive) overview of the field.

Hugh Shields has also published a separate bibliography of Irish folk song (Dublin 1985) designed to meet scholarly requirements, and Nicholas Carolan has supplied a discography (1987) to accompany this work. The Irish department of education

published in 1985 a brief dictionary of music: this work was written in Irish. Brief surveys of the important research collections of music in Irish libraries (by

G. H. P. Hewson, Donal O'Sullivan, Eimear O Broin, Newport White and Caitlin Bonfield) were included in Music in Ireland: of the important sources in the National Library, Trinity College Library, The Royal Irish Academy and Marsh's

Library, however, only those in Marsh's have been made known in detail. Richard Charteris' Catalogue of the printed books on music, printed music and music

manuscripts in Archbishop Marsh's Library (Dublin 1981) needs to be followed by several such studies. Hugh Shields, in the meantime, has written an interesting account of 19th-century Irish song chapbooks and ballad sheets in Trinity College (this account appears in Treasures of the Library, ed. Peter Fox, Dublin 1986). Lastly in this section, we note the publication of Geoffrey Spratt's catalogue of the works of Arthur Honegger by Editions Slatkine (Paris - Geneva 1986).

2. Editions and Facsimiles The presence of Boethius Press in Kilkenny since 1981 is a much-welcome anomaly

in a country notable for its want of publishers committed to art-music. Boethius has maintained its valuable series of facsimile reproductions entitled Musical Sources

(general editor, Richard Rastall); among the twenty-one volumes in the set are lute books from the late sixteenth century (including the Marsh Lute Book and the Hirsh Lute Book), the Cantiones Sacrae of Tallis and Byrd from 1575, and the Lachrimae of

John Dowland. Boethius also publishes a series of Classic Texts in Music Education translated and introduced by Bernarr Rainbow. These texts include Pierre Galin's Rationale for a new way of teaching music (presented in facsimile and parallel translation) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Project concerning new symbols for music

(1742), which appeared in 1983 and 1982 respectively. Boethius has published Thomas Weelkes: Keyboard Music, edited by Desmond

Hunter in 1985, and most handsomely (if somewhat unexpectedly) the second volume of T. J. Walsh's study of opera in Monte Carlo, which appeared in 1986. (See section 3. below.) The catalogue of music and books on music in Marsh's Library noted in 1. above also appeared under the Boethius imprint.

Other scholarly editions published in Ireland include The Wexford Carols

(Dolmen Press 1982) prepared by Diarmaid O Muirithe, with notations by S6oirse Bodley, and Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland, an edition of the 1840 collection of harp music prepared by Donal O'Sullivan and Miche~l O Siilleabhiin and published by Cork University Press in 1983. Although modern publication of




popular ballad-collections abounds in Ireland, much ethnic material awaits comprehensive scholarly investigation and editorial treatment. (See IV below.)

Nick Sandon is general editor of Antico Edition (Newton Abbot) which has published the first two volumes (1984 and 1986) of his The Use of Salisbury, containing the ordinary of the mass and the proper of the mass from Advent to Septuagesima. Further volumes in the series are due at the rate of one approximately every two years until all of the music for mass and office is published.

Paul Everett is a member of the editorial committee which is supervising the new critical edition of the works of Antonio Vivaldi (Ricordi, Milan) and he has prepared several sonatas (for violin and basso continuo) and concertos in this edition amounting to some fifteen volumes of music (with Michael Talbot). He has also prepared editions of Vivaldi motets and instrumental music by Daniel Purcell. Miire Egan-Buffet has co-edited two volumes of the complete works of Claude Goudimel published jointly by the Institute of Medieval Music in New York and the Societd Suisse de Musicologie in Basle in 1971 and 1983. Evelyn Barry, professor emeritus in Wellesley, Mass., edited the Complete Piano Works for Piano Solo by Philip Cogan, which was published in 1984 as volume 8 of the series The London Pianoforte School, 1766-1860 (Garland, New York), general editor, Nicholas Temperley. Harry White has edited an oratorio by Johann Joseph Fux which will appear as series IV, volume 3 in the complete works edition published by Bdirenreiter and ADEVA-Musik. This volume is due to be published in 1988. Nicholas Carolan's edition of John and William Neal, A collection of the most celebrated Irish Tunes, Dublin 1724, appeared in 1986.

3. Monographs. Organology; General History; Individual Genres and Composers

Under this heading we can include a small number of recently published studies (and some reprints) which allows some idea of the limited scope of research represented in book-length studies to date. Ian Woodfield's Early History of the Viol (Cambridge 1984) has been acclaimed as a definitive study, and its publication was noted in this journal in 1986. Barra Boydell's The Crumhorn and other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren 1982) has also been widely acknowledged as an important contribution to renaissance organology, and his Music and Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin 1985), which led later to a television series on the same subject, is an absorbing and extremely valuable iconographical study which should serve as a stimulus to further Irish work in this area. Joan Rimmer's study of the Irish Harp (1969) was published in its third edition by Cork University Press in 1984. A reprint (photolithographic facsimile) of R. B. Armstrong's Irish and Highland Harp (1904 edition) newly introduced in 1969 by Seoirse Bodley, and published by Irish University Press, is one of a number of early studies of Irish music reproduced by I. U. P. Gerard Gillen's study of Irish organs in the classical tradition is due to be published in 1988 by Positif Press, Oxford.

A comprehensive history of music in Ireland is sorely needed. W. H. Grattan Flood's A History of Irish Music (1904) went through three editions: Irish




University Press reprinted the third, 1913 edition in 1970. This was also introduced by Seoirse Bodley. Along with other scholars, Bodley shows that Grattan Flood's patriotic enthusiasms often made him an unreliable witness and a fanciful historian. This is not to dispute, however, the pioneering value and commitment of his work. Ita M. Hogan's Anglo-Irish Music 1780-1830 (Cork 1966) originated in a doctoral dissertation prepared at University College, Cork, and its documentary research (including a very useful bibliography of primary materials) and systematic narrative clarity resulted in a comprehensive general history which deserves to have been the source of further investigations. This has rarely been the case. The

publication of Brian Boydell's Dublin Musical Calendar 1700-1760 (in press) should ensure that some twenty-two years after Ita Hogan's study, another period in Irish musical history receives professional attention. Notwithstanding the publication of Four Centuries of Music in Ireland, a series of brief essays edited and introduced by Brian Boydell which appeared in 1979, publications in early Irish music history have been scant. Appendix IV in Frank Ll. Harrison's Music in Medieval Britain (London 1958) includes extracts from the statutes of Christ Church Cathedral (Dublin) which date from 1539. Although two recent dissertations pursue the history of cathedral music in Dublin, Michael Curran's The Antiphonary of Bangor and the

early Irish Monastic Liturgy (Irish Academic Press 1984) is the only published work to date to continue Harrison's investigations into medieval Irish polyphony, apart from Harrison's own contribution on the subject in the Bruno Stiblein- Festschrift of 1967, and research by Aloys Fleischmann in Munster.

Studies of individual genres in Ireland have been less common than full-length assessments of composers (or collections of essays). The former include the three volumes of opera history by T. J. Walsh, Opera in Dublin 1705-1797: The Social Scene (Dublin 1973) and Monte Carlo Opera 1879-1909 (Dublin 1975) and 1910-1951

(Kilkenny 1986). Anthony Carver (Belfast) has examined Venetian polychoral music to 1580 in a book which is in the Cambridge press and is due to be published this year.

On individual composers we note Patrick Pigott's Life and Music of John Field

(London 1973) which is dedicated to the Master Terry de Valera and his wife: Terry de Valera provided considerable research for this study and is so acknowledged (as is Eimear O Broin in Ita Hogan's Anglo-Irish Music). David Greer edited a collection of essays on Hamilton Harty (Belfast 1979) which featured contributions from former occupants of the Harty Chair, including Ivor Keys and Philip Cranmer. The Achievement of Sedn 0 Riada (Ballina and Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 1982) was edited by Bernard Harris and Grattan Freyer and it includes an assessment of 6 Riada's original compositions by Seoirse Bodley, and some facsimile material.

Finally, we note in this section three books which began life as doctoral dissertations: Geoffrey Spratt's The Music of Arthur Honegger (Cork University Press 1987), Henry Purcell: His Musical Style and its Development by Martin Adams (Dublin; this study is in press with Eulenburg), and Paul Everett's source- study of the Manchester concerto part-books, which is due for publication by Garland Press (New York) in 1988.




4. Ethnomusicological Studies

"Academic ethnomusicology flourishes only in Belfast, implanted in a department of social anthropology, but not yet more than marginally addressed to Irish music in particular." Thus Hugh Shields identifies a serious shortcoming in his 1985 bibliography of Irish Folk song (see 1. above) which has only recently been overcome (in part) by the introduction of courses in ethnomusicology at University College, Cork. (Queen's University, Belfast, has recently appointed a research fellow in Irish music.) Many of the published studies, accordingly, are by scholars unconnected with departments of music, as we have already observed, and this in turn may explain why so few publications are addressed to a comprehensive study of the actual m us i c, as apart from the text and its conventions and meanings. Were we to include a complete listing of textual monographs of the type represented, for example, by Sean O Tuama's study of the medieval origins of the love-lyric in Irish (An grd in amhrdin na ndaoine, Dublin 1960) or Angela Partridge's investigation of the Lament of the Three Marys in Gaelic folk poetry (Caoineadh na dtrf Muire, Dublin 1983) which does supply a melodic appendix, this section would be considerably longer than it is.

Breandin Breathnach's Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (Dublin 1971) went through several editions (including a Japanese translation in 1985) and has remained the best brief introduction to its subject (as its author expressly intended). Similar studies which followed it, including The Irish Song Tradition (Dublin-Toronto 1976) and Traditional Music in Ireland (London 1978) did not make any significant advance on Breathnach's study, and to date there has not been a more comprehensive and detailed examination available. Donal O'Sullivan's extended biographical, analytic and editorial study of Turlough O Carolan and his music (London 1958, repr. Lincs. 1983) was remarkably ahead of its time, and sadly has not yet been followed by further publications of this size and scope. Two more recent studies of contemporary folk musicians illustrate perhaps the most completely successful, integrated attempts to place the music in context and thereby contribute to the socio logy of Irish music: The Northern Fiddler, by Allen Feldman and Eamon O'Doherty (Belfast 1979) and Shamrock, Rose and Thistle (Belfast 1981) by Hugh Shields.

Beyond the subject of Irish music, we note the publication of Hormoz Farhat's monograph on The Traditional Art Music of Iran (1973), and a study by Frank Ll. Harrison not included in earlier reports, the anthology of ethnomusicological observation, c. 1500-1800, of music practices in continents other than Europe by Europeans, Time, Place and Music (Buren 1973). Finally, it is useful to note that a number of Irish and international presses reprinted early studies of Irish folk music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, James Hardiman, ed., Irish Minstrelsy (1831) republished by Irish University Press (Shannon 1971).

5. Aesthetics, Analysis and Criticism

The brief listing here of two works by Liberato Santoro, La filosofia della musica nel pensiero di T. W. Adorno (Rome 1972) and the collection Essays on Aesthetics




(Dublin 1978), is justified by Santoro's long-standing membership of the faculty of

Philosophy at University College, Dublin. Donncha O Maidin's chapter on

"Computer analysis of Irish and Scottish Jigs", in Musical Grammar and Computer Analysis (Florence 1984), is a rare attempt to apply new techniques to the (Irish) folk repertory. Scholars in Ireland have been slow to develop modes of analytic and critical thought: given the trends perceptible elsewhere, however, this is not likely to remain the case permanently.

6. Contributions to Periodicals

By far the greatest number of publications in Irish musicology are to be found in

journals and other periodical literature. The areas of enquiry represented in these shorter studies include some topics which have not yet been investigated at book-

length by Irish scholars. Two Irish journals in particular, Ceol (1963-1986) and Irish Folk Music Studies

(= IFMS, 1971) have each provided a forum for work in native music. In his

appreciation of Breandin Breathnach (1910-1985) the founding editor of Ceol, Nicholas Carolan, observed that the journal "made Irish folk music a subject for serious published study for the first time since the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society ceased publication in the early 1920s." (See Ceol VIII, no. 1, p. 3-10.) In Ceol, Breathnach developed many of his ideas (often trenchantly expressed) which in turn stimulated discussion among various contributors to the journal who included Nicholas Carolan, Padraig A. Breatnach, Josef Konig, Tom Munnelly, Lawrence E.

McCullough and Hugh Shields. Some of these contributors also published work in

IFMS, which to date has carried the valuable bibliographies listed in 1. above. IFMS

published Seoirse Bodley's essay on technique and structure in "sean-n6s" ("old- style") singing (1973); it has also featured several papers on traditional Irish

instruments, the notation of Irish music, vocal ornamentation and styles of piping. Caitlin Uif igeartaigh's critique of Patrick Joyce is one of a number of important papers to appear in IFMS which deal with 19th-century collectors of Irish music.

Hugh Shields, one of the most prolific contributors to IFMS, has also published on aspects of traditional Irish song in Ethnomusicology, the Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council and Ulster Folk Life (= UFL), a periodical which has often contained much serious historical writing in the field of traditional song. Maura Murphy's "The ballad singer and the role of the seditious ballad in

nineteenth-century Ireland. Dublin Castle's view," exemplifies this kind of work. It

appeared in UFL in 1979.

Many of Tom Munnelly's extensive investigations into maritime song have been

published in Bdaloideas, the journal issued from the department of Folklore at

University College, Dublin. Bdaloideas has also carried several learned papers from

such textual scholars as Breandin 0 Madagain (on functions of Irish song in the 19th century) and Diithf 0 h0giin. Another learned journal of Irish studies which has devoted space to musical subjects is Eigse,

which in 1983 featured Miire Buffet's penetrating appraisal of theories of musical notation in relation to Ogham script and the Irish Harp. The same issue also contained Mich~al 6 Conchubhair's




note on a copy of Hugh of St Victor's treatise on music, the Didascalion, which is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Other venues for papers on Irish subjects include Treoir (1967ff.) and Dal gCais (1972ff.), a journal of local history which has featured several studies of song in the County Clare region.

Three journals which have carried less learned yet informed articles on several aspects of European art music are Counterpoint (1969-1981) edited by Ian Fox and Eoin Garrett, its successor Soundpost (1981-1984) edited by Michael Dervan, and Music Ireland (1984ff.), also edited by Michael Dervan. All three journals originated in Dublin.

The London-based journal of contemporary music Contact (1971) enjoys a number of important Irish connections. It is co-edited by Hilary Bracefield, and it has featured since 1978 papers on Irish music by Brendan Major, on contemporary Polish composition by Adrian Thomas and on Gerald Barry's opera, The Intelligence Park (1987).

Other journals to which scholars working in Ireland and Irish scholars have contributed include the Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (Brian Boydell and Paul Everett), Informazioni e studi vivaldiani (Paul Everett), Early Music (Barra Boydell, Peter Downey, Nick Sandon), Chelys (Ian Woodfield), The Galpin Society Journal (David Rhodes, Barra Boydell), Fontes Artis Musicae (Harry White), Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (Aloys Fleischmann and Pauline Mac Sweeney), Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis (Ann Buckley), Jahrbuch ffir musikalische Volks- und Vdlkerkunde (Ann Buckley), Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis (Barra Boydell), The Music Review (Geoffrey Spratt), The Musical Times (Gerard Gillen, Ann Buckley, et al.), Zeitschrift fiir Musik (Aloys Fleischmann), Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch (Harry White), Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies (Gerard Gillen), The English Harpsichord Magazine (Desmond Hunter), Brio (Geoffrey Spratt), Schweizerische Musikzeitung (Geoffrey Spratt), International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (Harry White). Of these publications only Pauline Mac Sweeney's paper on harpsichord manufacture in 18th-century Ireland (Royal Irish Academy) is unrelated directly to other work surveyed in this report. The last major article by Frank Ll. Harrison to appear before his death combined two long-held interests: Ireland, and the sociology of music. "Music, Poetry and Policy in the Age of Swift," in: Eighteenth-Century Ireland 1 (1986), characteristi- cally broke new ground, both in its approach to the study of music in Dublin and in the interdisciplinary context in which it appeared.

IV. Current Research; Doctoral Degrees

In this section we survey a number of projects (including research degrees) which are part of work in progress; we also examine in brief the range of theses presented for doctoral degrees by scholars in Irish universities, and occasionally we include information germane to individual research activities which would otherwise fall beyond the scope of this report.




John Blacking is general editor of the series Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusi- cology; Brian Boydell is currently engaged on research into music at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, 1744-1791; Hilary Bracefield will publish a study of music and the handicapped in Northern Ireland with the University of Ulster Press in 1988, she is also completing a doctoral dissertation on British musical aesthetics in the 18th century. She continues as a member of the editorial board of Contact, and as a member of the International Society for Music Education. Ann Buckley is presently occupied with three major projects: preparation of the volume Irland for the German

ethnomusicological project Handbuch der europiiischen Volksmusikinstrumente (this study will comprise a survey of instruments in popular use in historical and

contemporary Ireland); secondly, Dr Buckley is editing a selection of French lais for Antico Edition, and she is preparing a study of this topic; finally, Dr Buckley is

engaged on an extensive study of musical life in Romania (with Paul Nixon). Miire Buffet is preparing a critical edition of the 14th-century Dublin play (with music), Visitatio Sepulchri in collaboration with Alan Fletcher (Department of Medieval

English, University College, Dublin). Dr Buffet is also editing a treatise by Adrian Le Roy (1583) and she is involved in textual studies in French 16th-century secular vocal music, modal theory, and Irish liturgical manuscripts from the 14th century. Among Nicholas Carolan's many research projects and related activities, his sixty programmes on early Irish recordings (The Irish Phonograph) transmitted on national radio between 1983-1986, and his comprehensive bibliography of Irish instrumental folk music (in progress) are particularly of note. Mr Carolan is also

devising a computer database for the control of all information on Irish Folk music: a

project which would appear to overlap to some degree with Bernard Harris' work in the Contemporary Music Centre (see III, 1. above). Paul Everett is writing a book-

length study of Vivaldi manuscripts, which will primarily be concerned with

provenance and chronology. Dr Everett also has a chapter on sources in a

forthcoming book on Vivaldi's cantatas by Francesco Degrada, and he is preparing an article on Vivaldi's copyists. Hormoz Farhat's study of the dastgah concept in Persian music is under contract for publication by Cambridge University Press. Professor Farhat has papers on the evolution of performance style in Persian music and on "unity and diversity in the musical modes of the Islamic Middle East" which are forthcoming from American and Greek presses in the near future. Gerard Gillen has recently provided a continuo-realization for the Fux oratorio II trionfo della Fede, edited by Harry White (see III. 2, above). As sometime chairman of the Dublin International Organ Festival and as a cathedral and concert organist, Professor Gillen combines his scholarly interests in performance practice and organology with a regular series of domestic and international recitals. Janet Harbison is completing a Ph. D. dissertation at the Queen's University, Belfast, where she has studied with

John Blacking. Professor Blacking's department has seen a number of ethno-

musicological studies through to successful completion which are remarkably distinct in subject matter from the characteristic areas of enquiry in Irish (and most British) universities. Doctoral theses on Korean folk music, on tabla drumming of Lucknow in its social and cultural context, on the role of Gospel music in Chicago,




on youth songs in Nigeria, have all been awarded in Belfast. This achievement, unique in an Irish context, is obviously due to Professor Blacking's initiative and expertise in large part.

Desmond Hunter, like Gerard Gillen, combines the roles of performer (as organist) and researcher, and his current research comprises a doctoral dissertation on ornamentation in English Keyboard music, c. 1530-1650, as well as other investigations into performance practice. David Rhodes completed a Ph. D. in 1983 on the life and works of F. A. Pfeiffer, and his current research embraces classical concerto performance practice, music at the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Court, Felix Rheiner (1732-1809), and the preparation of editions of concertos by J. C. Bach and Carl Stamitz. Much of Nick Sandon's recent research has been reported in previous musicological surveys in this journal; his reconstruction of liturgical services for the octave of the nativity (broadcast by the B.B.C. in 1984) was accompanied by a collection of essays and notes on the subject, revised and reissued in 1987. Professor Sandon's study of the manuscript London, British Library 1709 is forthcoming in the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society Centenary Volume (London). An anthology of renaissance music and a book on late medieval English music and its analysis are also in train. The steady stream of articles and reviews, bibliographical and stylistic studies which Hugh Shields has recently produced have been accompanied by several field recordings of folk songs in Ireland and France. A book on narrative song in Ireland is in progress. In addition to his continuing responsibilities as associate editor of Irish Folk Music Studies (and as editor of Ceol Tfre, newsletter of the Folk Music Society of Ireland), Dr Shields is editor of the series "European ethnic oral traditions", a number of cassette-recordings which contain material from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and Germany.

Among Geoffrey Spratt's many activities as a scholar and performer, his preparation of a monograph on contemporary Irish piano music (commissioned by the Contemporary Music Centre) and of a study of the modern Irish choral repertory (commissioned by the Association of Irish Composers) are especially relevant to this report. Dr Spratt's manifest abilities as a choral (and orchestral) conductor suggest, perhaps, that he is particularly well-equipped to undertake the latter task. Micheal 0 Suiilleabhain completed a Ph. D. degree in ethnomusicology (Belfast) in 1987; his current research interests include improvisation in Irish music, music education in Ireland, the folk music archive at University College, Cork, and the thematic index of Irish folk music which has been intermittently in preparation for some thirty years in Cork. (This project is under the direction of Professor Aloys Fleischmann.) It is expected that the first volume of this comprehensive reference work will be ready for publication in 1988. Supported by grants from the Irish Arts Council, the Department of Education and the Royal Irish Academy, this first volume covers material in general collections to 1800, and in Irish collections to Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland (1855). The forthcoming first volume of the Dictionary of Irish Biography, a project undertaken by the Royal Irish Academy, will include material on some sixty persons associated with music in Ireland. (Volume I runs from A-C.) Harry White's current research projects include papers




on the da capo aria in Viennese sacred-dramatic music in the early 18th century, on the passion oratorio at the Habsburg court, and on contemporary modes of musical thought. A contextual and critical study of the oratorios of Johann Joseph Fux (arising from a doctoral dissertation on this subject) is in train, in addition to a shorter and somewhat more schematic investigation of the musico-dramatic language and structure of Bach's cantatas.

Other doctoral dissertations recently completed in Irish universities include A. H. Bradshaw's study of the Kodaly concept and its impact on music education in Irish schools (Trinity, 1980). Dr Bradshaw has since prepared a number of texts on music education which are pending publication. Marian Deasy prepared a new edition of airs and dance tunes from the music manuscripts of the collector George Petrie, and surveyed Petrie's achievement as a scholar (University College, Dublin, 1982). Patrick Devine examined the early music of Anton Bruckner (also University College, Dublin, 1987): Dr Devine's current research interest is the music of Gabriel Faure. W. H. Grindle's scrutiny of Irish cathedral music (Trinity, 1985) revived an early interest of Frank Ll. Harrison's, and drew in part on a master's thesis on music in St Patrick's cathedral by Barbara Mc Hugh (1980). Dr Grindle's thesis is currently under consideration for publication; he is now

investigating plainchant in Ireland. Eunan Tobin earned his doctorate with a study of Schumann's formal strategies in the piano music (Trinity, 1982).

Michael Russ (Jordanstown) recently completed a Ph. D. in post-tonal analysis at the University of London under Arnold Whittall. Dr Russ has plans to publish a number of papers on this subject in the near future, and he will participate in the

forthcoming music analysis conference at Oxford in September, 1988. Lastly in this section we note the imminent publication of Deirdre O'Grady's study of poetry and politics in the Italian operatic libretto by Routledge in London and New York. Dr O'Grady is a member of the Department of Italian at University College, Dublin.

V. Conclusion

There would seem to be at least three areas of concern for the future of musicology in Ireland: the co-ordination of research, the development of new research and the

implications of musicology for music education. It may seem a truism to observe that the history and criticism of music in Ireland

is the responsibility of scholars who live and work there. But that responsibility is underlined by notable lacunae in standard works of reference which have appeared recently, notwithstanding Irish contributions to The New Grove and The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. The New Oxford Companion to Music

(1983), for example, reprints the article on Ireland which Percy Scholes wrote for the first edition of this publication in 1938. Although the 1983 Companion contains

entries on Sdoirse Bodley and Brian Boydell, it is silent on a host of other Irish composers such as Sean 0 Riada and James Wilson. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopaedia of 20th-Century Music (1986) simply overlooks Ireland completely, even though the contemporary music of thirty other countries is represented. It




cannot even be said, indeed, that the New Grove entries on Ireland and on Irish subject-matter always manifest a degree of bibliographical thoroughness adequate to the matter in hand: the omission of Ceol and Irish Folk Music Studies, together with any reference to their contents, is a troubling (and mysterious) weakness of the bibliography supplied by Breandan Breathnach to his article on folk music.

Some ten years after these Grove entries were written, and some thirty-six years after the publication of Music in Ireland, it is clear that an encyclopedia of music in Ireland is overdue. The accumulation of yet more facts may be a humble and occasionally tedious business, but we need to know where we stand in Ireland and where we have stood, in terms which are reliable, authoritative and conducive to further research. An encyclopedia would draw together the strands of research surveyed in this report; its planning and preparation would alert scholars to the needless duplication of work which appears to be imminent in the field of Irish studies (at least three archival projects in Dublin and Cork, for example, would surely benefit from a merging of resources); the undertaking of so large a project might well force an examination of the need for coherent methodologies, and folklorists, collectors archivists and ethnomusicologists who presently work inde- pendently of each other might assess the extent to which work could profitably be shared or increased.

More immediately, Irish Academic Press has undertaken (subject to funding) to publish a volume of essays which is designed to offer a conspectus of musicology in Ireland. Given that the field is a small one, the publication of such a volume is timely if not urgent. The work (achieved and in progress) surveyed in this report strongly suggests that the contribution of musicology to the history of ideas in Ireland ought to be made available for scrutiny. Recent publications such as Richard Kearney's The Irish Mind (Dublin 1985) show that scholars in the humanities have been particularly concerned to query the achievement of literary, philosophic, critical and other aspects of Irish culture. Music, however, is conspicuous by its general absence from these debates. To propose a journal of musicology in Ireland would not be justified by the size and present scope of the field, but to publish an occasional volume of Irish Musical Studies (a working title) would help to determine the progress of musical study in Ireland and "showcase" the work of musicologists for the benefit of interdisciplinary information and assimilation.

Ireland is inevitably influenced by the dominant trends of Anglo-American scholarship in the humanities. Reports on British musicology in this journal between 1980 and 1986 showed that the primary focus of the discipline in its first phase was a positivistic one. Joseph Kerman, in his compelling and authoritative survey of the whole discipline (Musicology, London 1985) also identified the accumulation of material in dictionaries, in source studies, above all, perhaps, in critical editions, as the principal business of musicology in its first maturity. Nevertheless, as Kerman argued, the move to a second phase of criticism and interpretation of this vast accumulation was (and is) vital to the regeneration of musical thought. However complex this issue (particularly with regard to the polarisation of analysis versus criticism in many quarters), it is clear that the first half of the 1980s has seen a




rapid growth of interest in this second phase in Britain. Such "trophies of

positivism" (Kerman's phrase) as The New Grove have not been the last word. It seems, on the contrary, that accumulation in musicology leads to analysis and to contextual interpretation.

Musicology in Ireland is still in its positivistic phase. If the picture of new research described in section IV. above is even moderately reliable, there are major areas of enquiry, notably in the history of 19th-century music and in analysis, where a significant showing has yet to be made. That being understood, there is no reason to suppose that the pursuit of musicology in Ireland cannot strengthen and develop, provided, of course, that we recognize that it is a discipline which depends on serious financial support. The huge corpus of edited music and scholarship which characterises musicology in the 1980s needs to be available to scholars and students in Ireland, and in this respect the r1le of the libraries is a fundamental one. The

comparatively recent appointment of specialists in music literature to the libraries of

University College, Dublin and Trinity College, for example, has resulted already in the provision of a reasonable resource for musicological research and education in Dublin. Nevertheless, there is not much to suggest that the tremendous (perhaps crucial) advantage of a close liaison between university music department and

library has been thoroughly explored as yet in most parts of the country. The impact of musicology on music education in Ireland is difficult to assess. Rather

than invidiously criticise those who prefer not to pursue the possibility of change, it is perhaps more useful in this report to acknowledge change where it has taken

place. While it would be wrong to suggest that the r61e of university departments in Ireland has followed precisely the structure and pattern described by David Fallows in 1980 (vol. 52, p. 55 of this journal), it is fair to say that the prominence of

compositional technique over music history and literature still obtains in Ireland. That prominence has lessened considerably, however, in recent years. I have selected two recent innovations to illustrate this fact: a four year Bachelor of Music

programme in University College, Cork (from October"1987) and a Bachelor of Music in Education programme offered jointly by the Dublin Institute of Tech-

nology (College of Music), the Royal Irish Academy of Music and Trinity College, Dublin. Both degrees would appear to mark an important advance in Irish musical education.

The courses in ethnomusicology, history, analysis, editorial techniques, style- criticism and performance practice which distinguish the Cork programme clearly

depend upon the co-ordination of specialists in these areas whose own research interests have determined the profile of the degree. This structure differs fundamen-

tally from the older (British-derived) model of a single programme envisioned by one individual and implemented by colleagues. If there are disadvantages in the loss

of uniformity which is entailed in the Cork degree-structure, there are surely many more advantages in the diversity and authority of specialization which it offers. Put

plainly, the structure of such new programmes is governed by the particular strengths of the department in question, and not by the abstract, notional authority of a "universal" B. Mus. degree.




In a different but related manner, the Dublin B. Mus. Ed. degree (which is distinct from the internal Bachelor's degree offered by the School of Music in Trinity) is specifically structured with the demands and needs of second-level school teaching in view. It, too, is structured by a team of specialists, but the emphasis here is not primarily musicological but educational, as it clearly should be. Both of these programmes (especially the Cork degree, in terms of this report) reflect an exciting and important departure from established trends in Irish musical education. The

r1le of musicology in this departure has been seminal. If the logical progression from these developments appears to be the recognition of musicology as a discipline in its own right, as a specialization to take its place alongside composition, analysis and education in Irish institutes of higher learning, it will survive to a second phase, as it has done elsewhere.



Musicology in Ireland

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