Edward Bunting of Armagh was a nineteen-year-old professional musician in Belfast when he was engaged at the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792 to note down the music of the last of the oral-tradition Irish harpers. Entranced by this music of medieval origins which was foreign to his own classical training and experience, and introduced by it to the contemporary world of traditional music, he made the collection, arrangement and publication of traditional music his lifework, and published three volumes of airs in 1796, 1809 and 1840 which have made his name famous.
However, Bunting published only about a quarter of the music and music information he collected or was given, and he published none of the 500 or so traditional song texts, most of them in the Irish language, which he collected through agents. The manuscripts containing this enormous and unique body of material give an unrivalled view of traditional instrumental-music and song culture across Ulster and Connacht in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They were lost sight of after Bunting's death, but were accidentally rediscovered in 1907 and are now mainly held in Belfast in the library of the Queen's University along with other papers of Bunting's.
This introduction to and catalogue of Edward Bunting's Irish music manuscripts by Dr Colette Moloney opens up for the first time the riches they contain. Setting Bunting's work in the context of his time and place, she pioneers the use of the methods of paleographic analysis on Irish music manuscripts, bringing the manuscripts into chronological order and uncovering the eighty-five scribes besides Bunting who contributed to them by the examination of such features as paper types, rastrography, bindings, collation of leaves and handwritings. Particular attention is paid to information on harp music and harpers in the manuscripts, and to other genres of ancient music which they contain, such as Ossianic airs and crónáin. The catalogue proper lists each music and verse item in order, with titles, music incipits (usually four bars), first lines of verse, annotations and other features. An extensive series of indexes includes the explication of obscure titles and lines of verse, and direction to all persons and places mentioned in the manuscripts.
This is a work of reference which will be an indispensable tool for musicians, especially harpers, for scholars of Irish music, language and oral literature, for cultural historians, and for all students of the Ireland of Bunting's time. It unlocks a wealth of music and cultural information first preserved some two hundred years ago but only now made known to readers worldwide.
Dr Colette Moloney from Charleville, Co. Cork, is a musician in both classical and traditional idioms and a music scholar specializing in the Irish harp. A graduate in music of University College Cork, she gained her Ph.D. from the University of Limerick in 1995 on the subject of the Bunting music manuscripts. A former director of the Ennis school of music Maoin Cheoil an Chlár, she is currently a lecturer in music in the Waterford Institute of Technology.
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