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Tunes 1-260.
See Tunes of the Munster Pipers 1 B for tunes 261-515.
Irish traditional music from the James Goodman manuscripts, Volume 1 / Dr Hugh Shields, ed.
Dublin: Irish Traditional Music Archive / Taisce Cheol Dúchais Éireann, 1998
James Goodman (1828─1896) from the Dingle area of West Kerry, a Canon of the Church of Ireland, Professor of Irish in Trinity College Dublin, and an accomplished performer on the Irish or uilleann pipes, compiled a highly important manuscript collection of Irish traditional music in the 1860s. Drawn to a great extent from the oral tradition of Munster, and partly from other manuscripts and printed sources, a book edition of the collection Tunes of the Munster Pipers has now been published for the first time, by the Irish Traditional Music Archive, in two volumes, edited by Hugh and Lisa Shields.
The first volume of the edition contains 515 song airs and dance tunes, and the second volume 536 ─ a total of 1,051 melodies in all.
The volumes contain all the melodies which Goodman himself noted down from the pipers and other performers of his native province, and those melodies not now otherwise available which he drew from manuscripts belonging to his musical colleagues. The tunes in the Goodman manuscripts which he copied from printed sources have been excluded. The edition provides musicians and scholars of the present day with a unique body of Irish music from the south-west region and gives unrivalled insights into the traditional music and song of Irish-speaking pre-Famine Ireland.
The edition also contains essays on Goodman’s life and career, and on his collection, based on new research. It is accompanied by a substantial online index of research information on the whole Goodman collection. Both volumes are available to purchase from the ITMA shop.
Dr Hugh Shields (1929─2008), Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin and former Senior Lecturer in French in the college, collected and studied traditional music from the 1950s, especially in Ireland and with particular emphasis on Ulster. He published many articles and sound recordings on the subject, and his Shamrock, Rose and Thistle: Folk Singing in North Derry (1981) and Narrative Singing in Ireland: Lays, Ballads, Come-All-Yes and Other Songs (1993) are standard works. Lisa Shields, his wife and a player of concertina and uilleann pipes, is a graduate in modern languages from TCD. She is the former Librarian of the Irish Meteorological Service.
The interactive scores from the book have been divided into two notated collections, each featuring c. 250 tunes.
Nicholas Carolan, Lisa Shields, Treasa Harkin, & Jackie Small, 12 April 2012
