Queen's University Belfast | Research Projects

Research Projects

Current Projects

An Historical Typology of Irish Song: Transmission, Performance and Cultural Memory

Principal Investigator: Professor Edward Larrissy

Funding Body: AHRC Large Grant Scheme (2012-15)

Description: The project will establish a typology of Irish song based on evidence of transmission, performance and cultural memory. The main problem in interrogating this archive is the dearth of written musical documents which might bridge the gap between pre-18th-century sources and the activities of field collectors of oral-tradition song during the 18th-20th centuries. Also to be taken into consideration are the intellectual and methodological challenges posed by the overlay of several generations of editorial hands.

We accept that we cannot necessarily trace the longer-term historical trajectory of a given song text or melody for which earlier evidence is absent. Therefore we propose to develop a typological method which unlocks information on continuities of tradition, and discloses possibilities for developing a theory of cultural practice. An example is the funeral elegy which was kept up in both Ireland and Scotland until the mid-20th century and keys into a pattern of singing and social ritual well attested throughout medieval Europe (and still continuing in parts of Central and Eastern Europe today). A given elegy may in itself not be particularly old, but its 'type', i.e., melodic elements and textual topoi, are unchanging and thus recognisable as belonging to an older style of singing (and social expression). Such melodies are characterised typologically as formulaic or cellular in structure and relate to oral-tradition performance for which the earliest European textual evidence survives in ninth-century French and German sources (the date of the oldest surviving manuscripts containing Latin song texts with neumatic music notation).

The work of composers and arrangers which survives in manuscripts and printed sources of the 17th-20th centuries in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man compensates in part for the rupture in historical evidence. It suggests links to an earlier era and to living practice, thus providing important material for testing the typology (albeit at one remove) and for closing historical gaps. Furthermore, the census of primary sources and the resulting typology will present an opportunity to interrogate these materials in a completely new way. By establishing criteria for identifying historical layers in the collecting, editing and arranging of oral-tradition song, these processes themselves will come under scrutiny - processes such as the standardisation of melodic nuances which might have been alien to outside observers, errors in recall, or indeed re-arrangement of materials to suit other environments, such as harmonic settings for piano accompaniment in urban salons and concert halls. The engagement of 21st-century sensibilities challenges us to re-evaluate older world-views.