The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland, 1770-1970 (review)

The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland 1770-1970. By Harry White (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) 227 pp. $24.00

Cultural history has taken a long time to come in from the proverbial cold in Irish academia. No longer marginalized by the conflicting historiographies of nationalism and revisionism, cultural investigations of Ireland's past have grown in scope and stature throughout the 1990s. Among the catalysts in this emergent alchemy is an influential series of Field Day essays (published in conjunction with Cork University Press), which has infused Irish cultural history with fresh interdisciplinary perspectives since its first publications appeared in 1996. Now Field Day has added an impressive opus from White to its auspicious pantheon of research.

Though not a history of music in Ireland as such, The Keeper's Recital claims to be the first book to survey the development of musical thought in modern Irish history. White's erudite study begins in the 1770s, at which point Ireland's two musical cultures--the native Irish and the European "high art" traditions--appear to have parted company (for various musical, social, and political reasons). It ends in 1970, immediately prior to the death of Seán Ó Riada, one of the most controversial musical figures in twentieth-century Ireland. In perusing the intervening centuries, White focuses specifically on the influential figures of George Frideric Handel and Turlough O'Carolan, Edward Bunting and Thomas Moore, Thomas Davis and Douglas Hyde, whose romanticism, antiquarianism, and nationalism helped shape the destiny of musical thought in modern Ireland. Sitting amid this mainstream discourse is a compelling evaluation of the Cecilian Movement for the reform of church music in post-famine Ireland. Echoing Larkin's hypothesis that the devotional revolution in post-famine Ireland was "a substitute culture," White's treatment of the European-centered Cecilian Movement is a welcome exposé of a hitherto neglected chapter in Irish musical, social, and ecclesiastical history. ¹

From the perspective of interdisciplinary history, however, The Keeper's Recital is not without shortcomings. These occur mainly in the realms of elementary hypothesis formation and research design. In scrutinizing a myriad of contentious issues, pivotal periods, and creative luminaries in Irish music history, the opus seems snared by an underlying premise that Irish music history has resulted from that timeworn conflict between the two dominant civilizations on the island--namely, those of the Irish Gael and the English Planter. White contends that the cultural production of music in Ireland from 1770 to 1970 oscillated between creative figures who wanted to integrate both civilizations and those who were determined to keep them apart. Throughout his work, however, there is a conspicuous reluctance to analyze discerningly the musical "middle ground," which included the majority of Irish musicians, popular as well as traditional. According to White's polarized matrix (which began with Moore's politicization of the "native repertory" and ended with Ó Riada's departure from "high art" music), Ireland failed to produce any prodigies who might rank as "modern art composers" alongside their illustrious homologues on the European mainland. In stark contrast to this dearth in "high art" music, White cites the case of Ireland's Anglo-Irish writers who recognized the need to adapt to English as a vehicle of literary creativity. No such adaptation was to take place in music. To compound its paralysis, music (both the "ethnic" and "high art" genres) was recruited as an agent of cultural nationalism, thus, rendering composers unable to escape from the subversive power of Irish writers.

The entrenchment of White's hypothesis seems even more pronounced when placed alongside his narrow-gauge choice of sources and his lack of experimentation with interdisciplinary research techniques from historical anthropology and cultural studies. Throughout his work, he remains tacitly indifferent to cultural trends within the world of Irish traditional music, which (contrary to the...