Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century ed. by Kerry Houston, Maria McHale, and Michael Murphy (review)

Documents of Irish Music History in the Long Nineteenth Century takes up issues pursued in previous essay collections belonging to the Irish Musical Studies series. As the twelfth volume, this collection aligns most closely with Music and Irish Cultural History (vol. 3, 1995) and Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (vol. 9, 2009), bringing together prominent and emerging scholars to interrogate music's role within the contexts of nineteenth-century socio-politics and culture. In his introduction, Michael Murphy describes the book as 'explor[ing] aspects of Ireland's musical past through the lens of historical documents' (p. 15). What sounds like a rather self-evident statement—through what kind of documents would one explore the past if not historical ones?— becomes more significant in the light of the collection's chief aim. This is to shed new light on music in nineteenth-century Ireland and, perhaps more importantly, to point to historiographical concerns in relation to the music under study (p.15).

While some themes (for instance, music journalism, cultural identity, and intersections between literature and music) are familiar, the volume features hitherto unexplored approaches and topics. The book's seventeen chapters are divided into three subsections, geared towards types of sources rather than themes: I. Writings, II. Music, and III. Archival Documents. This division is practical, enabling a clear categorization of all chapter topics, even if more than one type of source is drawn on. Moreover, two overarching themes unite all contributions: first, all chapters discuss music as cultural practice, a concept encompassing authorship, agency, institutions (publishing, journalism, performance, and education), cultural identity, as well as repertory, taste, and intersections between amateurism, semi-professionalism, and audiences. Second, many of the volume's authors consider Irish cultural history through a pan-European lens. Although chapter titles may not declare these strands of enquiry, they are evident on more subtle levels. Perhaps Murphy, in his introduction, might have articulated shared themes and their intersections somewhat more explicitly.

The first three chapters grapple with intersections between music, identity, and the public sphere in Ireland. Harry White (ch. 1) contextualizes Thomas Moore's 'Letter on Music' within Moore's oeuvre and its own reception. Scrutinizing instances of musical antiquarianism and the changing socio-political circumstances, White discusses the extent to which Irish music and music in Ireland generated a sense of national identity. Katherine Ferris (ch. 2) looks at the newspaper coverage of the Lord Lieutenant's command night concert on 25 February 1840. The event saw some socio-political disturbances ignited by supporters of the Lord Lieutenant's political opponent Daniel O'Connell. Comparing reviews of the event published in the Freeman's Journal, Evening Packet, and Saunder's News-Letter, Ferris argues that each paper was biased according to its own editorial line, sponsorship, and readership, thus helping to shape and represent the identity of each community of supporters, whether of the Lord Lieutenant or O'Connell. Murphy (ch. 3) follows up on related issues in music journalism by reconstructing the authorship of 'An Apology for Harmony' published in the Dublin University Magazine of May 1841. Murphy establishes that William Elliot Hudson must have penned the document and offers a wide-ranging perspective on repertory discussed in various documents written around the same time as the'Apology'.

Surveys of musical repertory are elsewhere pursued to allow authors to link Irish music with that of the European continent. Chapter 4, by Paul Rodmell, examines the Dublin Theatre Royal's Annals written by Richard Michael Levey (1880), through which Levey identified influential musical protagonists of the time. A large part of this chapter is devoted to Italian opera at the Theatre Royal, which, partly due to the singers Jenny Lind and Catherine Hayes, became popular in mid-century Dublin (pp. 68– 70). Maria McHale (ch.15) scrutinizes repertory...