Music in nineteenth-century Ireland

Irish musical studies 9

Michael Murphy & Jan Smaczny, editors

‘In this ninth volume of the Irish Musical Studies Series editors Murphy and Smaczny concentrate on the nineteenth century by assembling these essays which devote equal time to sacred and secular musical works’, Book News (August 2008).

‘…there is much to admire in this 336-page volume in terms of weight of research and contribution to knowledge: the chapters, which cover such varied topics as folk-music collecting, Belfast’s concert halls, and the impact of immigrant Belgian and German church organists, deliver many observations about the function and meaning of Irish musical life, supported by careful footnoting and other appropriate apparatus. The essays also display a variety of approaches to the art of historical writing, running the gamut in quality from simple reports of findings, or chronological surveys of events, to essays that satisfy as well-argued and mature history…each one of the fifteen essays will repay a second or third reading', Christina Bashford, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Journal for the Society for Musicology in Ireland (2008-9)

‘The music history of Ireland is at the one time like a jigsaw with many missing pieces, and a kaleidoscope which fluidly remixes genres and timbres in response to the rotation of the historical prism. [This] terrific volume takes a fresh step in the sorting of the mystery and confusion by locating and placing much desirable detail and, by design and inference, separating out primary hues … [this book is] satisfying and provocative. Historians and musicologists alike should welcome [it]', Fintan Vallely, Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 2010)