Feadaíl – The Whistling Tradition in Ireland c. 1800–2021
Robert Harvey
Comhaltas, August 2024

Published by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann as a Wexford Fleadh Cheoil legacy project, Feadaíl by Robert Harvey is a remarkable history of traditional whistling in Ireland – not tin whistling, but actual whistling. At over 550 pages, it not only explores sources going back to the 1800s but also comes with two CDs that begin with recordings of Brendan Rogers at the Feis Ceoil in the Antient Concert Rooms in Dublin in 1899. The book and research was prompted by Harvey’s own experience of adjudicating at Fleadh Cheoil whistling competitions several years ago: ‘While it was heartening to see young musicians taking up the mantle and carrying on the tradition, I couldn’t help but notice that the old style was being replaced and the old techniques disappearing.’ Mary Whelan of Comhaltas’ Dublin County Board also notes in her introduction that ‘Whistling had been slowly decreasing in practice within our Branches’. The original idea was to assemble recordings of previous winners of the all-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil competition, but the project naturally grew. The final book contains nine chapters exploring topics such as ‘Repertoire and Exponents in Pre-Famine Ireland 1794–1854’, ‘The Emergence of Whistling as a Theatre Act from c. 1890’, ‘Style in the Whistling Tradition of Ireland’ and more. It also contains 212 transcriptions from whistlers, details on previous Fleadh Cheoil and Feis Ceoil winners, and interviews with key exponents. The writer John B. Keane is quoted as saying that every community boasts one brilliant whistler. This book will strengthen this old tradition. 

To purchase Feadaíl, visit www.robertharveymusic.com.

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Cork Folk Festival 1979–2024 – Reeling Down the Years
William Hammond
August 2024

To mark 45 years of the Cork Folk Festival, festival co-Director William Hammond has produced a valuable volume of memories and documentation to provide a history of the event. Cork Folk Festival 1979–2024 – Reeling Down the Years brings the reader through every festival since 1979 year by year, providing descriptions of the event, anecdotes, and the full line-up, all interspersed with reminiscences from those who have been involved with the festival. Amidst Hammond’s narrative, there are contributions from co-Director Jim Walsh, Malachy Daly, Timmy McCarthy, Noel Shine, Paul Dromey, Ray Barron, Tony Grace and more. There are also wonderful photos of artists who played the festival as well as images of all the festival posters. Hammond’s introduction sets the scene and provides important information on the music scene in Cork in the 1960s and 70s from which the festival emerged. The origins of the festival lie in a story on page 16 when Malachy Daly had just returned from the Dublin Folk Festival in 1978: ‘The following evening I went to the Phoenix bar and met Tom Dineen, the owner, [who] asked me where I was for the weekend. I told him all about the Dublin festival. I was full of the joys of the great music and Tom said to me “Why Don’t you start your own festival?” You organise something and if you lose money, I will support you. That’s how the whole thing started, it’s thanks to Tom Dineen.’ Cork Folk Festival 1979–2024 is a rich document for all those interested in the modern history of Irish traditional music. It also includes a discography of music from Cork from 1929 to 2004. The book will be officially launched at this year’s festival on Saturday 5 October at Cork City Library at 6pm, and is available to purchase from Vibes and Scribes bookshop in Cork. Visit www.vibesandscribes.ie. 

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Ceoltóirí Chualann – The Band That Changed the Course of Irish Music
Peadar Ó Riada
Mercier Press, April 2024

Ceoltóirí Chualann – The Band That Changed the Course of Irish Music by musician, composer and broadcaster Peadar Ó Riada is a book in two parts. The first 54 pages provide a short but interesting history of the group, which was formed by composer Seán Ó Riada through his theatre work in 1960 and made a number of seminal recordings over that decade. Ceoltóirí Chualann also includes pen portraits of all the members and some biographical information of the composer himself. The second part contains 144 pages of arrangements by Ó Riada and the band, although they are not cross-referenced with the actual recordings so readers will have to do some searching to listen to them. The arrangements are not notated in staff notation but rather present the names of the tunes, the number of times each part was played, and the instruments involved. It’s an unorthodox approach but, given the creativity in traditional music today, who could say but that musicians will find something here to fuel their imaginations. Peadar Ó Riada says in the Foreword: ‘When you read the arrangements, you will see that they are far more sophisticated than mere accompaniment. I admit that I find it very hard to see anything comparable, in the last fifty-three years, since they played their last notes.’ The book also contains a discography of the band’s recordings, details of their broadcasts, some sample score pages, and a number of pictures.

Available from Mercier Press. Visit www.mercierpress.ie.

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Patrick O’Neill’s Manuscripts – Volume 2
Kathleen Loughnane
2024

Kathleen Loughnane has recently produced a second volume of harp arrangements drawn from the Patrick O’Neill Manuscripts. O’Neill, who was born in 1765 and died in 1832, was a farmer and miller from the townland of Owning in County Kilkenny. A descendant of the once powerful O’Neill clan, Patrick gained a reputation as an historian, folklorist and collector of traditional music and Gaelic manuscripts. He was also a piper and fiddle player and wrote poetry in Irish. His collection, which includes seven music manuscripts and a printed music book all purchased by the National Library of Ireland in 2008, contains a fascinating record of the music prevalent in the south-east of Ireland in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Among the pieces are country dance tunes, song airs, military marches, items from the harp repertoire, and continental dances – minuets and gavottes. Loughnane writes that the collection ‘is all the more interesting for having been compiled by a traditional musician, embedded in Gaelic language and culture – contrasting with collections such as those of Bunting and Petrie.’

Loughnane published her first volume of arrangements with accompanying CD in 2016, and this second publications also comes with a CD. She writes: ‘The challenge I set myself was to breathe new life into these old tunes before releasing them to be assayed and enjoyed by other musicians. Interpreting a tune is a never-ending journey involving a search for the heart of a tune, the point where it begins to sing.’ Among the tunes in her collection are a version of ‘Planxty Plunkett’ different to those in the Neal and Bunting collections, the air ‘Caitlín Triall’, and ‘Clout the Cauldron’, one of the oldest Scottish dance tunes.

To purchase the books and CDs of Patrick O’Neill’s Manuscripts, email kathloughnane [at] gmail.com. 

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Mo Cheol
Nóra Byrne Kavanagh
August 2024

Nóra Byrne Kavanagh is a flute and piano player and composer from Milltown near Ferns in County Wexford. She studied in Waterford Regional Technical College (later renamed SETU) and began teaching at the Waterford branch of Comhaltas in the 1990s. In 2020, Kavanagh published a history of the branch titled Music & Memories, and now she has published her first collection of tune compositions and arrangements, titled Mo Cheol. The book contains 52 tunes, including two suites, the Waterford Suite and Wexford Suite, which contain a number of tunes arranged for full ensemble. Her tune ‘The Road to the Wexford Fleadh’ was performed at the opening of this year’s Fleadh Cheoil in Wexford. In his introduction to the collection, Fintan Vallely writes: ‘Her finesse as a solo musician on flute and sense of harmony on piano fuse to yield both interesting new yet old-sounding melodies and powerful arrangements. Her naming is of our times too, for whereas in the climate of nineteenth-century emigration a quarter of tunes might be nostalgically named for left-behind places, half of this collection celebrates “place” as the composer’s lived-in environment.’ The book also contains illustrative photographs by Paul Kavanagh. Mo Cheol is a rich collection with excellent jigs such as ‘Mahon Falls’ and ‘Comeragh View’, and reels such as ‘Cullentra Trail’ and ‘Seán Byrne’s Dancing Shoes’, which is named after her father. Mo Cheol was launched at the Fleadh Cheoil on 6 August by Journal of Music editor Toner Quinn. 

To purchase Mo Cheol, visit https://norakavanagh.com.

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Compositions of Tommy Whelan: Traditional Irish Music Dance Tunes
Seán Moloney
September 2024

This is a collection of 19 tunes composed by the Galway flute player Tommy Whelan (1879–1951), compiled with an introduction and biographical details by the flute player Seán Moloney. Whelan was born in Philadelphia in the United States to Irish emigrants who returned home shortly afterwards to Ballinakill in east County Galway. In 1924, Whelan was a founding member of the Ballinakill céilí band that made a number of recordings and broadcasts in the 20s and 30s. Whelan then emigrated to Chicago, but also eventually returned to Ireland.

Moloney’s father Eddie (1919–1980) was a friend and neighbour of Whelan and almost all of the music and tunes are sourced from him. Whelan is known as the composer of the session standard ‘Whelan’s Jig’, but what may not be as well known is that Eddie credits him as the composer of the two other session favourites, ‘Devaney Goat’ and ‘The Earl’s Chair’. Frankie Gavin opened his famous Croch Suas É flute album with ‘Eddie Moloney’s Set’, which comprised two of Whelan’s tunes in this book.

Compositions of Tommy Whelan: Traditional Irish Music Dance Tunes also contains a CD of the tunes played mainly by Eddie. Seán Moloney is giving a presentation on 4 October at 8.30pm at the Crane Bar in Galway to launch the book. It will include a performance by Frankie Gavin on flute.

Available to purchase from Custy’s Music Shop. Visit https://custysmusic.com.

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The Wexford Tunebook – Traditional Compositions, Collections and Repertoire of County Wexford
Compiled and edited by John Roche
Wexford Public Library Service, August 2024

The Wexford Tunebook, like Feadaíl above, is a legacy project of the 2024 Fleadh Cheoil in Wexford Town. Compiled and edited by Wexford fiddle player John Roche, and published by the Wexford Public Library Service, the 460-page mammoth book includes over 450 traditional pieces gathered from sources throughout County Wexford and the Wexford diaspora. The publication is in two parts: the first consists of tunes composed by people who are from Wexford or of Wexford descent. The second gathers tunes associated with the county. Among the sources for this latter section are a mid-nineteenth century Kilmore manuscript; tunes with a Wexford origin published in The Feis Ceoil Collection of Irish Airs in 1914, compiled by P. J. McCall and Arthur Darley; tunes mentioned in the folklore writings of Patrick Kennedy, particularly his book The Banks of the Boro; and Wexford tunes drawn from a range of other print sources such as O’Neills. In his introduction to The Wexford Tunebook, Roche writes: ‘Like all projects of this type, as more music was unearthed, and people around the country and indeed further afield became aware of the project, the collection grew. People sent me recordings of themselves or of family members playing tunes that they had composed. In some instances, music was sent to me written out in ABC notation or very occasionally, in staff notation. In most cases, either myself or Nóra Byrne Kavanagh transcribed the notation from the recordings’. The Wexford Tunebook will be an invaluable resource for musicians from the south-east as well as those with a keen interest in music of the area. The book was launched on 5 August at the Fleadh Cheoil and is available to purchase online. Visit www.traxmusicstore.com.

In other news, Cork University Press recently published the third edition of The Companion to Irish Traditional Music edited by Fintan Vallely. See our review here.

For our February round-up of music books, see here.

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