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Old Irish Folk Music and Songs: A Collection of 842 Irish Airs and Songs Hitherto Unpublished, ed. Patrick Weston Joyce (Dublin: 1st ed. 1909)
Old Irish Folk Music and Songs is Joyce’s magnum opus in Irish music. It includes the melodies of songs (some with words in English) and a variety of dance tunes. About half come from Joyce’s musical memories of his childhood in rural Co Limerick during the years before the Great Famine. The remainder are drawn from the then unpublished music manuscripts of the collectors William Forde and John Edward Pigot, which had been given to Joyce by the Pigot family (see Nicholas Carolan, ‘The Forde-Pigot Collection of Irish Traditional Music’ in Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library, Bernadette Cunningham, Siobhán Fitzpatrick, Petra Schnabel eds, Dublin 2009, pp. 256–67).
The interactive scores are presented here in four tranches, each featuring c. 200 tunes. The tunes in this tranche also featured in the Port / Joyce collaboration between ITMA and Liam O’Connor. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland (2017).
Nicholas Carolan, Treasa Harkin & Jackie Small, 23 April 2013
