The Irish Music Manuscripts of Edward Bunting: An Introduction and Catalogue

The Irish Music Manuscripts of Edward Bunting (1773-1843): An Introduction and Catalogue / Dr Colette Moloney, ed.

A guide to some 1,000 traditional instrumental melodies (including many harp tunes) and 500 song texts (mainly in Irish) from 18th- and 19th-century Ulster and Connacht preserved in the music manuscripts of the musician and collector Edward Bunting. Includes an extensive introduction, a catalogue listing titles, music incipits, first lines of verse, names of persons and places, annotations etc., and numerous indexes, on 735 A4 pages. This catalogue is the first to give direction to Irish traditional music in manuscript and the first of its kind in Irish studies.

This is a work of reference which will be an indispensible research 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 200 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 specialising 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 Chláir, she is currently a lecturer in music in the Waterford Institute of Technology.