Among the very first field recordings made of Irish traditional song were 13 ‘wax’ cylinder recordings created in 1905 in the Gaeltacht or Irish-speaking areas of An Rinn (Ring promontory) and Cill Ghobnait (KIlgobnet parish), Co Waterford, by Rev. Dr Richard Henebry (Risteárd de Hindeberg, 1863–1916), a Roman Catholic priest and an academic in Celtic studies. The cylinders preserved 14 songs sung in Irish (2 on one cylinder). Although the original recordings were destroyed, several copies of them survive. These are now relatively difficult to listen to because of their age and condition, but they have a great importance in enabling us to actually hear Irish-language traditional singers of more than a century ago. The 14 performances are presented here, along with a copy of a recording made by Henebry about the same time of hornpipes played by an uilleann piper, and with ancillary information and links provided below.
Richard Henebry was a traditional musician, a fiddle player and uilleann piper, born in 1863 to an Irish-speaking and musical farming family near Portlaw, Co Waterford. Ordained as a priest in Dublin in 1892, he served for some years in England before going to Germany to study for a doctorate in Irish dialect. He came into contact with cylinder recording technology while lecturing in the United States from 1898. On his return to Ireland in 1903 he published some of his music theories in a pamphlet Irish Music
In An Rinn and Cill Ghobnait in July 1905 Henebry recorded the 14 songs from six local singers. They were Mrs Margaret Costelloe from Baile na nGall, An Rinn; Walter de Poer or Power (a middle-aged man who had ‘never sung into a phonograph before’) from Cúl na Sméar, Cill Ghobnait or Cill na bhFraochán (Kilnafrehan); Martin Draper (about 11 years old and a ‘practised phonograph singer’) from Baile na nGall, An Rinn; Maighréad Ní Cheallaigh or Margaret Kelly also from Baile na nGall; Pádraig Ó Néill or Patrick O’Neill (about 12 years old and ‘quite accustomed to sing into the phonograph’) from Droichead na gCorrán, Heilbhic (Helvic) An Rinn; and Maighréad Ní Néill or Margaret O’Neill (aged between 9 and 10 and a sister ‘now in Boston, Mass.’ to Pádraig Ó Néill). The uilleann piper recorded was James Byrne, a musician from Trim, Co Meath, who was living in Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny, and it is possible that he was recorded before the singers. Byrne was a favourite piper of Henebry’s. He recorded him on other occasions and would bring him some years later to play for his students in University College Cork while all present shared a dozen bottles of stout.
Probably because of his contacts with Germany, Henebry was aware of the scientific work of recording and analysing ethnic music worldwide that was being carried out from 1900 in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv under the early ethnomusicologists Carl Stumf and Erich von Hornbostel. Wishing to have his 1905 song recordings copied and subjected to musical analysis in Berlin, he sent them to von Hornbostel in 1907 with payment for copies and a request for analysis. He inadvertently included a recording of James Byrne.
The work of copying involved making a copper negative mould or ‘galvano’ of the original ‘wax’ cylinder, which was destroyed in the process. Wax copies were then made from the galvano, which was itself sent in each case to Henebry along with copies of the cylinders and transcriptions of the melodies and a tonometric analysis of their pitches, made by von Hornbostel and a colleague Otto Abraham. One wax copy of each was retained in the Berlin archive (They remain there to the present, having in the interim been moved to Silesia during WW2, then to Lenigrad, then to East Germany, and finally back to their original home in the former West Germany).
Henebry became professor of Irish Language and Literature in University College Cork in 1909 and continued to develop his music theories until his death in Portlaw in 1916. His cylinder recordings and the documentation provided from Germany formed a basis for some of his theorising, although he may have further edited the German transcriptions. He left behind a manuscript on the subject, which drew on the 1905 cylinders, and this was edited and published by some of his Cork colleagues as A Handbook of Irish Music (Cork University Press, 1928). Copies of certain wax cylinders owned by Henebry remained in the College (They have recently been digitised with other UCC cylinders – see below).
Long after Richard Henebry’s death, in the 1960s, 14 copper galvanos, a cylinder phonograph, and Henebry family cylinders from Richard’s time and later, were given by a member of the family to Dr Seóirse Bodley of the Music Department of University College Dublin (UCD), The galvanos have since proved to be those supplied by the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv to Henebry in 1907. They contain reversed recordings in their interiors of his six Waterford singers and the uilleann piper James Byrne. In the 1990s, the galvanos and phonograph with cylinders were donated by Professor Bodley in turn to the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
The cylinders were digitised for ITMA in France in 2006 by Henri Chamoux of the Archeophone Company and the galvanos were preserved in ITMA, but no further use could be made of the latter until it was discovered in 2008 – through the good offices of Dr Fintan Vallely, and of Professor Thérèse Smith of the School of Music, UCD – that the Phonogramm-Archiv still had the capability of making new cylinder copies from galvanos. Contact was made with Berlin and scholarly cooperation was quickly forthcoming from Dr Susanne Ziegler of the Archiv. Information and documentation was exchanged between the two bodies. ITMA sent the galvanos to Berlin, new copies were made from them using a red composition, and these copies were digitised there. The digital files were presented to ITMA by Dr Ziegler on 27 February 2009 at an International Council for Traditional Music Ireland conference on ‘Recording’ held in UCD.
These files were remastered for ITMA by Harry Bradshaw in Dublin, and the resulting copies are those presented above. Henebry’s local titles have been followed, but his often eccentric spelling has been changed to a modern standard.
A second tranche of copies of ITMA Henebry cylinder recordings is available below.
Links to further Henebry information and recordings from ITMA and others:
From ITMA
From others
With thanks to Professor Seóirse Bodley, Dr Suzanne Ziegler and the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, Dr Fintan Vallely, Professor Thérèse Smith, Henri Chamoux, and Harry Bradshaw.
Nicholas Carolan, Elaina Solon & Danny Diamond, 1 June 2015
This second tranche of copies of cylinder recordings of Irish-language singers made by Rev. Dr Richard Henebry in Co Waterford in the early 20th century, and presented here from its collections by the Irish Traditional Music Archive with some of his instrumental music cylinders, is not for the faint-hearted.
Although they have been expertly remastered for ITMA by Harry Bradshaw, who has recovered sound from them that is inaudible when they are played ‘flat’, they are nevertheless still indistinct and noisy. Not surprising, given that the original cylinders are now more than a century old, are of ‘wax’ composition and were only designed for a limited number of playings. They are now badly worn, and often scratched or cracked. The wonder is that they have survived and can be heard at all.
These recordings differ therefore from the first published tranche of ITMA Henebry cylinder recordings. Those were remade from copper cylinder moulds as the result of a cooperative project between ITMA and the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv and are of a better audio quality. These recordings differ also in containing some fiddle renditions of traditional tunes, some of which may be given by Richard Henebry himself using up unused space on cylinders, and in including some recordings from Irish America. The first tranche of Henebry cylinder recordings is available below, along with information on the whole ITMA Henebry project and links to copies of his books and other recordings.
These new recordings are undated but at least two were made in July 1905, when the first tranche was recorded, and the probability is that at least some of the others also were. Introduced by Henebry himself, two of the singers are the same, Pádraig Ó Néill and Maighréad Ní Néill, and second takes are given of some of the same songs. The uilleann piper James Byrne is playing here again. But there are also new singers to be found from An Rinn, some introducing themselves. A Seán de Henebry, probably Richard’s brother, plays fiddle, and a whistle or piccolo player can also be heard. Among the new singers are William Power and Sylvester O’Murray, and two whose names will be familiar: Nioclás Ua Tóibín and Labhrás Ó Cadhla. But these latter are undoubtedly older relatives of the well-known Waterford singers of these names who were recorded by radio and record companies in the mid- and later 20th century. It is possible that some of these recordings were made by members of the Henebry family using his equipment after Richard’s death in 1916 as some written documentation found with these cylinders dates from 1929 and 1930 (however it is also possible that only the documentation and not the cylinders may be of those dates). Also to be heard here is the Chicago-based uilleann piper Bernard Delaney of Offaly, and an anonymous uilleann pipes and fiddle duet, on cylinders which had been sent to Henebry by Captain Francis O’Neill of Chicago (Delaney can be more audibly heard on Milwaukee O’Neill cylinder copies available here).
In spite of their difficult audio quality, these Henebry recordings have a unique cultural value. They preserve traditional melodies, something not often found in early Irish-language song collections which typically print only verbal texts. They also preserve elements of traditional song style and instrumental style which are beyond the reach of music notation. A declamatory singing style is common in these recordings; it may have been influenced somewhat by the recording process. In the hope that singers and musicians of the present day will hear enough on them to be able to re-create the songs and music, and that people with local knowledge and interested scholars will be able to add information and make transcriptions, even the noisiest of the Henebry cylinders are presented here. Some identifications of songs and singers are tentative, as indicated; additional information would be very welcome.
With thanks to Professor Seóirse Bodley, donor of the original recordings to ITMA; to Henri Chamoux of the Archaeophone Company in France who digitised them; and to Harry Bradshaw who remastered the digitisations.
Nicholas Carolan, Elaina Solon & Danny Diamond, 1 August 2015
The Revd Dr Richard Henebry/ Risteard De Hindeberg (1863–1916) was born into an Irish-speaking farming family in Mount Bolton, Portlaw, Co Waterford.
The family was musical. Henebry played the fiddle, as did his mother, and he had a great interest in traditional singing and uilleann piping. An outstanding but eccentric scholar, he became a Catholic priest, and after a doctoral course of philological studies in Germany was briefly professor of Irish in the Catholic University of Washington DC in the 1890s, and later taught in Berkeley University in California.
While in America he became friendly with Captain Francis O’Neill in Chicago and other Irish musicians. Suffering from ill-health, he returned to Ireland about 1903, and made a valuable collection of early cylinder field-recordings in Waterford in 1905. These led to correspondence with leading German ethnomusicologists in Berlin, and formed an influential component of his theories on Irish music scales and intonation. From 1909 until his death Henebry was professor of Irish Language and Literature in University College Cork. Highly idiosyncratic in his behaviour and a stubborn public controversialist, he nonetheless inspired admiration and affection in many of his colleagues, some of whom published the manuscript of his original and substantial Handbook of Irish Music (Cork, 1928) after his death.
Henebry’s originality and dogmaticism is on display in his booklet study Irish Music (Dublin, 1903) which is reproduced below from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. His only publication on Irish music to appear during his lifetime, apart from occasional pieces in newspapers and magazines, it drew on his musical experiences in Ireland and America, and has a supplement of his mother’s tunes.
Richard Henebry’s brief study of Irish music is best understood in the context of a series of such studies which had appeared before 1903. Many of these – beginning with the earliest substantial study, Joseph Cooper Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (Dublin & London, 1786) – are now also available online in full text, and links to them are provided below.
Renehan, Laurence F., History of music, Dublin: C.M. Warren, 1858
Conran, Michael, The national music of Ireland, London: John Johnson, 1850
Ledwich, Edward, The antiquities of Ireland, Dublin: Printed by and for John Jones, 1804 (2nd ed.)
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.
[Other Henebry material is also available on the ITMA website. For his cylinder recordings see here, and for his Handbook of Irish Music see here.]
One of the most substantial of the theoretical works on Irish music, and one that is difficult to understand, is A Handbook of Irish Music by the Rev. Dr Richard Henebry (Risteárd de Hindeberg, 1863–1916). Henebry was a traditional musician from an Irish-speaking and musical farming family in Co Waterford, a Roman Catholic priest who had served in Britain and the United States, an academic with a doctorate in Celtic studies awarded in Germany, and an early field recorder in Ireland of Irish music on cylinder.
A person of strong opinions on many subjects, and something of an eccentric, Henebry also had firm views on the nature of Irish traditional music. These were first aired in his 1903 pamphlet Irish Music, but were revealed at their fullest in the Handbook, which was edited by his colleagues in University College Cork in the years after his death and published in 1928 by Cork University Press, aided by the subscriptions of friends and admirers and with a preface by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, his successor as Professor of Irish Language and Literature in Cork. The book is based on a surviving Henebry manuscript which lacks some pages but which is otherwise published in its entirety, with the addition of four missing melodies from family members and some footnotes and indexes. A facsimile of the Handbook is presented below.
The original manuscript of the Handbook was divided by the editors into five sections: 1 Introductory; 2 Of the Writing of Irish Music; 3 Of the Coarser Analysis of Irish Music; 4 Structural Analysis; 5 Of the Finer Analysis of Irish Music, or Tonometric Examination. Henebry had been influenced by the thinking of early German and American ethnomusicologists as well as by his own observations, and understood music as arising from the emotions rather than the reason, and sharing its characteristics with animal utterance. He gives primacy to vocal music over instrumental music, and pays most attention to the pitches and intervals, scales and modes which he considers ‘natural’ to Irish music. In this connection he expends much time on note frequency counting that he had carried out on tunes from the published collections of George Petrie and Patrick Weston Joyce.
The most valuable features of the book are the versions of tunes he gives from his own experience and the incidental information he gives on singers and musicians, including his own mother. The fifth section of the book deals with the melodies he himself had recorded on phonograph in Co Waterford in 1905 (see related material below) and which had been subjected to tonometric analysis in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archive in 1907. The melodies were transcribed for the Handbook from notations said by the editors to be Henebry’s (but which may actually have been those of the Berlin analysts) by the singers and music editors Séamus de Clanndiolúin and Maighréad Ní Annagáin.
For further information on Henebry and his music, see the links following the Henebry playlist below.
With thanks to the Breathnach family, donors of the book.
Nicholas Carolan & Maeve Gebruers, 1 June 2015
One of the most substantial of the theoretical works on Irish music, and one that is difficult to understand, is A Handbook of Irish Music by the Rev. Dr Richard Henebry (Risteárd de Hindeberg, 1863–1916). Henebry was a traditional musician from an Irish-speaking and musical farming family in Co Waterford, a Roman Catholic priest who had served in Britain and the United States, an academic with a doctorate in Celtic studies awarded in Germany, and an early field recorder in Ireland of Irish music on cylinder.
A person of strong opinions on many subjects, and something of an eccentric, Henebry also had firm views on the nature of Irish traditional music. These were first aired in his 1903 pamphlet Irish Music, but were revealed at their fullest in the Handbook, which was edited by his colleagues in University College Cork in the years after his death and published in 1928 by Cork University Press, aided by the subscriptions of friends and admirers and with a preface by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, his successor as Professor of Irish Language and Literature in Cork.
