The Case for an Encyclopedia of Music in IrelandAuthor(s): Harry WhiteSource: The Irish Review (1986-), No. 6 (Spring, 1989), pp. 39-45Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29735420 .

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The Case for an Encyclopedia

of Music in Ireland

HARRY WHITE

Irish scholarship in the humanities has been characterised within the past decade

by a sustained investigation of the history of ideas in Ireland and by the concept of an Irish intellectual tradition. The Crane Bag, The Irish Mind and The Irish Beview exemplify publications which have sponsored this investigation, in which

the literary, philosophic and artistic achievements have been profiled and

queried. Such publications comprise a debate on Irish culture, and focus upon

ideas of 'Irishness', nationhood and political identity. Music has been con?

spicuous by its general absence from this debate. The history of music in Ireland, the sociology oflrish music, the mere recital oflrish musical achievement, have

been investigated only in part. A consequence of this is the marginal position for

music in the history of Irish thought. Music has been central in Irish life (as entertainment, as a mode of recreation, as a manifestation of political dissent

and social distinctiveness, as a symptom of urban growth or of rural decline, as

an agent of spiritual, artistic and aesthetic experience, as a livelihood), but our

command of the facts about music in Ireland is sketchy and insecure. We lack a

collation or synthesis which would enable a sustained discussion of its impact on

Irish life. We urgently need to incorporate music as part of the debate on Irish

ideas and culture, but in order to do so, we require a systematic assembly of facts

about music and the history ofthat music. We need, in brief, an encyclopedia of

music in Ireland.

This proposal is informed by three factors: (a) the advent of musicology in Ireland and the range of musical subject material which it has identified, (b) the success of the The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada [EMC] published in 1981,

which I would propose as a model for an Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland [EMI], (c) the discernible progression of musicology world-wide from the positivistic accumulation of information (in the present instance, the production of an en?

cyclopedia) to the assimilation and interpretation ofthat information.

Beyond these three factors, there is the desirability of a comprehensive

reference work which would not only testify to the past and present state of

music in Ireland, but which would also afford an authoritative and reliable basis

for further research, critical interpretation, and speculative discussion of the role

and meaning of music as a force in Irish intellectual and cultural life.

39

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40 White

I

My intention here is not to rehearse in detail the history of scholarly writing on

and editions of music in Ireland, which is an adequate if somewhat broadly based definition of musicology for the purposes of this paper. It is more useful

here to reflect upon the scope of research material which such work has brought to light, and which argues most readily the case for an encyclopedia. Twelve

categories of research in particular illustrate the range of material: source studies

and general works of reference, studies in Irish folk music, the history of church

music in Ireland, Anglo-Irish music c. 1700-1800, Anglo-Irish music c.1800

1900, twentieth-century (including contemporary) music in Ireland, music

printing and publishing and related activities, the history and content oflrish

music journals, Irish musical instruments, music education and musicology in

Ireland, the history of musical performance in Ireland, and the history of

popular music in its commercial and sociological aspects. These are twelve areas

which have been suggested by the objectives and results of much recent

research.

The thrust of this research is overwhelmingly positivistic. Most of it carefully discloses a web of facts about music in Ireland which could usefully be mar?

shalled and stored in encyclopedia format. I would argue throughout this paper that if the field of music in Ireland is to sustain a

professional species of

musicology, it needs the resources of information which research has afforded in

some (by no means all) areas. Major research projects by Brian Boydell, Aloys Fleischmann and Ita Hogan, for example, have illuminated vital information on

repertories of music in Dublin from 1700 onwards, while Nicholas Carolan and

Hugh Shields have both provided extensive bibliographies of instrumental and vocal Irish folk music respectively. The catalogue of contemporary Irish com?

posers prepared by Edgar Deale (in 1968, revised in 1973) and the information data-base devised by Bernard Harris for the control of information on most

aspects of music in Ireland (published in occasional information-sheets by the

Contemporary Music Centre) are other examples of reference studies which fall

under the first category named above and which enhance the proposal of a com?

prehensive and authoritative encyclopedia of music in Ireland. Editorial and

documentary assignments (such as those undertaken by Donal O'Sullivan and

Richard Charteris), as well as archival projects (such as the recently-established Irish Traditional Music Archive) also testify to a corpus of source material which

suggests that an article on Musical Sources in Ireland would be an extensive one.

The proliferation of textual, analytical, sociological and structural studies in

Irish folk music since the war has sharpened the need for a long-overdue syn?

thesis of information in this category, which an encyclopedia would provide. While the literature on musical analysis and on the sociology oflrish music is

slender, studies of collectors and collections, of textual forms and of individual

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EncyclopediaofMusic 41

genres of vocal and instrumental music, suggest that an encyclopedia would

stand to harvest and collate a great deal of this research, even as its preparation would identify lacunae and serve as a stimulus to further research.

The history of church music in Ireland represents a category that has been but

poorly investigated to date. Michael Curran' s AntiphonaryofBangorand the Early Irish Monastic Liturgy (1984) is, astonishingly, the only extensive study oflrish church music published thus far, although a number of unpublished dis?

sertations, in addition to chapters by Ita Hogan, Aloys Fleischmann and Frank

Harrison, among others, do indicate the aspects an encyclopedia could pro?

fitably address.

Recent research in Anglo-Irish music, 1700-1900, also supports the case. Two

major studies of repertory confirm the view that eighteenth-century music, par?

ticularly in Dublin, comprises a very large resource of vocal and instrumental

genres which await stylistic criticism and interpretation. TJ. Walsh's Opera in

Dublin 1705-1797 (1973) and Brian Boydell's Dublin Musical Calendar (1988) are of immense value in the information which they afford on the history and

sociology of music in the eighteenth century. I would suggest here that both

studies define an initial research-phase, and that they could and should be com?

plemented by a second phase of analysis and style-study. The interdisciplinary

approach espoused by Frank Harrison in his study of'Music, poetry and polity in the age of Swift', which appeared in the first volume o? Eighteenth-Century

Ireland (1986), represents a further line of (ethnomusicological) inquiry. A series of articles on the especially prominent relationship between music and politics in eighteenth-century Irish music is one important feature which an en?

cyclopedia could offer.

Music in Ireland during the nineteenth century represents a category which

has been largely neglected by scholars to date, with the important exception of

Anglo-Irish Musk 1780-1830, a study by Ita Hogan which easily ranks with the

work of Boydell and Walsh in terms of archival research, historical synthesis and

stylistic appraisal (in which last feature it is unique, in the context of similar

studies of music in Ireland). Nevertheless, there is a dearth of information on

music in the latter half of the 19th century. The lack of a comprehensive reference work exclusively devoted to music in Ireland is most keenly felt,

perhaps, in the field of twentieth-century music. If we confine ourselves to com?

position, for example, we find that there is no

book-length study of any Irish

composer whose work has been established since the founding of the state, with

the single exception of a series of essays on The Achievement of Sean ? Riada, edited by Grattan Freyer and Bernard Harris in 1982. Kitty Fadlu-Deen's thesis

on contemporary music in Ireland (1968) is representative of a number of un?

published critical surveys and studies, but the lack of published material has only recently been addressed, by limited commissions for studies oflrish piano music

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42 White

and choral music from the Contemporary Music Centre and the Association of

Irish Composers. Comprehensive coverage (stylistic as well as informational) in

an encyclopedia would alert scholars to the need for full-length assessment of

many genres and individuals. Gerald Barry, Seoirse Bodley, Brian Boydell, Ray? mond Deane, Aloys Fleischmann, John Kinsella, A. J. Potter, Adrian Thomas, David Byers, Piers Hellawell, Gerard Victory and James Wilson are among many whose work demands and justifies critical scrutiny.

The history of music printing and publishing in Dublin, the unique phenomenon of Boethius Press in Kilkenny in the present day (with its array of facsimile reproductions and magnificently produced Classic Texts in Musk

Education series), the immense archival usefulness of journals such as Counter?

point (1969-1981), the steady stream of papers on Irish instruments produced by

organologistssuch as Ann Buckley and Barra Boydell, all indicate the size of the

field. One might add a final category: the history of musical performance in Ireland

offers a daunting challenge which could only be intelligbly answered by an en?

cyclopedia of the magnitude implied in this paper. Confining ourselves again to

the twentieth century for the sake of clarity, we can show that an encyclopedia would include articles on venues for the performance of music (opera houses, conceit halls, recital rooms, theatres, etc. ), on the musical history of a multitude

of towns, cities and rural areas, on the history of individual genres (such as opera in Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Waterford and Wexford), on the history of festivals

(choral music in Cork, organ and piano festivals of major international standing in Dublin), on the history of music competitions throughout the country, on

recital series of long standing, on choral and operatic societies (a great many similar articles on amateur music-making),

on professional associations of per?

formers, on the enormous contribution and influence of the media on music in

Ireland, on individual performers. Much information of this kind is, of course,

readily available. But there is a distinction to be drawn between the role of music

directories and the idea of an encyclopedia, which subsumes the notions of

assimilation and assessment. No directory, for example, could trace the history of early music performance since 1945 and its unprecedented acceleration since

1980, or assess the visits of Shostakovich and Stravinsky to Dublin in the early 1970s in terms of their influence upon the performance and composition of con?

temporary music in Ireland.

II

The Encyclopedia of Musk in Canada is about music in Canada and Canada's

musical relations with the rest of the world. . .Between the late 19th century and mid-20th little information on Canadian music and musicians appeared

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Encyclopedia of Music 43

in European and U.S. Journals and reference works. . .Even in the late 1960s,

by which time a vigorous generation of Canadian composers had reached

maturity, dictionaries and surveys of the world's music gave Canada only

spotty coverage. The few useful Canadian reference works were limited in

scope and were aging

. . .

Were we to substitute 'Ireland' and 'Irish' for 'Canada' and 'Canadian' in the

foregoing excerpt from the general introduction to EMC (pp xi-xiii), it would

usefully serve as a summary of the objectives of an Irish encyclopedia and of the

most pressing needs for bringing such a project into being. Music in Ireland has

not been particularly well-represented in works of reference to date. Not one of

the composers named in this paper, for example, finds a place in the Thames and

Hudson Encyclopedia of 20th-century Music (1986) edited by Paul Griffiths, who is

widely acknowledged as a reliable authority on contemporary music. This

publication in fact omits any reference whatever to Irish music, although the

music of some thirty other countries is represented. The New Oxford Companion to Music (1981) does contain short entries on Irish composers (by Paul Griffiths, among others), and Bodley, Boydell, Fleischmann and Victory find a

place therein, despite the absence of a host of others, including ? Riada and Wilson.

The New Companion, moreover, reprints the badly outdated article on Ireland

which Percy Scholes wrote for the first edition of this work in 1938. The New

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980) includes numerous articles on

music in Ireland, but few scholars acquainted in detail with the field (or parts of

it) would maintain that the coverage which Irish music receives in The New Grove

is adequate to the size and scope of the subject in question.

The idea of devoting a dictionary to the music of one country has been

realised before, but the editors are not aware of any previous attempt to

describe a nation's musical culture in all its breadth and depth: the historical

and the current aspects of popular, folk, religious, concert and other forms of

music, and the educational, critical, administrative and commercial

manifestations.

This second excerpt from EMC (p. xi) neatly encapsulates the aims and inten?

tions which underlie the present argument for an Irish encyclopedia, which I

have tried to justify by the discussion of twelve categories of research, to say

nothing of popular music, which would undoubtedly require consideration and

comprehensive inclusion. The editors of EMC draw attention to 'the coin?

cidence of three-and-a-half centuries of Canada's colonization with the period of the vast majority of the works which appear in the standard Western concert

repertoire of the 20th Century', and to 'the expansion of co-existing and

sometimes cross-fertilizing musical cultures' (Indian, French and British), as

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44 White

themes which recur frequently throughout EMC. Similar themes are notably relevant to the enterprise of an Irish encyclopedia.

In proposing the EMC as a model for an Irish encyclopedia, therefore, I am

conscious not only of the desirable end-product of the EMC itself, but also of the

means and motivations by which it was brought to production. Five separate

stages characterised the production process, a process which could be partly emulated in an Irish context: a committee to examine the feasibility of the pro?

ject and to appoint a team of editors and consultants was struck, criteria of in?

clusion, treatment, format and style were established, lists of entry headings and

estimates of word length were prepared, some sixty consultants selected accor?

ding to field of specialization were appointed, and, finally, a small army of

several hundred contributors was mobilized. Only then could the arduous

"journey of discovery5 begin. The editors of EMC stress the fact that the project itself stimulated the research and cultivated the expertise necessary for its com?

pletion, in direct contrast to the usual process whereby an encyclopedia utilizes

existing research and long-established technical competence. The relationship between EMC and some of its contributors would perhaps be replicated by the

production of an EMI, notwithstanding the advanced state of research in some

areas discussed in this paper. The EMC was an expensive undertaking (the estimated budget for the second edition alone stands at one million Canadian

dollars) and its production took ten years from the appointment of editors and

staff in 1971. Given the comparatively smaller field of research in Ireland, it is fair

to say that these extremes of cost and time would not apply in the case of an EMI.

Nevertheless, an encyclopedia adequate to music in Ireland in the terms out?

lined here would certainly comprise one of the largest single undertakings in the

humanities to date in this country.

Ill

And yet: a dictionary, even the best dictionary, is essentially just another

trophy of positivism. It is a static rather than a dynamic thing, an immovable

object rather than an irresistible force (Joseph Kerman, Muskokgy, 1985).

These remarks by Joseph Kerman on The New Grove remind us that there is a case

to be made against the production of yet another music dictionary or en?

cyclopedia, no matter how pressing the need. Kerman's impatience with

positivistic musicology (which for him is principally manifested by the prolif? eration of critical editions and works of reference in music since 1945) should not

distract us, however, from the fact that he writes thus after the event. By his own

admission, his book-length survey of the discipline of musicology 'could scarce?

ly have been written at all5 without The New Grove and the information it af?

forded him. Kerman bites the hand that fed him in a brilliantly argued critique of

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Encyclopedia of Music 45

an intellectual pursuit which seems to him to have stood still in its dominant

mode of fact-finding and meticulous preparation of musical texts. 'What appals

me', Kerman observes, 'is that musicologists as a corps spend so much more

time in establishing texts than in thinking about the texts so established'

(Musicology, p. 226). Kerman's reservations about the failure of musicology to

accommodate or move towards a phase of high-level critical thought in many

areas of musical research and his diagnosis of the polarisation of musical thought

generally (with regard to the widening gulf between analysis and style criticism) constitute a persuasive appeal against the paramount commitment to low-level

research which an encyclopedia would inevitably entail. The sophisticated and

wjiolly desirable modes of criticism which he and other similarly disposed musicologists have evolved are not immediately germane to the production of

an encyclopedia. This in turn means that the primary commitment to research

would entail for the contributors a deferment of the kinds of critical inquiry which Kerman passionately and eloquently advocates as the necessary motion

forward for musicology as a whole in the 1990s. That this motion is clearly discernible in much (but of course not all) recent British, American and Euro?

pean musicology, however, does not gainsay the fact that a meaningful mode of

criticism is naturally subsequent to basic research, at least in music.

To return to my twelve categories: the research associated with them which I

have outlined in this paper is characterised by an essential, positivistic impulse to

acquire information, as I observed at the outset. It would be unwise to ignore this impulse or to underestimate its value. This is not to suggest that certain

aspects of music in Ireland (opera in eighteenth-century Dublin, for example) are not already amenable to modes of criticism which would incorporate textual

analysis and contextual, comparative interpretation. But I would argue, at the

last, that if music in Ireland is to attain the level of critical insight and cultural debate which Joseph Kerman rightly prefers over the unthinking generation of

more and more information, the facts about that music must inevitably be ac?

cessible. An Encyclopedia of Music in Irelandwould provide such access. From the

musicologist's point of view, it would also focus the field of research and clarify the many aspects ofthat field through which our

understanding of the role and

meaning of music in Ireland might be enriched.

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