Andrea Palandri is originally from Venice in Italy and has been living in Ireland since 2014. He started to take a keen interest in the music of Sliabh Luachra, and in particular in the fiddle music of Pádraig O’Keeffe, Denis Murphy and Paddy Cronin in his late teens. He has been looking through O’Keeffe manuscripts and studying the bowing techniques found therein for several years now. He is particularly interested in the distinctive bowing patterns taught in O’Keeffe’s notation, in which much of the rhythm and detail of this unique regional style is hardcoded. These manuscripts are an incredible resource for any fiddle player who wishes to study the techniques taught by O’Keeffe to his students, effectively allowing us to carefully retrace the steps taken by some of the most extraordinary musicians ever to emerge from this region.
Andrea choose to focus on 21 tunes from various O’Keeffe manuscripts, 11 jigs, 2 hornpipes, 2 polkas, 2 slides and 4 reels. Each of these tunes was recorded individually and made available on the ITMA site with a full suite of learning resources.
Links to all 21 tunes can be found in this collection.
21 tunes chosen by Andrea Palandri and made available as interactive scores
He also recorded a number of the tunes in sets. Note in the recordings below the sets were recorded in a different key to the individual tunes.
Untitled [tune no. 28], polka from O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor MS A
Untitled [tune no. 85], polka from O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor MS E
Untitled [The ladies cup of tea] [tune no. 30], reel from Pádraig O’Keeffe ITMA-Collins manuscripts, book 2: fiddle.
Untitled [Murphy’s] [tune no. 59], reel from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-Miscellanous Manuscripts
Untitled [tune no. 7], jig from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor Manuscript C
Untitled [tune no. 8], jig from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor Manuscript C
Untitled [tune no. 9], jig from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor Manuscript C
Untitled [tune no. 104], slide from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor Manuscript E
Untitled [tune no. 27], slide from Pádraig O’Keeffe Mac Aoidh-O’Connor Manuscript A
Videos, like those above, were recorded for each of the 21 tunes chosen by Andrea. Each tune also has an interactive score synced with the video and a downloadable PDF of the staff notation.
ITMA are delighted to make available a digital edition of Micheal Tubridy’s A selection of Irish traditional step dances (2018).
The steps in this book come from people who learned their dancing in the old school, in the early part of the 20th century, and this form is generally described as Traditional Irish Step Dancing. It is a form of dancing which is not really competition orientated, even though the odd competition is held, so there is no need for a stiff body posture. The arms may hang loosely by the side, the body be held in its natural upright position, and the legs should always be bent slightly at the knees, to give a bounce or spring or easy style to the step.
Michael Tubridy, from the introduction to the 2nd edition
In 1998 Brooks Academy published the first edition of this book, which used a unique notation system devised by Michael to describe step dances which he and his wife Céline had learned from dance masters Dan Furey (1910−1994) and James Keane (1917−2000). Both men, from Labasheeda, Co Clare, perpetuated an older style of traditional step dancing. Michael and Céline brought this local tradition to another generation through teaching in Ireland and abroad. In 2007 they released an instructional DVD Step Dancing with Céline and Michael Tubridy. In 2018 Micheal published a second edition of the book and another DVD, with a further 9 dances.
Michael Tubridy has generously allowed ITMA to publish the DVD recordings and his notation, and this page brings together the learning tools for all 18 dances from the book.
For each dance there is a video recording at normal dance tempo first, followed by a performance at a slower tempo for learning purposes. Individual steps are isolated and slowed to highlight certain phrases of the dance. Voice-over instructions can be heard from Michael and Céline throughout the videos. Links to the individual steps are available when viewed on the ITMA YouTube channel.
Each dance also has a PDF download of the steps in notation, as it appeared in the printed book. A PDF download of the full book is also available.
ITMA would like to thank Michael Tubridy, and his late wife Céline, for permission to publish this material on its website.
Jerry O’Brien’s Accordion Instructor for the 10-Key and 19-Key Irish-Style Accordion: Containing a Selection of Irish Jigs, Reels, Hornpipes, Polkas, Highland Flings and Waltzes / Arranged for Accordion, Violin, Flute, Bagpipes and Banjo by Jerry O’Brien. Roxbury, Massachusetts: E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, 1949
Accordion player Jerry O’Brien, a native of Kinsale, Co Cork, came to Boston in 1921, and as accordionist with the recording group O’Leary’s Irish Minstrels was a leading exponent and teacher of Irish music in the city. In 1928 he also made one solo 78 rpm recording for the Columbia company of New York before the Great Depression of 1929 brought most Irish-American recording to a halt. In a period of rising prosperity after the Second World War he began recording solo again, this time for the Irish-American Copley label of Boston, and also in duet with a young local star pupil Joe Derrane. The Copley label had been set up in 1948 by Justus O’Byrne DeWitt, son of an Ellen O’Byrne DeWitt who had been involved in the recording industry in New York since 1916. O’Brien also designed for the company the O’Byrne DeWitt Irish Professional Accordion.
The success of O’Brien and Derrane’s Copley recordings gave rise to two Boston book publications by E. O’Byrne DeWitt’s Sons, both compiled by Jerry O’Brien and with a repertory heavily influenced by gramophone records. The first was this collection, his accordion tutor and tune book of 1949, and for which James Morrison’s 1931 tutor for the Globe accordion (see below), an instrument which O’Brien had played, was doubtless an exemplar. O’Brien’s second publication was an Irish tune book of 1952 and is also available below.
This tutor is primarily for the two-row accordion in D and C sharp, i.e., one of the two ‘press-and-draw’ systems used by accordion players in the Irish tradition. The system taught here (sometimes known among players as the ‘outside-in’ system) is now virtually obsolete, but it is still played by a very loyal minority of players of the Irish accordion. Prominent current players include Joe Derrane of Boston, whose music is featured in the book. The music and the musical ethos embodied in the tutor is, however, still very much alive in the Irish tradition today, thanks largely to its successful revival by the group De Danann in the 1980s.
These tunes were set from a copy of Jerry O’Brien’s tutor kindly donated to the Irish Traditional Music Archive in 1989 by accordion player Frank Murphy of Syracuse, New York.
Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 23 May 2013
The Meisel Simplified Method: How to Play the Globe Accordeon Irish Style. An Easy and Practical Method for Self-Instruction. Also Contains Selections of Irish Reels, Jigs, Hornpipes, Long Dances, Airs, Ballads and Other Popular Music / arranged by James C. Morrison. New York: C. Meisel Inc., 1931
By the 1920s, melodeons and accordions had become well established in Irish traditional music, especially in Irish America where they were popular band instruments. Agents for Globe accordions in particular were successfully targeting Irish players in the United States by the mid-1920s with a variety of amateur and professional instruments, and using the prominent Cork-Boston accordion player Jerry O’Brien in advertising campaigns. At the end of the decade New York resident James C. Morrison of Riverstown, Co Sligo, well known in the city on stage, record and radio, was commissioned to write a tutor for the Globe accordion. ‘Professor’ Morrison (1893–1947) was primarily famous as a fiddle player, but he also sold, played and taught the accordion, among other instruments. He included in the tutor a selection of tunes suitable for beginners, reproduced on the left, from the popular contemporary repertory, most of which had been published on Irish commercial recordings in New York.
The diatonic Globe accordion for which Morrison wrote the tutor would today be described as a ten-key melodeon. Since he left no recordings as an accordion or melodeon player, we have no idea of his proficiency on the instrument, but he is known to have had close associations with noted players of the instrument of his day, including the melodeon player P.J. Conlon and the accordionist Tom Carmody, with both of whom he recorded. While the ten-key melodeon has great expressive possibilities, particularly for dance music, it is quite limited in musical compass in comparison to other instruments in the Irish tradition. Judging from his music scores, Morrison had a well-grounded understanding of the strengths and limitations of the instrument. He modifies tunes where necessary to fit them to the compass of the instrument, and carefully tailors each element of the scores to its characteristics.
A Globe accordion played by James Morrison in New York has recently been donated to the James Morrison Music Festival in his native Riverstown: see here. For a biography of Morrison by Harry Bradshaw and 30 remastered tracks of his music, see the double audio cassette James Morrison: The Professor (Viva Voce 001, Dublin, 1989). Morrison’s tutor and tune book of 1931 was doubtless an exemplar for an accordion tutor and tune book of 1949 by Jerry O’Brien in Boston (see here).
The Irish Traditional Music Archive has a photocopy of Morrison’s accordion tutor, kindly donated to it by Hugh E. O’Rourke of New York, from which these tunes were set. It would always welcome a donation of the original tutor, or a loan of it for digital scanning.
Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 23 May 2013
An explosion occurred in the publishing of cheap printed teach-yourself tutors for all kinds of musical instruments in the late 19th century in Western Europe and the United States of America, a kind of publishing that had its roots in the 18th century and even earlier and continues to the present.
Typically these printed tutors first presented the rudiments of staff notation (and sometimes tablature), followed by instrument-specific information, graded scales and exercises, advice, tips, etc., and music. Some incorporated a systematic programme of teaching, some were really tune-books prefaced with some starter-level information.
Tutors of this kind were known in Ireland from at least the early 18th century, but they were normally directed at instruments of classical and popular music, and at most contained a few hackneyed Irish traditional tunes. Tutors directed at players of Irish traditional music have been produced mainly in the 20th century, often outside Ireland, and as well as printed publications have included audio, video and online tutorials.
Even earlier however were such tutorial aids as the treatise on the uilleann pipes included in O’Farrell’s Collection of National Irish Music for the Union Pipes (London, 1804) and the opening sections of the book presented here and marked for the Irish fiddle, Batt Scanlon’s The Violin Made Easy and Attractive… Gaelic Collection of Irish Airs, Jigs, Reels, Hornpipes, Marches, etc. (San Francisco, 1923, ITMA copy imperfect).
Batt (Bartholomew?) Scanlon was a Co Kerry music teacher who operated the Scanlon School of Music in downtown San Francisco in the 1920s. He had been a fiddle pupil in Ireland of a noted blind travelling fiddle teacher George Whelan, who had flourished around the 1880s, and he passes on some of his tunes in this volume. Although Carl G. Hardebeck, the blind London-born pianist and organist who specialised in the arrangement of Irish music, states in his preface to Scanlon’s book that Whelan was born in Co Clare and taught in North Kerry, Clare sources state that he taught in Clare but was from Kerry.
Hardly by accident, Scanlon’s book was published in the opening years of the new Irish Free State. It seemed to have been influenced by a Gaelic League spirit and by the publications of his fellow-Munsterman Capt Francis O’Neill of Chicago. Scanlon dedicates the volume to another Irish activist, the famous San Francisco-based priest Rev. Peter C. Yorke.
With thanks to book donor Dr Jimmy O’Brien Moran of Waterford. Do you have a perfect copy of this tutor, or do you have similar Irish music, song or dance tutors? The Archive would welcome their donation or the opportunity to copy them. Readers in California, and in San Francisco in particular, may be able to find further information on Batt Scanlon in local sources; we would also welcome any such information.
Nicholas Carolan, Grace Toland & Maeve Gebruers, 1 April 2010
The book Dances of Donegal Collected by Grace Orpen, published in London in 1931, is the first published collection of Irish traditional dances from one locality, as distinct from earlier general collections that included dances from different regions.
It is essentially a tutor for couple and group dances in the then living tradition, and it provides music for each dance along with dance notation and verbal description and instruction. The music is arranged for piano but some of the melodies were originally played on fiddle and concertina. Like some other Irish dance collections of the period, it has connections with a contemporary interest in exercise and physical education.
Grace Orpen (1905–66), the compiler and editor of the collection, was a member of a family from Carrickmines, Co Dublin, which regularly spent summer holidays in the Dunfanaghy area of Co Donegal. Her book is still in copyright and is reproduced here with the generous permission of the Somerville-Large family, who are the copyright holders. Her son Bill Somerville-Large has kindly provided this further information on Grace Orpen and the background to her book.
Grace Anne Orpen (1905–66) was born in Carrickmines, Co Dublin and was the second daughter of Charles St George Orpen and Cherry Darley.
The Orpen family spent regular summer holidays in Donegal from 1915 to 1939, mostly in the Dunfanaghy area, where they rented Marble Hill from 1917 to 1927. In Marble Hill they regularly held ‘kitchen dances’, to which neighbours from the surrounding area would come. Among them was David McElhinney whose son, also David, played the fiddle. David’s eldest daughter, Jenny, was a great dancer and remembered dancing all night and putting her head under the pump before going to work at Marble Hill the next morning.
Jenny married Harry Stewart, a farmer, who was killed in a farm accident. Jenny set up a guesthouse to which the Orpens went from 1927 to 1938. There were no more kitchen dances, but Grace would hum a tune and ask Jenny to name it. She had all the names. “And I’ll lult [sic] it for you”, she would say. She would even dance to her own lilting.
Grace and her cousin Mary (Bunny) Orpen went to Donegal and wrote down Jenny’s airs. They were helped with the harmonisation of the airs by Herbert Exshaw, organist of Stillorgan Church of Ireland church, who also used to spend holidays with the Orpen family in Donegal.
Grace trained as a PE teacher in Bedford College of Physical Education and worked in England for a while before getting the job as PE teacher in Alexandra College, Dublin. In 1931 and 1932 the Ling Society asked Grace to teach Irish dancing at their Summer School in London, during a week of folk dancing.
Grace’s book, Dances of Donegal, was on sale during her two years at the Irish Countrywoman’s Association Summer School, 1931–32. It was subsequently on sale at the Country Shop, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, which acted as an outlet for the market of the products of Irish Craftworkers. Dances of Donegal sold out and was not reprinted.
Grace married Philip (Paddy) Somerville-Large in 1933 and was mother of Bill Somerville-Large. She died in 1966.
The above information has been contributed to the Irish Traditional Music Archive by Bill Somerville-Large, following conversations between Grace’s sister, Kathleen Delap, and their brother-in-law, Chalmers (Terry) Trench.
ITMA would welcome the donation of other materials of this kind which are not yet in its collections (check our catalogues here), or of their loan for copying.
Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 June 2009
In 1914, the second edition of A Handbook of Irish Dances: with an Essay on their Origin and History, available here, was published in Dublin by M.H. Gill and Son. As with the first edition published in 1902, the dance manual gives instruction for 26 figure dances, taken mostly from the teaching of the London-based Kerry dance master Patrick Reidy, and Tadhg Sheáin Ó Súilleabháin from Glenbeigh, Co Kerry. The descriptions of these dances and their publication were the work of two prominent members of the Gaelic League of London: James George O’Keeffe (1865–1937) and Arthur Patrick O’Brien (1872–1949).
Art was born in London to a prosperous and established family, his father John Francis O’Brien being a native of Cork. He studied civil and electrical engineering and after working abroad returned to London in c. 1899. Late-Victorian London was the home of a variety of Irish cultural revivalist organisations such as the Southwark Irish Literary Club (founded 1883), the Irish Literary Society (1892), the Irish Texts Society (1896) and the Gaelic League of London (1896). Art O’Brien joined the Gaelic League of London in 1899, and gaelicised his name to Art Ó Briain… ‘thenceforth becoming a regular attendant at the classes and other gatherings’. At such gatherings, Art would have met one of the London League’s exhibition dancers Seamus O’Keeffe (James George O’Keeffe). A native of Kanturk, Co Cork, Seamus was steeped in the language, literature and dance of his native area. He was educated in Blackrock College, Dublin, and moved to London in 1885 to work as a civil servant in the War Office. As a member of the Irish Literary Society and the Gaelic League of London, he taught Irish-language classes. With the League, he and Kathleen O’Brien of Limerick taught step dancing classes in Madame Geree’s Ballet Dance Parlours in Leicester Square, and with Liam O’Looney of Cork performed exhibition dances. London-based dance master Patrick Reidy introduced a repertory of group dances or ‘ceili’ dances such as ‘The Siege of Ennis’ and ‘The Walls of Limerick’ which were easier to learn. O’Keeffe and O’Brien visited Kerry following the Ballyvourney Feis in 1899 to add to their social dances and meet an increased demand for such dances. The role of the Gaelic League of London in introducing the concept of Irish ceili dancing is documented in the article ‘The Beginnings of Ceili Dancing: London in the 1890s’ available here. The popularity of such social dancing within the Gaelic League movement may well have provided the impetus to share and publish a description of the dances in 1902.
Art O’Brien was to play a substantial role in nationalist politics following the outbreak of the First World War as a member of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in London, and in founding the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain (1920–21). His political career was however marred by financial controversy and he removed himself from political life until 1933, but remained President of the Gaelic League of London until 1935. Under Sean T. O’Kelly he was appointed Irish Minister to France and Belgium 1935–1938. He died in Dublin in 1949.
James George O’Keeffe was a respected and prolific editor of Irish-language texts as a member of the Irish Texts Society and Scoil Ard-Léinn na Gaeilge, publishing for example Táin Bó Cuailgne from the Yellow Book of Lecan with John Strachan and Buile Suibhne. In 1914 he was appointed a financial advisor for the British War Office in the United States and was awarded an OBE. in 1918. He died in Richmond, Surrey in 1937.
The second edition of the Handbook which we have digitised and made available on the ITMA site does differ from the 1902 edition but not in terms of the basic dance instructions. Of note also in the 1914 publishing is the use of Ireland’s first national trade mark ‘Déanta in Eireann’, reflective of the cultural and political nationalism of the period. The symbol was introduced in 1906.
ITMA thanks the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin Ireland for permission to upload the article by Art Ó Briain, ‘Gaedhil thar Sáile: Some Notes on the Gaelic League of London’ in The Capuchin Annual (1944), pp. 116–126, and also thanks Dr Brian Kirby, Provincial Archivist of the Irish Capuchins, for his help.
Grace Toland & Maeve Gebruers, 1 April 2016
A handbook of Irish dances / by J. G. O’Keeffe & Art O’Brien
Gaedhil thar sáile : some notes on the history of the Gaelic League of London / Art Ó Bríain
To celebrate Lá Fhéile Bríde/St Brigid’s Day 2022, the Irish Traditional Music Archive, in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs, commissioned three traditional artists to compose new works inspired by lore relating to Brigid: Louise Mulcahy (uilleann piper and flute player); Síle Denvir (harper and sean-nós singer), and Caitlín Nic Gabhann (concertina player and dancer).
When the Department of Foreign Affairs approached ITMA about a collaboration, we were very excited at the prospects of connecting talented female artists with material relating to Brigid as a source of inspiration. It was decided to commission three new works that would see a new song, a new melody and a new dance created especially for St. Brigid’s Day 2022.
The three commissioned artists spent time in ITMA’s library researching music, history and folklore relating to Brigid. They also visited places associated with the saint in Kildare. Once sufficient creative impetus was found, they set about composing their new works.
The works were premiered on 1 February 2022 as part of To be Irish on St Brigid’s Day, an online celebration of St Brigid and the lives and legacies of women at home and abroad.
Notation and an interactive learning score for all three compositions is now available on the ITMA website, along with notes from each of the performers regarding their inspiration behind the compositions. Caitlín Nic Gabhann also provides an instructional video on the steps for her new dance.
Síle Denvir was inspired by the traditions and customs associated with the Eve of Brighid’s day in west Galway and Connemara to compose “Seo í isteach mo Bhrídeog’, a new melody and adaptation of a traditional rhyme or prayer.
Seo í isteach mo Bhrídeog,
Mo Bhrídeog chun a’ tí,
Mo Bhrídeog álainn gléasta,
In éadach agus tuí,
Tabhair pingin don Bhrídeog
‘S beidh sí buíoch díobh.
Here comes my Brídeog,
My Brídeog into the house,
My brídeog dressed beautifully,
In cloth and straw,
Give the Brídeog a penny,
And she will be grateful to you.
Learn & Read: Interactive score of “Seo í isteach mo Bhrídeog” with playback, ABC notation and more
Concertina player and dancer Caitlín Nic Gabhann from Ashbourne, Co. Meath, decided that St Brigid should have a tune and a dance in her honour, just like St Patrick!
“The name Brigid or Bríd is ‘all around us’ in Irish life. Both my grandmothers were Brigid and Biddy and my own name is Caitlín-Bríd. My grandmother came from St Brigid’s Well, at Liscannor in Co. Clare and my first dancing lessons were at Kilbride hall in Co. Meath.
There is a tune and dance called ‘St Patrick’s Day’ that is known all over the world, so for St. Brigid’s Day this year, I thought it was time she got a tune and a dance of her own.
When trying to decide on what type of tune to compose for St.Brigid’s Day, I settled on a slip-jig for a couple of reasons. It’s traditionally a feminine dance and I also felt that the slip-jig suited the feast of St Brigid – the first day of spring.
Legend has it that Brigid asked the King of Leinster for some land in Kildare so that she could build a monastery. When he declined, she didn’t give up. She later returned and asked him if he’d give her the land that her cloak would cover. He laughed and said he would! So four of her sisters took a corner each of the cloak and walked in opposite directions – north, south, east and west. As they walked the cloak spread and grew and stretched across many acres. And this is where she built her monastery, one of the first in Ireland.
The tune I wrote has four parts, representing the St Brigid’s Cross, and also the four corners of her cloak stretching out so far and wide. The dance is a percussive slip-jig, which is unusual, as the slip-jig is usually a light-shoe dance, but I wanted it to represent Brigid’s strength and the ground she broke in her time.
I called the tune and the dance ‘St Brigid’s Day'”.
Learn & Read: Interactive score of St Brigid’s Day slip jig
Learn to dance St Brigid’s Day with this instructional video created by Caitlín Nic Gabhann
Uilleann piper/flute player Louise Mulcahy’s new composition, Port Naomh Bríd/St Brigid’s Jig, celebrates St Brigid, her legacy and her important connection with nature and the environment.
Throughout my research at the Irish Traditional Music Archive, I discovered some charming legends and folklore connecting St. Brigid to nature. St. Brigid is synonymous with the spring season, a time of renewal, new life, growth and positivity. It is the time of year when we celebrate new beginnings and new life on earth. This jig seeks to encapsulate the feelings of hope and positivity whilst celebrating the beauty of nature and new life. The jig is performed on the uilleann pipes which have a range of sonic possibilities. The instrument allows for the deep connection with the sounds of nature and these possibilities are explored in the tune.
The uilleann pipes which Louise is playing were once owned by the master piper Liam O’Flynn and were entrusted to her by Na Píobairí Uilleann.
Learn and Read: Interactive Score of St Brigid’s Day / Port Naomh Bríd
For more events and projects celebrating St Brigid’s Day: Celebrating the Creativity of Women / Lá Fhéile Bríde: Ag Ceiliúradh Cruthaitheachta na mBan, visit https://tobeirish.ie
