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Irish music is a subset of the music
traditions of the Celtic peoples (those people who originally spoke some
variety of Gaelic). These traditions include Irish, Scottish, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, and Breton.
Included in the Scottish group are songs and tunes from the Hebrides, Shetland and Northumberland
which, while south of the Scottish border in England, is very much Scottish in its traditional
music.
Because of the large number of Irish tunes and songs in this collection, I have put them into this separate section. Please consult the Celtic section for a more complete description of Celtic music. Some tunes in the Irish tradition are also well known in American tradition and I have left them in the Old Time Tunes category. ("Old Mother Flanagan" is a good example). Type of dances common in Ireland are: Jigs
The structure of Irish music is usually simple. In the past, most tunes consisted of 2 x 8-bar phrases, called Parts, which are usually repeated. These 8-bar parts can be further sub-divided into 2 x 4-bar sub phrases which are often quite similar. A typical form therefore is AABB which is usually repeated for the length of the dance. More recently developed tunes commonly have 3 or even 4 parts. Some of my audio sources for this music are The Clancy Brothers, The Chieftains, Eugene O'Donnell, Mick Maloney and The Boys of the Lough, all of whom have made excellent recordings of traditional material. The most used printed sources in my library include: Cole's One Thousand Fiddle Tunes Patrick Galvin's Irish Songs of Resistance Miles Krassen's edition of O'Neill's Music of Ireland John Loesburg's An Irish Tunebook, part 1 and part 2 Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies Robin Williamson's English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish Fiddle Tunes |
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