IrishMusicInfo
The Sunday Tribune Weekly Traditional Music Column by Fintan Vallely
990117
A thousand years or so ago our chiselling of harps on stone crosses was to be the earliest evidence of Irish music. A century ago the launch of O'Neill's music collection provided a potential bridge to revival. And last week the late UCC Prof. Aloys Fleischmann's contribution to immortalising the compositions of the modern era was launched by President McAleese in UCC. 'Sources of Irish Traditional Music, c. 1600-1855' has some 7,000 tunes, sourced from all known manuscripts and collections dating to c. 1583. This colossal undertaking was begun by Fleischmann c. 1950, then after his death in 1992 it passed to Prof. M’che‡l î Sœilleabh‡in of UL. DCU music technology lecturer Paul McGettrick (then a student in UCC) in the years since physically re-organised it all to accommodate new material and render it compatible with modern technology. A flute player with parental associations in Sough Sligo, he brought Traditional music savvy to a work originated almost in contradiction to it. For the pioneering Fleischmann's own expertise had been quite different - he founded the Cork Symphony Orchestra, and was prime mover in setting up the Ballet and the Choral Society there. In the context of such broad mindedness it was a pity that McGettrick's key contribution was overlooked by all speakers in the launch ceremony, and his presence on the platform unacknowledged. In her address to this event - the second major Traditional music initiative in just one month of her career - the President paid tribute to Fleischmann, and applauded particularly î Sœilleabh‡in's "generosity of spirit" and academic commitment to his project in "taking on another man's work" in the midst of a busy and prestigious career "on behalf of the Irish people and the global Irish family". î Sœilleabh‡in is chairman of the board of the ITMA whose director Nicholas Carolan was also a key figure in the final stages of a work which brings together what only specialist scholars could previously have comprehended. The two-volume publication (by Garland) does not come cheap at £190, and while there may well have been as many more tunes composed in the years since 1855, nevertheless such a window on the pre-literate era of what we now call 'Traditional' music-making is surely of inestimable value as we move out from a century where 'Irish' in the music world indicates an artistically-substantial genre that is taken up and consumed by people of many other nationalities, often as definitively as on this island. Perhaps then, since the expense and scale of the 'Sources' collection prohibited its publication in Ireland, now that it is available - and an electronic version planned for later this year - shouldn't it be placed in every library, music department and academic institution in the country?
©Fintan Vallely, IrishMusicInfo.com
Back to Sunday Tribune, 1999 master page