A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, Containing a Variety of Admired Airs Never Before Published, and also the Compositions of Conolan and Carolan; Collected from the Harpers &c. in the Different Provinces of Ireland, and Adapted for the Piano-Forte, with a Prefatory Introduction by Edward Bunting. Vol. 1. Price 10s.6d. Printed & Sold by Preston & Son at their Wholesale Warehouses 97 Strand. [London: 1797]

As is well known, Edward Bunting’s A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music of 1797 had its origins in a commission given to a young Armagh-born classical organist and pianist Edward Bunting (1773–1843), by the organisers of the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, to notate and preserve the music of the last of the professional Irish harpers. Bunting made this task his lifework and published two further similar volumes in 1809 and 1840.

The 66 interactive music scores presented here are from the original undated edition of the Collection produced in London in 1797 (and later) by the firm of Preston and Son. A facsimile of this edition, with contextual notes, is also available below.

Nicholas Carolan, BB, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 13 October 2015

Postscript

The generally accepted date of publication for this undated volume has long been 1796, although there have been some indications that it may have been published in 1797. The former is the date that Bunting himself retrospectively assigned to it in his manuscripts and in his final publication, The Ancient Music of Ireland Arranged for the Piano Forte (Dublin: 1840). It has therefore been the date hitherto accepted by ITMA. However, recently published research by Dr Peter Downey, former head of music at St Mary’s University College, Belfast, has conclusively shown that 1797 was the year in which the volume as known was actually first published.>

The detailed primary evidence for this conclusion is contained in Dr Downey’s book Edward Bunting and the Ancient Irish Music: The Publication History of A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music… Adapted for the Piano-Forte (London: Preston & Son) (Lisburn: 2017; ISBN 978 0 9955858 2 9; 71 pp.) which builds both on newly uncovered and well-known information sources. The book also traces the publication history of Bunting’s second volume, A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Arranged for the Piano-Forte…, first published in London in 1809.

Briefly, the confusion between the two dates of 1796 and 1797 has been shown to have arisen from the actions of Bunting himself. In May 1796 he registered with Stationers’ Hall in London 28 engraved tunes of an unpublished draft version of what finally became the 66 published tunes of A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music… He registered the published volume in Stationers’ Hall in October 1797, but subsequently referred to it himself as having been published in 1796.

A copy of Edward Bunting and the Ancient Irish Music: The Publication History of A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music… Adapted for the Piano-Forte (London: Preston & Son), kindly donated by Dr Downey, is now available for consultation in ITMA.

Nicholas Carolan, 30 November 2017

A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Arranged for the Piano Forte; Some of the Most Admired Melodies are Adapted for the Voice, to Poetry Chiefly Translated from the Original Irish Songs, by Thomas Campbell Esq. and Other Eminent Poets: to Which is Prefixed a Historical & Critical Dissertation on the Egyptian, British and Irish Harp, by Edward Bunting. Vol. 1st. Price £1.6.0. London, Printed & Sold for the Editor by Clementi & Compy. No. 26 Cheapside, and All Other Music Sellers in the United Kingdom.

In 1809, some twelve years after his first published volume of ‘ancient’ Irish music appeared, Edward Bunting published a second similar volume harmonised for the piano, again in London. Of the 77 melodies in this second collection, 13 are repeated from the 1797 collection.

A facsimile of this edition, with contextual notes, is available below.

Nicholas Carolan, Maeve Gebruers, Sadhbh Caverly, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 12 November 2015

[Amended December 2017]

A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, Arranged for the Piano Forte; Some of the Most Admired Melodies are Adapted for the Voice, to Poetry Chiefly Translated from the Original Irish Songs, by Thomas Campbell Esq. and Other Eminent Poets: to Which is Prefixed a Historical & Critical Dissertation on the Egyptian, British and Irish Harp, by Edward Bunting. Vol. 1st. Price £1.6.0. London, Printed & Sold for the Editor by Clementi & Compy. No. 26 Cheapside, and All Other Music Sellers in the United Kingdom.

In 1809, some twelve years after his first published volume of ‘ancient’ Irish music appeared, Edward Bunting, now in his mid-thirties and still living in Belfast, published a second similar volume harmonised for the piano, again in London. Most of its melodies had also been collected by him from the vanishing race of professional harpers, some of whom he had sought out across the north of Ireland in the years following the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792. Other melodies he had notated from Irish-language singers. Of the 77 melodies in this second collection, 13 are repeated from the 1797 collection.

A new departure in this volume is the inclusion of English-language verses, by a variety of writers, set to 20 of the melodies. Most are based on prose translations from the Irish. This innovation was an attempt by Bunting to emulate the recent 1808 successes of Thomas Moore in setting his original verses to traditional airs in his Irish Melodies series (Moore would go on to use a further 17 Bunting melodies from this 1809 collection). Not being an Irish speaker, Bunting employed agents to collect the Irish words of the songs with a view to publishing them, but in the event, for a variety of reasons, he did not do so. The brief historical notes on the Irish harp in his first volume are greatly expanded in this, with the inclusion of harp descriptions and of technical terms used by the harpers. Plates of illustrations are added, and the Irish harp is put into an international context of British harps and harps of ancient civilisations. The music was engraved by an R.T. Skarratt, and the volume was printed by a T. Davison, Whitefriars, London. In spite of the ‘Vol. 1’ inscription on the title page, no second volume appeared under this title. At the time of his death Bunting was working on a revised edition of the volume, but this was never completed.

This second Bunting publication was musically well received and has been influential, but it was not commercially successful. It is said that Bunting sold on the copyright to the firm of Clementi which had produced it, and which republished it in London in 1811 (and possibly in 1819). An 1836 reprint by the London firm of Willis & Co. has also been recorded. Later reprints were published in 1969, 1981 and 2002 by Walton’s Piano and Musical Instrument Galleries in Dublin, and in 2012 by the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. An extensively annotated edition of the music of the volume utilising Bunting’s surviving music manuscripts, with song texts etc., was made by Donal O’Sullivan and A. Martin Freeman and published as vols XXVI–XXIX of the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society (1932–39). The edition was reprinted in 1967 by the London firm of Wm. Dawson & Sons.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive facsimile copy presented here (along with its 77 related interactive music scores) is of a first edition once owned by the Scottish musician and composer, and editor of Irish music, Alfred Moffat (1863–1950). The caption on the harp frontispiece is unclear in this copy; it reads ‘Ancient Irish Harp, in the possession of Noah Dalway Esq./ Bellahill, near Carrickfergus./ London. Published Nov. 1809 by E. Bunting’.

Nicholas Carolan, Maeve Gebruers, Seán Caverly, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 12 November 2015

[Amended December 2017]

A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music, Containing a Variety of Admired Airs Never Before Published, and also the Compositions of Conolan and Carolan; Collected from the Harpers &c. in the Different Provinces of Ireland, and Adapted for the Piano-Forte, with a Prefatory Introduction by Edward Bunting. Vol. 1. Price 10s. 6d. London, Printed & Sold by Preston & Son, at their Wholesale Warehouses 97 Strand. [n.d.]

Edward Bunting’s A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music of 1797 has occupied a highly influential position in the history of Irish traditional music. Although it is by no means the earliest such collection, its focus on the then disappearing centuries-old music of the Irish professional harpers resonated with the romantic sensibilities of its time, and in the years since its publication it has been extensively mined by arrangers, publishers and performers. Its influence continues in print, on sound recordings and on the Internet.

As is well known, the collection had its origins in a commission given to a young Armagh-born classical organist and pianist Edward Bunting (1773–1843), by the organisers of the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792, to notate and preserve the instrumental and vocal music of the Irish harpers. Bunting made this task his lifework and published two further similar volumes: A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (1809) and The Ancient Music of Ireland (1840). More of the music and song that he gathered remains unpublished in his surviving manuscripts.

The volume presented here (along with its 66 related interactive music scores) is the original undated edition of the Collection, edited by Bunting when he was in his early twenties, and produced in London in 1797 (and later) by the firm of Preston and Son. The motivation and finances for its publication came from the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge (forerunner of the present Linen Hall Library, Belfast), which included many of the Harp Festival organisers and would nowadays be regarded as its publisher. Bunting’s preface lays stress on the antiquity of the music of the harpers and the importance of rescuing the music and its lore from oblivion. The music was drawn by engraver surnamed Neele. In spite of the ‘Vol. 1’ inscription on the title page, no second volume appeared under this title. Reference found elsewhere to music published by Bunting about 1790 can be disregarded. At the time of his death Bunting was working on a revised edition of the volume, but this was never completed.

The profits from the original publication were allocated to Bunting by the Society, but as early as 1797 there were rumours of a pirated edition being prepared in Dublin. In the event several such editions, undated, appeared in the following years from the Dublin firms of Hime, Gough, and W. Power, and from the London firm of W. Power & J. Power. An undated ‘new edition’ was issued in Dublin by J. Willis. Legitimate reprints were published in 1969, 1981 and 2002 by Walton’s Piano and Musical Instrument Galleries in Dublin, in 1996 by the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, and in 2011 by ECCO Print Editions in Michigan. An extensively annotated edition of the music of the volume utilising Bunting’s surviving music manuscripts, with song texts etc., was made by Donal O’Sullivan and A. Martin Freeman and published as vols XXII–XXV of the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society (1927–30). The edition was reprinted in 1967 by the London firm of Wm. Dawson & Sons.

Crucial in spreading the melodies published by Edward Bunting worldwide over the last two centuries has been their early adaptation by the Dublin poet Thomas Moore for the song lyrics of his highly successful Irish Melodies series (1808–1834). In all Moore took 21 airs from the 66 of this first Bunting collection.

With thanks to Brigitte Bark for the initial setting of the interactive music scores. The facsimile copy of the book presented here is of an original edition carrying Bunting’s autograph which was donated to ITMA by Leslie Shepard.

Nicholas Carolan, Maeve Gebruers, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 13 October 2015

Postscript

Research by Dr Peter Downey, published in 2017, has established that 1797 was the date of publication of this volume, and not 1796, as has been generally thought. See here for details.

Nicholas Carolan, 30 November 2017

By the end of the eighteenth century, harping in Ireland was at a very low ebb and the ancient tradition on the brink of collapse. Edward Bunting (1773–1843) – music collector, publisher, editor, organist – is credited with saving the music of the Irish harp for posterity at a time when it was in danger of permanent loss. An Armagh born organist who was employed to notate the music played at the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival. There he lived with the McCracken family and associated with many of the members of the United Irish Society who had initiated the event. Bunting was so taken by the group of ageing harpers at the festival that he subsequently chose to devote a large proportion of his time to the collection and publication of Irish music. He toured Mayo in 1792 with Richard Kirwan, founder of the Royal Irish Academy, collecting a number of airs. In the same year he also gathered material in the counties Derry and Tyrone, visiting the harper Denis Hempson at his home in Magilligan. Bunting met Arthur O’Neill in Newry late in 1792 and visited Denis Hempson and Dónal Black in 1795 or 1796. His first publication appeared in 1796 with sixty-six tunes. ‘fieldwork’.

Bunting was the first Irish collector that we know of to gather music from musicians ‘in the field’. He also had some impressive ideas about publication – planning to print Irish texts with accompanying tunes and English translations. To that end Patrick Lynch, an Irish scholar, accompanied him on his 1802 tour of Connacht. Bunting later employed James Cody to collect both music and texts in Ulster. Bunting’s plans to include the Gaelic texts were not successful, however, as the 1809 publication contained seventy-seven airs, twenty of which were accompanied by English texts. arrangement Also, in making piano arrangements of tunes for publication Bunting provided versions of the tunes that lacked authenticity in relation to their original repertoire. He was aiming his publications at a particular market – the amateur musicians among the middle and upper classes. Certainly the printed music would have been of little use to the musically non-literate traditional musicians and harpers who were his sources.

After 1809 Bunting does not appear to have undertaken any major tour or collection. Most of his time was now devoted to arranging tunes he had already collected or that he received from correspondents. His final collection was published in 1840 and contained 151 tunes plus an elaborate introduction. Bunting wished to revise and re-edit his two earlier volumes, but, due to ill health, did not manage to do so. He is buried in Mount St Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

Source: Dictionary of Irish Biography  https://www.dib.ie/