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The Ancient Music of Ireland - The Bunting Collections

( Please note, this is a very heavy hardback book)

Edward Bunting's three great collections of Irish songs, with piano arrangements:

A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (London, Dublin 1796)

A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (London 1809)

The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin 1840)

Background

In 1792, the Belfast Harp Society sponsored a gathering of harpers and commissioned a young Armagh-born musician, Edward Bunting (1773-1843), to write down the music they played and make notes on the techniques they used.

The Belfast Harp Festival left a profound impression on Bunting and kindled an enthusiasam fo traditional music that would remain with him for the rest of his life. As he remarked in his 1840 Collection, 'all the best of the old class of harpers - a race of men then nearly extinct, and now gone for ever - Denis Hempson, Arthur O'Neill, Charles Fanning and seven oters, the least able of whom has not left his like behing, were present.'

At this meeting, the last of its kind, and in his subsequent travels around Ireland, Bunting collected several hundred songs and airs, some, by tradition, dating back to the 10th or 11th centuries. He also collected a wealth of information on the styles and music of the harpers themselves. His work was the last comprehensive effort to record a dying art and culture, which had been handed down through the centuries 'note for note', from master to pupil.

Bunting gathered almost three hundred songs and airs in his three collections of 1796, 1809 and 1840. Many of these, published in piano arrangements, have been used by later songwriters, including Thomas Moore, and are still heard in both vocal and instrumental form today. This facsimile edition of all three collections includes Bunting's extensive dissertation on the history and practice of music in Ireland, with details of harps and harp technique, harpers and their compositions. It has proved a source of inspiration to countless musicians and composers and is an indispensible reference for anyone interested in Irish traditional music.