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Irish traditional music

Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland.

For Irish music more generally, see Music of Ireland.

In A History of Irish Music (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were the cruit (a small rubbed strings harp) and cláirseach (a bigger harp with typically 30 strings), the tiompán (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the feadán (a fife), the buinne (an oboe or flute), the guthbuinne (a bassoon-type horn), the beannbhuabhal and corn (hornpipes), the cuislenna (bagpipes – see Great Irish warpipes), the stoc and storgán (clarions or trumpets), and the cnámha (bones).[1] There is also evidence of the fiddle being used in the 8th century.[1]


There are several collections of Irish folk music from the 18th century, but it was not until the 19th century that ballad printers became established in Dublin. Important collectors include Colm Ó Lochlainn, George Petrie, Edward Bunting, Francis O'Neill, James Goodman and many others. Though solo performance is preferred in the folk tradition, bands or at least small ensembles have probably been a part of Irish music since at least the mid-19th century, although this is a point of much contention among ethnomusicologists.


Irish traditional music has endured more strongly against the forces of cinema, radio and the mass media than the indigenous folk music of most countries in the west of Europe. From the end of the Second World War until the late fifties folk music was held in low regard. Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (an Irish traditional music association) and the popularity of the Fleadh Cheoil (music festival) helped lead the revival of the music. The English Folk music scene also encouraged Irish musicians . Following the success of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the US in 1959, Irish folk music became fashionable again. The lush sentimental style of singers such as Delia Murphy was replaced by guitar-driven male groups such as the Dubliners. Irish showbands presented a mixture of pop music and folk dance tunes, though these died out during the seventies. The international success of the Chieftains and subsequent musicians and groups has made Irish folk music a global brand.


Historically much old-time music of the US grew out of the music of Ireland, England and Scotland, as a result of cultural diffusion. By the 1970s Irish traditional music was again influencing music in the US and further afield in Australia and Europe. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres.

Musical characteristics[edit]

Composition[edit]

Irish dance music is isometric and is built around patterns of bar-long melodic phrases akin to call and response. A common pattern is A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Partial Resolution, A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Final Resolution, though this is not universal; mazurkas, for example, tend to feature a C Phrase instead of a repeated A Phrase before the Partial and Final Resolutions, for example. Many tunes have pickup notes which lead in to the beginning of the A or B parts. Mazurkas and hornpipes have a swing feel, while other tunes have straight feels.[2]


Tunes are typically binary in form, divided into two (or sometimes more) parts, each with four to eight bars. The parts are referred to as the A-part, B-part, and so on. Each part is played twice, and the entire tune is played three times; AABB, AABB, AABB. Many tunes have similar ending phrases for both A and B parts; it is common for hornpipes to have the second half of each part be identical. Additionally, hornpipes often have three quavers or quarternotes at the end of each part, followed by pickup notes to lead back to the beginning of the A part of onto the B part. Many airs have an AABA form.[3]


While airs are usually played singly, dance tunes are usually played in medleys of 2-4 tunes called sets.[3]

Modes[edit]

Irish music generally is modal, using Ionian, Aeolian, Dorian, and Mixolydian modes, as well as hexatonic and pentatonic versions of those scales. Some tunes do feature accidentals.[4]

Ornamentation[edit]

Singers and instrumentalists often embellish melodies through ornamentation, using grace notes, rolls, cuts, crans, or slides.[3][4]

Accompaniment[edit]

While uilleann pipes may use their drones and regulators to provide harmonic backup, and fiddlers often use double stops in their playing, due to the importance placed on the melody in Irish music, harmony is typically kept simple or absent.[4] Usually, instruments are played in strict unison, always following the leading player. True counterpoint is mostly unknown to traditional music, although a form of improvised "countermelody" is often used in the accompaniments of bouzouki and guitar players. In contrast to many kinds of western folk music, there are no set chord progressions to tunes; many accompanists use power chords to let the melody define the tonality or use partial chords in combination with ringing drone strings to emphasize the tonal center. Many guitarists use DADGAD tuning because it offers flexibility in using these approaches, as does the GDAD tuning for bouzouki.[5]

Revivals of traditional Irish music[edit]

Late 19th century revival and the early 20th century[edit]

The revival of interest in Irish traditional culture was closely linked to Nationalist calls for independence and was catalysed by the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893. This sought to encourage the rediscovery and affirmation of Irish traditional arts by focusing upon the Irish language, but also established an annual competition, the Feis Ceoil, in 1903 as a focus for its activities.


In the US, traditional musicians remained popular in Irish communities in large cities such as Chicago. Francis O'Neill (1848–1936) was a collector and promoter of Irish traditional music whose work was a "huge influence on the evolution of Irish traditional dance music in the twentieth century".[26] As well as publishing large compendiums of tunes, O'Neill is credited with making some of the earliest recordings of Irish Musicians on Edison wax cylinders.[27] In the 1920s and 1930s the records of emigrant musicians such as Ed Reavy, Michael Coleman, James Morrison and John McKenna breathed new life into music being played back in Ireland.[28]


Religion also played a role in the re-development of Irish culture. The actual achievement of independence from Britain tallied closely with a new Irish establishment desire to separate Irish culture from the European mainstream, but the new Irish government also paid heed to clerical calls to curtail 'jazz dancing' and other suggestions of a dereliction in Irish morality—though it was not until 1935 that the Public Dance Halls Act curtailed the right of anyone to hold their own events; from then on, no public musical or dancing events could be held in a public space without a license and most of those were usually only granted to 'suitable' persons – often the parish priest.

List of Irish musicians

List of traditional musicians from County Clare

List of All-Ireland Champions

List of traditional Irish singers

Traditional Gaelic music

Irish Recorded Music Association

Irish topics

Irish rebel music

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ISBN

Fleischmann, Aloys, ed. (1998). Sources of Irish Traditional Music c.1600–1855: An Annotated Catalogue of Prints and Manuscripts, 1583–1855. New York and London: Garland Publishing.  0-8240-6948-X.

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ISBN

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ASIN

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Petrie, George, Petrie's Complete Irish Music: 1,582 Traditional Melodies, prepared from the original manuscripts by Charles Villiers Stanford, London: Boosey & Co., 1902–5 (reprint: London: Dover Publications, 2003).

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ASIN

Tuohy, David; Ó hAodha, Mícheál (2008). Postcolonial Artist: Johnny Doran and Irish Traveller Tradition. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.  978-1-84718-441-2.

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Vallely, Fintan (1998). . Cork: Cork University Press. ISBN 1-85918-148-1.

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A directory of traditional Irish music instruments and their history, associated mythology and notable players

Traditional Irish Music Instruments

National public reference archive and resource centre for traditional song, instrumental music and dance of Ireland

Irish Traditional Music Archive

A searchable database of traditional dance tunes which identifies sources for tunes on commercial recordings and in tune books

The Irish Traditional Music Tune Index

Ireland's national resource and archive centre for contemporary Irish classical music.

Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin

by W. H. Flood

A History of Irish Music

Historical Harp Society of Ireland

Clarsach.net

A UCD Digital Library Collection.

Irish Folk Music. Folk songs collected by Tom Munnelly in 1971 and 1972, recordings available online.