John Birchensha: Writings on Music

John Birchensha: Writings on Music

Author: Christopher D.S. Field

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1351561588

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John Birchensha (c.1605-?1681) is chiefly remembered for the impression that his theories about music made on the mathematicians, natural philosophers and virtuosi of the Royal Society in the 1660s and 1670s, and for inventing a system that he claimed would enable even those without practical experience of music to learn to compose in a short time by means of 'a few easy, certain, and perfect Rules'-his most famous composition pupil being Samuel Pepys in 1662. His great aim was to publish a treatise on music in its philosophical, mathematical and practical aspects (which would have included a definitive summary of his rules of composition), entitled Syntagma music Subscriptions for this book were invited in 1672-3, and it was due to be published by March 1675; but it never appeared, and no final manuscript of it survives. Consequently knowledge about his work has hitherto remained extremely sketchy. Recent research, however, has brought to light a number of manuscripts which allow us at last to form a more complete view of Birchensha's ideas. Almost none of this material has been previously published. The new items include an autograph treatise of c.1664 ('A Compendious Discourse of the Principles of the Practicall & Mathematicall Partes of Musick') which Birchensha presented to the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and which covers concisely much of the ground that he intended to cover in Syntagma music a detailed synopsis for Syntagma music hich he prepared for a meeting of the Royal Society in February 1676; and an autograph notebook (now in Brussels) containing his six rules of composition with music examples, presumably written for a pupil. Bringing all this material together in a single volume will allow scholars to see how Birchensha's rules and theories developed over a period of fifteen years, and to gain at least a flavour of the lost Syntagma music


The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast

The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast

Author: Roy Johnston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1351542109

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Roy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast?s thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast?s musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast?s prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.


Documents of Irish Music History in the Long 19th Century

Documents of Irish Music History in the Long 19th Century

Author: Kerry Houston

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781846827242

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This volume presents extracts from a number of documents from the long nineteenth century that pertain to the history of music in Ireland. The documents fall into one of three categories: musical notation, text, image. Each chapter contains a copy of a document (or an extract) along with an essay that provides context, explanation and interpretation. The editors have sought to represent a broad range of documents that address aspects of the history of music in Ireland: social history; the economics of musical life; performance practice; musical taste and repertoire; theory and aesthetics; the historiography of Irish music history; national identity, the traditional repertoire. The Irish Musical Studies series is published in association with the Society for Musicology in Ireland.


Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives

Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives

Author: Martin Dowling

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-24

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1317008405

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Written from the perspective of a scholar and performer, Traditional Music and Irish Society investigates the relation of traditional music to Irish modernity. The opening chapter integrates a thorough survey of the early sources of Irish music with recent work on Irish social history in the eighteenth century to explore the question of the antiquity of the tradition and the class locations of its origins. Dowling argues in the second chapter that the formation of what is today called Irish traditional music occurred alongside the economic and political modernization of European society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dowling goes on to illustrate the public discourse on music during the Irish revival in newspapers and journals from the 1880s to the First World War, also drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan to place the field of music within the public sphere of nationalist politics and cultural revival in these decades. The situation of music and song in the Irish literary revival is then reflected and interpreted in the life and work of James Joyce, and Dowling includes treatment of Joyce’s short stories A Mother and The Dead and the 'Sirens' chapter of Ulysses. Dowling conducted field work with Northern Irish musicians during 2004 and 2005, and also reflects directly on his own experience performing and working with musicians and arts organizations in order to conclude with an assessment of the current state of traditional music and cultural negotiation in Northern Ireland in the second decade of the twenty-first century.


Music Preferred

Music Preferred

Author: Lorraine Byrne Bodley

Publisher: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag

Published: 2018-05-28

Total Pages: 920

ISBN-13: 399012403X

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The contributions to this Festschrift, honouring the distinguished Irish musicologist Harry White on his sixtieth birthday, have wide repercussions and span a broad timeframe. But for all its variety, this volume is built around two axes: on the one hand, attention is focussed on the history of music and literature in Ireland and the British Isles, and on the other, topics of the German and Austrian musical past. In both cases it reflects the particular interest of a scholar, whose playful, sometimes unconventional way of approaching his subject is so refreshing and time and again leads to innovative, surprising insights. It also reflects a scholar, who – for all the broadening of his perspectives that has taken place over the years – has always adhered to the strands of his scholarly preoccupations that have become dear to him: the music of the 'Austro-Italian Baroque', and Irish musical culture first and foremost. An international cast of authors announces the sustaining influence of Harry White's wide-ranging research. Professor Dr Thomas Hochradner Chair of the Department of Musicology University of Music and Dramatic Arts Mozarteum Salzburg


Women and Music in Ireland

Women and Music in Ireland

Author: Laura Watson

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2022-12-13

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1783277556

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Explores the world of women's professional and amateur musical activity as it developed on and beyond the island of Ireland.


The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995

The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995

Author: Patrick F. Devine

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13:

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"This book addresses the relationship between music and cultural history in Ireland. It variously identifies and examines the development of music as an outgrowth of extra-musical concepts and socio-cultural entities, including celticism (in pre-christian and early christian Ireland), the ideology of ethnic culture, education, nationalism, religion, the composer in modern Ireland and the impact of music on the Irish literary imagination. Throughout the book, an abiding concern with music as the expression of political, social and religious norms of cultural development in Ireland affords thematic coherence to the essays as a whole." "As with the preceding volumes in the series, Music and Irish Cultural History breaks new ground in the cultivation of musicology in Ireland. In particular, it serves as a stimulus to the better understanding of music as a vital preoccupation of the Irish Mind."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved


Thomas Salmon: An essay to the advancement of musick and the ensuing controversy, 1672-3

Thomas Salmon: An essay to the advancement of musick and the ensuing controversy, 1672-3

Author: Benjamin Wardhaugh

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780754668442

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Thomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute quickly descended. Beneath the unedifying invective employed by Salmon, Locke and their supporters however, serious and novel statements were being made about what constituted musical knowledge and what was the proper way to acquire it. This volume is the first published scholarly edition of Salmon's writings on notation, previously available only in microfilm and online facsimiles.


Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond

Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond

Author: Mark Fitzgerald

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 131709249X

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Music and Identity in Ireland and Beyond represents the first interdisciplinary volume of chapters on an intricate cultural field that can be experienced and interpreted in manifold ways, whether in Ireland (The Republic of Ireland and/or Northern Ireland), among its diaspora(s), or further afield. While each contributor addresses particular themes viewed from discrete perspectives, collectively the book contemplates whether ’music in Ireland’ can be regarded as one interrelated plane of cultural and/or national identity, given the various conceptions and contexts of both Ireland (geographical, political, diasporic, mythical) and Music (including a proliferation of practices and genres) that give rise to multiple sites of identification. Arranged in the relatively distinct yet interweaving parts of ’Historical Perspectives’, ’Recent and Contemporary Production’ and ’Cultural Explorations’, its various chapters act to juxtapose the socio-historical distinctions between the major style categories most typically associated with music in Ireland - traditional, classical and popular - and to explore a range of dialectical relationships between these musical styles in matters pertaining to national and cultural identity. The book includes a number of chapters that examine various movements (and ’moments’) of traditional music revival from the late eighteenth century to the present day, as well as chapters that tease out various issues of national identity pertaining to individual composers/performers (art music, popular music) and their audiences. Many chapters in the volume consider mediating influences (infrastructural, technological, political) and/or social categories (class, gender, religion, ethnicity, race, age) in the interpretation of music production and consumption. Performers and composers discussed include U2, Raymond Deane, Afro-Celt Sound System, E.J. Moeran, Séamus Ennis, Kevin O’Connell, Stiff Little Fingers, Frederick May, Arnold