David Byers, Irish composer, musicologist, broadcaster



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Contents, though decidedly out-of-date since 2002!

1.
David Byers

(a) Address and email contact

(b) General biography / musical & compositional background

(c) Former BBC work

2. Select List of Compositions

Orchestral;  Chamber Music;  Solo & Keyboard;  Vocal & Choral;  Incidental Music

3. Select Programme Notes

Distractions of the Mind (solo piano piece) Five Stoned Cherries (solo piano piece)

Three Epigrams of Janus (solo piano pieces) Crooked Lymbecks (orchestral piece)

4. Belfast Musical Festival (the first one - 1813) including Bunting's performance of Messiah by Handel.

5. Edward Bunting (1773 - 1843) a potted biography of the folk-song collector

6. Norman Hay (1889-1942) a biographical note and work-list to follow in due course…

 

Contact David Byers at:

 

 

425 Beersbridge Road

Bloomfield

Belfast BT5 5DU

Northern Ireland

Tel/Fax: 028 9065 9706

Email: David.Byers@btinternet.com

David Byers

Studied at Queen's University, Belfast 1965-67 and was awarded the Manson Scholarship in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London 1968-72. After a post-graduate year at the RAM he was awarded the Macauley Fellowship by the Irish Arts Council in 1972. That same year the award of a Belgian Government Scholarship enabled him to study with Henri Pousseur at the Liège Conservatoire.

Served on Music and Opera Sub-Committee of Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) for many years (approx. 1979 - 1992).

Awarded an ARAM and in 1984 appointed to the Irish Arts Council, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, for five years.

Northern editor of Soundpost and Music Ireland, two joint Arts Councils-supported music magazines (1981 - 1989), contributing many articles and reviews.

ACNI-nominated member of the board of Annaghmakerrig, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a residential centre for artists (1987 - 1994).

BBC-nominated board member of the Ulster Orchestra from 1981-2002, also serving on its General Purposes & Finance sub-committee until 2000. Re-invited as Board member in his own right 2002; resigned June 2002 to take up the post of Chief Executive.

He is an alumnus of the Salzburg Seminar (1979 and 1997).

Currently serving as a Governor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin (since 1992) and as a board member of the RTÉ-supported National Chamber Choir (since 1996).

Founding committee member of Sonorities, serving since 1981, chairing, planning, booking and coordinating the 1995 Sonorities Festival.

Board member of Opera Northern Ireland for three years; served on the European Music Year Committee for NI (1985) and the Belfast Harp Festival Committee (1992).

Served on the juries of many international festivals (representing BBC Radio 3 at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris, 1981, 82 and 83; the Hungarian Radio & TV International Conductors' Competition in 1986; the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1987 and 88), including Cork International Choral Festival, Dublin International Piano Competition, Dublin International Organ Festival, the John McCormack Competition (1996, 1998 [Chairman of the jury], and 2000), the UTV School Choir of the Year 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002, and the Gaillard International Piano Competition 1998, 2000 and 2002.

Contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1981), BBC Radio 3's Fairest Isle book, record sleeve notes for various companies, and articles for a range of magazines (including The Listener and The New Hungarian Quarterly), newspapers and specialist publications (including poems for an Ulster Orchestra publication in the 1970s).

Many editions of 17th, 18th, and 19th century music, including piano concertos by Sterndale Bennett, symphonies by William Crotch, music by Samuel Wesley and organ music by Pepusch published by Universal Edition in Austria.

Founder conductor of the New Belmont Consort (1972 - 1985), with many public concerts and radio and TV broadcasts, including BBC Radio Ulster's first-ever stereo broadcast. Conductor of the St. George's Singers (1994 - 1999), specialising in large-scale works such as the St. Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass.

Conducted many editions of Songs of Praise for BBC1 Television between 1981 and 1995.

As a composer, David Byers's works cover many genres, including incidental music for Radio 3 plays by Büchner, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin, many organ works (mostly written for performance by Norman Finlay) and commissions for the Ulster Orchestra (including its USA tour in 1992), National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Ulster Youth Orchestra (1996), Lontano, Concorde and the Arditti and Britten Quartets. The Organ Works of David Byers is the title of an M.A. thesis written by Dónal Doherty (Maynooth 1991). An entry on David Byers is included in the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Also keen on genealogy, gardening, DIY and photography, when time permits!

After his studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Liège, David Byers returned to live in Northern Ireland, initially as a freelance composer, part-time music teacher (one morning a week at Regent House Grammar School, some private pupils and teaching organ, theory and aural at the City of Belfast School of Music) and organist and choirmaster of Belmont Presbyterian Church, Belfast. These were also the years of the thriving New Belmont Consort and its many concerts.

After some part-time work in BBC Northern Ireland’s Music Library, David Byers was appointed to the post of Music Producer in 1977, becoming Senior Music Producer in 1981 and Chief Producer, Music & Arts in 1997.

His extensive BBC career centred on music programmes for BBC Northern Ireland and the networks, in particular for BBC Radio 3, although that did not exclude other areas of interest. The range was considerable, including speech programmes for Radio 4 in the 1980s based on Irish myths, fairy stories, and short stories; a prize for Radio Ulster for a folk music production from Czech Radio (with David Hammond); Ulster Band for BBC Radio Ulster and big band programmes and a major James Galway series for Radio 2.

In 1998 he was executive producer for An Irish Requiem on BBC2 network television - a programme following the St George's Singers and choirs from Enniskillen, Carlow and Wexford, with the Ulster Orchestra, performing Mozart's Requiem in Wexford, Dublin and Belfast. The final Belfast performance coincided with the Good Friday Agreement, adding to the poignancy of a venture commemorating all the dead of the 1798 uprising.

David Byers has also presented a wide variety of programmes for BBC Radio 3 and for Radio Ulster, ranging from Music in our Time to editions of Composer of the Week, lunchtime concerts and Performance on 3.

In radio classical music he championed the development of frequent BBC Invitation Concerts given by the Ulster Orchestra (usually in the Ulster Hall, Belfast), along with chamber music recitals. Across 17 years, the BBC Summer Invitation Concerts featured seasons of Bruckner, Berwald, Schubert, Goetz, Sullivan, Legends, music by women composers, Double Concertos, etc. By 2000, the Northern Ireland region was hosting some twenty lunchtime recitals for Radio 3 in addition to the many BBC Radio Ulster lunchtime recitals - a considerable contribution to arts provision in Northern Ireland.

During David Byers’s tenure in charge of the music department, the region's contributions to network programmes included many Ulster Orchestra recordings and concerts, In Tune, Musical Encounters, Hear and Now, Composer of the Week, Digital Masters, programmes of traditional music, Wexford Festival Opera relays, chamber music recordings and relays, 18th century Dublin, etc.

Under his guidance, between 1981 and 2001, BBC Northern Ireland developed a distinctive artistic direction for the Ulster Orchestra's broadcast output, helping to change the awareness of the musical establishment to the music of the past 200 years - much of which had lain dormant: hence the major Radio 3 explorations of a wealth of British 19th century music (Sterndale Bennett, Samuel and Charles Wesley, Cipriani Potter, William Crotch, Stanford, etc.). Commissions for Irish composers (including Gerald Barry, Kevin O’Connell, Michael Alcorn, Ian Wilson, Philip Hammond, Stephen Gardiner and Elaine Agnew) and others (Adrian Thomas, Lyell Cresswell and Pawel Szymanski) were an important feature; as was the exploration of Ireland's musical heritage (including the rediscovery of music by Joan Trimble and Norman Hay).

David Byers also produced a number of programmes out of London, including a major series of choral and orchestral works by Thomas Linley and Samuel Wesley with the BBC Singers and the Orchestra of St John’s, Smith Square, organised as BBC Invitation Concerts in Knightsbridge. In September 1997 he organised a world première performance/recording of Samuel Wesley's Missa de Spiritu Sancto as a co-production between the BBC and RTÉ in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and RTÉ FM3.

David Byers took early retirement from the BBC in March 2002 to concentrate on his composing and writing. In June he produced a week of programmes recorded in France for BBC Radio 3 with Sean Rafferty presenting Paris in the Springtime for Morning Performance.

At the end of June 2002 David Byers was appointed Chief Executive of the Ulster Orchestra.

Visit the Ulster Orchestra’s website at  http://www.ulster-orchestra.org.uk

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Select List of Compositions

(This section to become more selective, but enlarged to give instrumentations etc.)

Orchestral

Tephra (1982)

Caliban's Masque (1982) Wind band

A Planxty for the Dancer (1983)

Moon is our breathing (orchestral version - see also chamber music)

Out of the Night (1991)

Toccata: La morte d'Orfeo (1996)

Madrigale: Ecce Orfeo (1996)

Crooked Lymbecks (2001)

Chamber Music

Epitaphs (1969)

Music for Crazy Jane (1971) fl.ob.cl.bsn

Thingummy-Jig (1971/73) wind quintet

The Nature of Gothic (1973)

Pholypony (1975) wind quintet

Triptych (1977) viola/piano

William Cowper: His Delight (1978)

Segue (1980)

Moonshadows (1981)

At the still point of the turning world (1981) string quartet

St. Columba and the Crane tuba & tape

The Wren's Blether (1984) radiophonic piece

The Deer's Horn (1988) oboe & viola

Moon is our breathing (?) octet

Sweeney Erect; Sweeney amongst the nightingales (1988?) (Sop/ ch. ensemble)

The journey of the Magi (1991) string quartet

Solo & Keyboard

Partita: Jesu, meine Freude (1968) organ

Icon (1972) organ

Canto (1972) flute

Cherries in the Round (1975) organ

Five stoned cherries (1975) piano

The harp that once … (1976) organ

Pibroch: Dunfermling Rune (1978) organ

Epiphanies (1979) violin

Dragons (1979) organ

Decadophony (1980) organ

In Nomine (1980) organ

Verses (1982) organ

Magnificat (1983) organ

Tuba mirum (1984) organ

Distractions of the Mind (1998) piano

Three Epigrams of Janus (2000) piano

The Rising of the Moon (2002) piano

Vocal & Choral

Many carols (1968 - )

Five Poems of Marie Overton (1970) Sop/piano

The Wind among the Reeds (1969) SSA

Songs for Granny (1969) Any voice/piano

As in their time (1969) SATB

The Tasking (1969) SSA/harp

Canzonets (1972) SATB

Night Song (1972) SATB

Cerises d'amour (1972) SSA or SSS

Preces & Responses (1975) SATB

Rhymes (1980) SATB

Colours (1985) Mezzo/piano

Mortality's Eclipse (1988) Mezzo/piano

Out of the hat (1997) SATB

Incidental Music

Büchner's Woyzeck (1986) (BBC Radio 3)

Sweeney Agonistes (T.S.Eliot) (1988?) (BBC Radio 3)

Sweeney Astray (Seamus Heaney) (1989) (BBC Radio 3)

Seize the Fire (Tom Paulin) (1990?) (BBC Radio 3)

Medea (Brendan Kennelly) (1991) (BBC Radio 3)

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DISTRACTIONS OF THE MIND

for solo piano

Distractions of the Mind was written early in 1998 for the First International Piano Competition of Rencontres Musicales de Gaillard (June 1998) and it is dedicated to Adilia Alieva. (See also http://windoms.sitek.net/~concours)

The music is based on a little keyboard work by Thomas Tomkins (1572 - 1656), A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times, which he wrote when he was 77. Tomkins was the last in a great line of virginalists, and he was writing in what was, by then, an old-fashioned contrapuntal style.

I first got to know the Sad Pavan in the early 1970s and used it to frame a Belfast concert in which I commissioned a number of Northern Irish composers to write their own Pavans. This was a particularly distracted time when the Northern Ireland troubles were at their worst and the new pieces were a response to that situation, however removed they might have been as "pure" music. My own contribution has somehow been mislaid in the intervening years, so it seemed appropriate, 25 years or so later, to revisit Tomkins' piece - particularly given the coincidences of a French piano competition, the 200th anniversary of the ill-fated 1798 Rebellion of the United Irishmen (which uniquely united Presbyterians and Catholics along with support from the French), and that, coincidentally, the Paris Conservatoire is now home to Tomkins' autograph score!

More often than not, it is minds which are described as being distracted rather than times. But the two go hand in hand. Tomkins' distracted times were occasioned by two Civil Wars, the execution of Charles I (just a fortnight before he wrote his Sad Pavan) and the establishment of Cromwell's republican Commonwealth (just a few months later the puritan Cromwell was in Ireland putting Catholic inhabitants of Drogheda and Wexford to the sword - a new order overturning the old, just as Tomkins' musical values and beliefs in a contrapuntal style were being overturned in the world at large by a fashionable new style with an emphasis on a treble part and a bass line.

The parallels with the political debates and bloody murders in the Ireland of 1798 and those of our own times are all too obvious. And the wheels of musical fashion also continue to turn!

Distractions of the Mind is a comparatively short work, like A Sad Pavan, and it uses harmonies from Tomkins' piece - passing chords that exist for a moment - along with some of Tomkins' little melodic motives that leap off the page and stick in the mind. Between the opening ornamented lament and the final bare harmonised melody, the music explores memory and obsession, revisiting some of Tomkins' tonal relationships in this very different context and eventually leading to a gentle pavane interspersed with some direct quotations from Tomkins' piece.

Who's to say what the distractions are? I won't! Historic, topical, trivial, political, European, Irish, universal, personal … at the end of the day the music has to stand or fall on its own merits.

No matter, Tomkins would be well pleased that his music stands the tests of time and fashion and distracted minds.

David Byers (Belfast, March 1998)

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Five Stoned Cherries

for solo piano

David Byers studied in Belgium with the composer Henri Pousseur in the early 1970s. It was a time of "happenings", one of which was a big choral weekend with newly composed and improvised music, all built around the chanson Cerises d'amour.

That was the start of something … many of David Byers's pieces from these years were built out of musical ideas, shapes, and harmonies developed from this melody.

This piano work, Five Stoned Cherries is just such a one.

The piece is dedicated to his composition professor at the Royal Academy of Music, James Iliff, who lives in a cottage deep in the Welsh valleys.

The work's subtitle is "a penillion on Cerises d'amour" - a penillion being a sort of improvised Welsh song to a harp accompaniment. The piano piece sandwiches two sections, in an apparently improvised manner, between three gently meandering harmonic studies, beginning low down and eventually ending high up on the keyboard.

There's a quotation from an Elizabethan poem as a preface -

Lady, those cherries plenty Which grow on your lips dainty Ere long will fade and languish. Then now, while yet they last them O let me pull and taste them.

And, at the end, a quotation from a box of Belgian chocolates -

The stones in our cherries have been mechanically removed. Therefore it is impossible to guarantee that all our cherries are stoneless. Be careful. Thank you.

Five Stoned Cherries has been recorded by Philip Martin.

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Three Epigrams of Janus

for solo piano

Many of my works have been sparked into life by the written word. In 1986 in Budapest I came across a volume of The Epigrams of Janus Pannonius, a 15th century Hungarian writing in Latin, then the language of clerics and scholars. (Latin was the official language in Hungary up to the mid 19th century.) The poems comment on our own times every bit as much as they illuminate Janus's own. My original aim had been to set three of the more witty and erotic epigrams for choir - instead I've been drawn to three of the more serious ones which have provided the starting point or excuse for each of these three little pieces. I hope that they are as economical and emphatic as Janus's poems.

The first is perhaps the most literal musical paraphrase - a mathematical recipe in which a point becomes a line, a surface and finally a solid cube.

The second and third chart slightly more abstract musical journeys which parallel Janus's poems. The second is a plea to Mars, the God of War, for peace: the poem is like an ancient prayer, invoking the god in all his manifestations; the music incorporates some plainsong in its mix of ideas. The third epigram reminded me of poems by the often insane 18th century English poet, William Cowper. A bird is struck dead by an arrow, but continues to fly - raising paradoxical questions about the nature of life and death, but leaving the answers to others!

The pieces are dedicated to Adilia Alieva.

David Byers      November 1999

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Crooked Lymbecks

 

Lett not your soule (at first with graces fill’d, / And since, and thorough crooked lymbecks, still’d / In many schools and courts, which quicken it,) / It self unto the Irish negligence submit.

 

A lymbeck was an old-fashioned (actually 13th century!) word for an alembic, one of the glass vessels or retorts used in the distillation process.

 

On my piano for many years I had kept a copy of a 1599 John Donne poem which I felt would be good to use in some musical context or other. When I finally came to do so, I discovered that I had seriously misunderstood it.  I had been misled by a superficial reaction to its title Henrico Wottoni in Hibernia belligeranti (To Henry Wotton making war in Ireland ) and the poem’s references to conquering, love for Ireland, shott, boggs, yong death, crooked lymbecks, and Irish negligence.  When I sat down and read the poem properly (with a dictionary search for “lymbecks”!), it turned out, ironically, to be an intriguing conceit, looking for a simple honest letter from his friend Henry Wotton; all, in hindsight, clear enough from the closing lines -

 

I aske not labored letters which should weare / Long papers out: nor letters which should feare / Dishonest carriage: or a seers art: / Nor such as from the brayne come, but the hart.

 

Crooked Lymbecks grew out of different aspects of that misunderstanding.  I thought of it as looking at a giant still, complete with its crooked lymbecks – the music may be considered as a series of cross-sections taken at a number of points and from different perspectives of that distillation process.  The piece is about ten minutes in length, and the music is mainly fast-moving – an attempt to mix the straightforward musical language of my annual Christmas carol, complete with its (usually) changing dance metres, with my more usual compositional processes. The musical materials are based on a blend of 12th century organum and discant;  the result could be described as a theme and five variations with a coda.  The Dorian modality of the opening and closing sections is relieved or disturbed elsewhere by other tonal conflicts.

 

Crooked Lymbecks was commissioned by Sonorities for the 2001 Festival and supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

 

It was first performed at the closing concert of Sonorities 2001 on Friday 11 May in the Whitla Hall of Queen’s University by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, conductor Gerhard Markson.  The concert was broadcast live on RTÉ’s Lyric FM and on BBC Radio Ulster.

 

David Byers  (April 2001)

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Handel's Messiah and the 1813 Belfast Musical Festival

1. The Belfast Festival performance of Messiah

a Sequence of numbers performed

b Details of soloists, conductor and orchestra

2. Programme of the 1813 Belfast Musical Festival

3. Contemporary reviews from the Belfast News-Letter

4. Bibliography

 

Messiah by Handel at the first-ever

Belfast Musical Festival in 1813

The running order for

Handel's Messiah

as performed on 22 October 1813 at Dr. Drummond's Meeting-House, Rosemary Street, during the Belfast Music Festival organised by Edward Bunting.

(The first most complete Messiah performance in Belfast)

Sequence & Details of Belfast version with relevant No. in Novello - Prout/Watkins Shaw

Overture 1

recit. Comfort ye (tenor) 2

Every valley (tenor) 3

And the glory (chorus) 4

recit. Thus saith the Lord (bass) 5

But who may abide (bass) (sing alto version) 6

recit. Behold a virgin shall conceive (counter tenor) 8

O thou that tellest (chorus with counter tenor) 9

recit. For behold, darkness (bass) 10

The people that walked (bass) 11

For unto us a child (chorus) 12

recit. There were shepherds (boy treble) 14, 15, 16

Glory to God (chorus) 17

Rejoice greatly (soprano 1) 18

He shall feed his flock (soprano 1 and tenor) 19

(soprano 1 sings alto line to letter C, then tenor sings soprano line)

Farewell ye limpid streams (soprano 2) Interpolated air from Jephtha

He was despised (counter tenor) 23

All we like sheep (chorus) 26

Interval

recit. All they that see him (tenor) 27

He trusted in God (chorus) 28

recit. Thy rebuke hath broken (tenor) 29

Behold and see (tenor) 30

recit. He was cut off (soprano 1) sing tenor version 31

But thou didst not leave (soprano 1) sing tenor version 32

Lift up your heads (chorus) 33

Why do the nations (bass) 40

Worthy is the lamb (chorus) 53

I know that my redeemer (soprano 2)* 45

*but Belfast News-Letter review states "boy treble"

Since by man came death (chorus) 46

recit. Behold, I tell you a mystery (bass) 47

The trumpet shall sound (bass) 48

If God be for us (tenor) sing soprano version 52

Hallelujah! (chorus) 44

Finis

 

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Original soloists:

Mrs. Cooke (cf. Soprano 2 in my list)

(wife of Tom Cooke, leader of orchestra, - they married in Dublin in 1805 - she was formerly Fanny Howells, an actress and a "pretty little singer")

Miss Spray (cf. Soprano 1)

(daughter of tenor soloist)

Master Robinson (treble)

(most likely to have been Francis Robinson (1799-1872), who would become an important Dublin singer and organist … less likely, it might have been his brother, William Robinson (1803-1881), also to become a leading Dublin musician)

Mr. Spray (tenor)

(John Spray was an English tenor who settled in Dublin c.1797, and was vicar-choral of Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals. Well known as a leading concert soloist)

Mr. Jager (counter tenor)

(Robert Jager was an English singer, formerly a lay-clerk at Canterbury, who sang as a counter tenor and a bass, performing in Dublin from around 1810. He was a vicar-choral of Christ Church and St. Patrick's Cathedrals. "…the incongruous effect of his delivery of the opening of 'O thou that tellest' where he dropped from a falsetto 'A' to 'D' in the lower octave came as something of a shock to his listeners")

Mr. Weyman (bass)

(David Weyman (1771-1822), Dublin born bass who was well-known as a concert singer and was also a vicar-choral at both Dublin cathedrals)

The "Conductor" was Mr. Edward Bunting, the "Leader of the Band" was Mr. T. Cooke and "The Chorusses under the direction of Mr. Blewitt".

At that time the conductor was the keyboard player who would have guided the soloists; the leader was the principal violinist who led and directed the orchestra; presumably Mr. Blewitt, in turn, directed the choir. It was a set-up which frequently engendered differences of opinion!

Edward Bunting (Armagh 1773 - Dublin 1843), renowned for transcribing the airs at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792, subsequently published three important volumes of his arrangements of the airs he had collected (the first of these published in 1796, the second in 1809, and the third in 1840) and for many years he was the leading musician and teacher in Belfast. In 1806 he became organist at the Second Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street - "a large, jolly-looking man; that he should fail to be so is hardly possible, for Belfast concerts are never mere music meetings - they are always followed by a supper and store of wine and punch".

In 1813 Bunting organised the Belfast Music Festival (Belfast's population was 27,832 in 1811) which began in the Theatre on 19 October and offered five concerts for two guineas, during which Bunting reportedly played a Mozart piano concerto and also organised a Benefit Concert for himself. The festival ended with a daytime Messiah in Rosemary Street, followed by a ball and supper that evening. This was the first nearly complete performance of Messiah to be given in Belfast.

Bunting "resigned from Rosemary Street in 1816/17 for [the newly-built] St. George's - Chapel of Ease, where he gave his services gratuitously till 1 January 1818. He was then paid a salary of 40 guineas per annum, out of which he paid his deputy (C. Dalton) and had to instruct the choir. He left St. George's on 1 January 1821, when Mr. Dalton was appointed his successor @ £20 per annum to be assisted by Mr. Guerrini as Teacher of the choir @ £20 per annum. Dalton … got into some trouble in connection with one of his lady pupils and had to leave town." Bunting had married in 1819 and moved to Dublin in 1820.

T.S.Cooke

Thomas Simpson Cooke (Dublin 1782 - London 1838) was a composer, conductor, instrumentalist and singer, one of the most colourful musicians of the period. Son of a well-known Dublin oboe player, he was a talented violinist who rapidly became the leader of Dublin's Crow Street Theatre orchestra and then its musical director. In 1813 he moved to London (returning that October to sing in Dublin and to be the leader and soloist at the Belfast Music Festival) where he was a leading tenor soloist in the Drury Lane Theatre for twenty years. He led the Drury Lane orchestra for many years, was its musical director, managed Vauxhall Gardens, composed music for over 50 stage productions and wrote a major treatise on singing.

Jonathan Blewitt (London 1782 - London 1853) moved to Ireland in 1811 as private organist to Lord Cahir. He was organist of St. Andrew's Church, Dublin and succeeded Tom Cooke as composer and director of music at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. He was grand organist to the Masonic body of Ireland and conducted many concerts throughout Ireland. He returned to London (to the Drury Lane Theatre) in 1825.

The orchestra list given in the Messiah programme suggests a minimum band of 9 violins, 2 violas, 3 cellos, 3 basses, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets,1 trombone, 1 bass horn (a comparatively rare kind of serpent which enjoyed some popularity in Britain in the first couple of decades of the century … it would normally have been found in wind bands, but it was also occasionally used in the large festival orchestras e.g. York 1825 &1827), 1 double drum (meaning timpani).

Many of the listed players were from Dublin - regulars in the Crow Street and Hawkins Street Theatres - and included Anthony Bunting, Edward's cellist brother from Dublin. Perhaps a few of the players were local … the violinist May was possibly J. T. May who was listed as musical director of the Arthur Street Theatre in 1826 and known as a violinist and organist. The principal trumpet player was Henry Willman, described by Michael Kelly as "the finest trumpet player I ever heard in any country … his execution on the instrument almost baffled belief." Without searching too far, ten, possibly eleven, of the seventeen string players can be identified as Dublin professionals; likewise five of the wind players, including Tom Cooke's father, the oboist Bartlett Cooke.

Question: Is the list complete? Or only a list of known names as the programme went to press? For example, might there in reality have been two flutes? More strings? Three trombones? (See News-Letter review below re trombones.) Would the church have accommodated any more?

Members of the Christ Church Cathedral choir were the basis of the chorus, but it's difficult to assess what contribution there was from local singers. The source for much of this detailed information is a typescript copy from 1900 of the original 1813 programme. This list does not mention Christ Church - although the Belfast News-Letter does (see below, Page 6) - but the listing of chorus names ends with "&c. &c." Is this as it appeared in the original programme? Before "&c. &c." there are fifteen men's names, one woman's and four boys'. Given the detail of the 1900 typescript, it seems likely that this is a faithful transcript of the 1813 programme.

Given the constitution of the orchestra, with its listed "clarionets", it seems that the performance used Mozart's arrangement. This re-orchestration was made at the request of Baron van Swieten in 1789; it was published in 1803 and performed at Covent Garden in 1805, though "purists" continued to protest at the "additions" for many years. By 1812 George Smart was beginning to omit some of the additional accompaniments as being not "suitable to the accustomed English ear."

The following details appeared in the Belfast News-Letter during the week before Belfast's first festival.

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BELFAST

MUSICAL FESTIVAL

FOR THE BENEFIT OF

THE INCORPORATED CHARITABLE SOCIETY
UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF

MARQUIS OF DONEGALL, / MARCHIONESS OF DONEGALL, / MARQUIS OF DOWNSHIRE, / MARCHIONESS OF DOWNSHIRE, / COUNTESS OF CLANWILLIAM, / EARL OF MASSEREENE, / COUNTESS OF MASSEREENE, / EARL OF LONDONDERRY, / COUNTESS OF LONDONDERRY, / LORD VISCOUNT DUFFERIN, / LADY DUFFERIN, / LADY ELIZABETH PRATT, / LADY HARRIET FOSTER, / COLONEL FOSTER, / SIR EDWARD MAY, Bart. / LADY MAY, / SIR H. HERVEY BRUCE, Bart. / LADY BRUCE, / HON. R. WARD, / COLONEL FORDE, / GEORGE BRISTOW Esq. High Sheriff Co. Antrim, / THOMAS VERNER Esq. Sovereign of Belfast, / MRS. VERNER, / ALEXANDER STEWART Esq. Ards, / NICHOLAS PRICE Esq. Saintfield, / ROBERT BATESON Esq. Belvoir, / REV. DR. HUTCHESON Donaghadee, / REV. EDWARD MAY, / MRS. MAY, / COLONEL HEYLAND, / MRS. HEYLAND, / HUGH KENNEDY Esq. Cultra, / WILLIAM SHARMAN Esq. Warringstown, [sic] / JOHN REILLY Esq. Scarva, / RICHARD DOBBS Esq. Castle Dobbs, / JAMES WATSON Esq. Brook Hill, / GEORGE DOUGLAS Esq. Mount Ida, / FRANCIS TURNLY Esq. Richmond Lodge

AT THE THEATRE,

ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 19, 1813,

WILL BE PERFORMED,

A GRAND MISCELLANEOUS

CONCERT,

OF VOCAL & INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

AT DR. DRUMMOND'S MEETING HOUSE,

On WEDNESDAY MORNING, OCT. 20,

A GRAND SELECTION OF

SACRED MUSIC,

From HANDEL, PURCELL, MARCELLO, &c.

AT SAME PLACE,

On THURSDAY MORNING, OCT. 21,

HAYDN'S CELEBRATED ORATORIO OF

THE CREATION;

WITH A GRAND MISCELLANEOUS ACT,

SELECTED FOR THE OCCASION.

At the THEATRE, on THURSDAY EVENING,

A MISCELLANEOUS

CONCERT,

FROM THE WORKS OF

HAYDN, MOZART, AND BEETHOVEN

AT DR. DRUMMOND'S MEETING-HOUSE,

ON FRIDAY MORNING, OCT. 22.

THE ORATORIO OF

THE MESSIAH,

PRINCIPAL VOCAL PERFORMERS,

Mrs COOKE, Miss SPRAY,

Master ROBINSON, Master MULLEN,

Mr SPRAY, Mr. JAGER, and

Mr. WEYMAN.

Leader of the Band ……………………….. Mr. T. COOKE.

Second Violin ……………………………… Mr. BARRETT.

Tenor [ = viola ] ………………….……….. Mr. BOWDEN.

Violincello [sic] …………………………………… Mr. BIRD.

Double Bass ………………………….. Mr. SIDEBOTHAM.

Flute .…… Mr. WERDNER. [actually Johann Carl Weidner]

Oboe ……………………..…………………… Mr. B. COOKE.

Clarionet …………………..……………………. Mr. MAHON.

Bassoon …………………………………………….. Mr. BOND.

Horn …………………………………………. Mr. MULLIGAN.

Trumpet …………………….…………….…… Mr. WILMAN.

Trombone ……………………………………… Mr. MEIGLER.

Double Drums …………………………..……… Mr. GLOVER.

CONDUCTOR …………….Mr. EDWARD BUNTING,

Who will preside at the Organ & Piano Forte.

The DEAN and CHAPTER of CHRIST'S CHRUCH [sic],

DUBLIN, having been pleased to grant permission for the

principal parts of the Choir to assist on this occasion, the

CHORUSSES will be numerous and complete. The en-

tire Band will consist of above 50 performers.

BALL AND SUPPER.

There will be a splendid BALL & SUPPER at the EX-

CHANGE ROOMS, on FRIDAY Evening, 22d Oct.

Particulars in a future advertisement.

REGULATIONS.

Evening Concerts at the Theatre The UPPER and

LOWER BOXES, with an inclosed [sic] part of the PIT, are

prepared for the accommodation of the Patrons, Patronesses,

and other Subscribers, for the entire entertainments of the Week.

(Of the Lower Boxes, Nos 4, 5, 6, and 8, are kept for the Patrons and Patronesses.)

Plans of the Boxes, and Subscribers' part of the Pit, will

be ready for inspection on MONDAY the 18th inst. At

TWELVE o'Clock, at which hour places may be taken

at the House of Mr. JOHN GALT SMITH, Secretary

to the Committee, No. 26, High-street, to be entered in the

exact order of application.

SINGLE TICKETS

For each of the EVENING CONCERTS, to the remaining parts of the House,

will be ready for delivery as above, on Thursday next.

LETTICES, and Uninclosed part of the PIT, 10s. 10d.

GALLERY, ………………….……………..6s. 8d.

Single Tickets for each of the SACRED PER-

FORMANCES, in the Morning, at Dr.

Drummond's Meeting-House, …………… 12s. 6d.

N. B. All Tickets to be Transferable.

Evening Concerts at the Theatre. Doors to be opened at

Seven o'Clock, and the performance to commence precisely at Eight.

(Carriages to enter by Donegall-square and form a single

line along Arthur-street, taking up in the same manner -----

Horses heads towards Corn-Market.)

Morning Sacred Performances, at Dr. Drummond's Meeting -House.

---- Doors to be opened at Eleven o'Clock, and commence precisely at Twelve.

(Carriages to enter by the Exchange, forming a single line along Rosemary-street,

taking up in the same manner - horses heads towards Hercules-street [now Royal Avenue].)

To avoid confusion, no Money will be taken at the Doors for any of the performances,

nor Servants allowed to keep places.

Subscribers for the entire week's performance will be pleased to shew their Tickets to the Stewards

---- holders of Single Tickets to deliver theirs.

After this Notice, it is expected that Subscribers will send for their Tickets without further delay.

The Theatre lighted with Wax.

The concert programme for Messiah lists five additional patrons:

Lord Jocelyn / Lady Jocelyn / Lady Isabella Blachford /

Colonel Blachford / Edward Jones Agnew, Esq. Killoughter

Additionally, Colonel Forde is listed as Lieutenant-Colonel Forde.

The programme gives the following as Stewards:

The High Sheriff of the Co. of Antrim, / The Sovereign of Belfast, /

Lieutenant-Colonel Coulson, / Rev. Mr. Jebb, / Richard Dobbs, Esq. /

Richard Staples, Esq. / Jackson Stockdale, Esq. / Henry Purdon, Esq.

The programme lists the following Instrumental Performers:

Leader of the Band - Mr. T. Cooke.

Violins - Messrs. Mahon, [John] Barrett,

May, R. Barton, Coleman,

Sanders [probably Saunders],

Garbatt, and Nelson.

Tenors [=Violas] - Messrs. Bowden and Giesler.

Violincellos [sic] - Messrs. Bird, A. Bunting, and Robinson.

Double Basses - Messrs. Sidebotham, Cubitt and [Wm. J.]Gray.

Flute - Mr. Weidner.

Clarionets - Messrs. Thompson and Wagstaff.

Oboes - Messrs. B. Cooke and McClean.

Bassoons - Messrs. Bond and Reed.

Horns - Messrs. Mulligan and Reilly.

Trumpets - Messrs. Wilman and Maddison.

Trombone - Mr. Miller.

Bass Horn - Mr. Costellow.

Double Drum - Mr. Stokesbury.

The Chorusses by

Messrs. Connor, Broad, Duff, Gray, Barr, Hughes, Hart, sen., Hart, jun., Bennett, Stevenson, Fry, Hatton, Mrs. Gray. - Masters Mussen, Murray, Betty, Willis, -- Mr. McCune, sen., Mr. McCune jun., Mr. Webb, &c. &c.

A further two advertisements were placed in the Belfast News-Letter on Tuesday 19 October for Bunting's benefit concert and they give further details of ticket arrangements for the Ball and Supper:

MR. BUNTING'S CONCERT

AT THE THEATRE,

ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 20.

ACT I

OVERTURE ……………………………………….……………………………. Cooke.

GLEE - "Hark the Lark at Heaven's gate Sings" ………………………………….Cooke.

SONG - Mr. Jager - "The Maid of the Mountain" …………….………………… Bishop.

GLEE and CHORUS -"Hark the hollow woods" ………………………………….Shield.

SONG - Master Robinson - "Thou hast run away from me, Mary." -[no composer given]

SONG - Mrs. Cooke - "Sweet Robin" …………………………………………….Cooke.

CONCERTO TRUMPET - Mr. Wilman ……………………………………….…Cooke.

SONG - Mr. Spray - "When for our Laws and Native Land" …………………Stevenson.

FINALE - "Viva Enrico" ………………….………………………………………Pacitto.

ACT II

CONCERTO VIOLIN - Mr. T. Cooke……………………….…..……………...Kreutzer.

GLEE - "Oh! Nanny, wilt thou gang with me," …………….…..harmonised by Harrison.

SONG - Mrs. Cooke ………………………………………………………………Puzitta.

MILITARY CONCERTO PIANO-FORTE - Mr. Bunting …………………..……Latour.

GLEE - "See our Bark" - Violin Obligato [sic]…….………………….…Sir J. Stevenson.

POLLACCA - Mr. Cooke, from "The Cabinet" …………………………….……Braham.

DUETT - Messrs. Spray and Weyman, "Tell me where is Fancy bred" … Sir J. Stevenson.

FINALE - Rule Britannia.

TICKETS to be had of Mr. J. G. SMITH, and Mr.

ARCHER, Stationer, High-street; and PLACES to be

taken at the THEATRE, from Eleven till Five o'Clock.


TICKETS

FOR THE BALL AND SUPPER,

ON FRIDAY EVENING,

AT THE EXCHANGE ROOMS,

For the BENEFIT of the POOR-HOUSE,

Will be issued at Mr. SMITH'S 26, High-street.

LADIES' ………………………10s.

GENTLEMEN'S………………..…12s. 6d.

As the number to be entertained must necessarily be limit-

ed, such Ladies and Gentlemen as wish to attend, will be

so good as to return their names on or before TUESDAY

next. ------------ Mr. JELLET to provide the Supper.

Belfast, October 15, 1813.

Such music festivals as Belfast's were very popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (The annual meeting of the cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford first took place in 1715 and by the 19th century had become known as the Three Choirs Festival.) Most of these festivals took place in the large centres of population, such as Birmingham and Manchester, areas of great industrial expansion. These festivals would often be linked with middle-class concern about social conditions; in Grove 6, Percy Young lists festivals in " Leeds (1767), Birmingham (1768), Norwich (1770), Chester (1772), Newcastle (1778), Liverpool (1784), Manchester (1785), Sheffield (1786), and York (1791) with the primary aim of raising funds to establish or support new hospitals."

In Tamworth, in Staffordshire, in 1809, with a population of only 3000, the town hosted a two-day festival with performances of Haydn's The Creation and Handel's Messiah. Over 130 performers took part, including Samuel Wesley, who played one of his own organ concertos and incorporated into it a fugue by J. S. Bach.

These provincial festivals usually followed much the same pattern and, understandably, their planning was often determined by the availability of an organ or the need for natural or artificial lighting. In England, as Philip Olleson writes, (in The Tamworth Music Festival of 1809, )

"the scheduling of festivals during the summer and early autumn months (typically during August, September and October) gave employment during the London off-season to the London singers and instrumentalists who were the soloists and the principal orchestral players. The remainder of the orchestra was recruited more locally, often from music teachers and organists (who as a matter of course would also be string players) of nearby towns. The choral forces would typically come from local cathedral choirs, often supplemented by professional choristers who moved, like the soloists and principal orchestral players, from festival to festival …"

"… a performance of Messiah was almost mandatory at each festival, and his [Handel's] music (usually in the form of extracts from the oratorios) dominated the remaining morning oratorio concerts …"

"… ticket prices of between 8s. and £1. 1s. were such as to exclude all but the most well-to-do … evidence for the wide geographical support for the festival [in Tamworth] is provided by the list of patrons [see Belfast's patrons listed on page 6], made up of members of leading families … The financial support of these families does not, of course, indicate that they actually attended the performances …"

[In 1811, Belfast factory cotton spinners were reckoned to be comparatively well paid at £2. 7s. 0d. per week. Weavers were much more poorly paid at between 12 and 15 shillings per week, out of which "they had to pay for candles, assistance and - sometimes - the renting of a loom-stand" (Jonathan Bardon: Belfast - An Illustrated History)].

Charlotte Milligan Fox, writing in Annals of the Irish Harpers, mentions that Messiah "was rendered by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin," and quoted some details from Bunting's private papers about his expenses:

"Mr. Cooke and his wife" (the prima donna) Bunting enters as having been paid 100 guineas; Spray (the tenor) and daughter, 45 guineas; Mahon Wedner [sic = clarinet and flute], 30 guineas; Sidebotham, as secretary, [and double-bass], regulating everything, received 30 guineas for his trouble; and, after paying for the choir and a band of fifty, the expenses amounted to a total of £638. The concerts took place in the theatre, or, when an organ was required, in Dr. Drummond's meeting-house. There is an addendum to the list of expenditure. "Paid Spray out of my own pocket 5 guineas, as he said that his rank as first tenor deserved it," by which we see that concert directors had to cope with the same difficulties as at the present day.

BACK to top RETURN to start of section on Festival of 1813

The following extracts are from reviews printed in the Belfast News-Letter:

Friday 22 October 1813

BELFAST MUSICAL FESTIVAL

From the day on which the Musical Festival was first suggested, the idea was eagerly embraced, and as the proposed combined rational amusement with the virtue of benevolence, it readily met the unqualified sanction of the public. Belfast had not before enjoyed the luxury of such a treat; and as the period approached, the public became more impatient, and nothing was talked of but the Festival, so that expectation was wound up to the highest pitch. The Committee and Stewards who undertook the charge of making the necessary arrangements, soon found that they had very arduous duties to perform; and on Mr. Bunting devolved the very important task of selecting and engaging the various professional gentlemen who were to compose the Band. All these essential preliminaries having been accomplished, the Festival commenced at the Theatre on

TUESDAY EVENING.

It had been announced that the doors were to be opened at seven o'clock, but long previous to that hour, they were literally besieged by numerous parties of Ladies and Gentlemen, all anxious to secure good places. A number of carriages having also arrived, and the front of the theatre being much thronged with spectators, eager to see the elegant company, much confusion might have ensued, but a party of the military having previously been obtained, the approach to the theatre was kept pretty clear, and no great degree of inconvenience was experienced. Previous to the doors being opened, the Stewards, who were distinguished by a red ribbon at their breast, and a white rod in their hand, took their respective stations within, to conduct the company to the different apartments allotted for their reception. When the doors were thrown open, the pressure was considerable, but by the attention of the Stewards, order was soon restored, and in a little time, the two tiers of boxes, and the enclosed part of the pit, displayed as fine an assemblage of fashionable company as ever graced a theatre. It is true, that "loveliness needs not the foreign aid of ornament," but we must pay the tribute of truth in expressing our admiration of the taste and elegance displayed in the dresses of the Ladies, which, combined with their native beauty, formed a most fascinating scene.

At eight o'clock the curtain rose and exhibited the Orchestra to the full view of the audience. It occupied the greatest part of the stage, each seat rising behind the other. The Performers having previously taken their respective situations, the Concert immediately commenced with a grand overture.

…The Choruses were the theme of universal approbation, being bold, powerful, and at the same time harmoniously adapted. Mr. Cooke, the Leader of the Band, was conspicuously eminent; …To Mrs. Cooke our meed of praise is a debt we owe, and which we willingly pay; knowing that the public voice is in unison with what we express.

Mr. Weyman, Mr. Spray and Mr. Jager, the principal vocal performers, gave great satisfaction. The former in the commencement of the oratorio of the Creation, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," was peculiarly impressive. We might select many passages in which the others also evinced great compass and power. Miss Spray's diffidence prevented her from giving some of her fine songs with the effect she would otherwise have produced, but she was very favourably received and applauded. Mr. Wilman's execution on the trumpet surpassed perhaps what had ever been witnessed before by any of the audience…

(2) The following week

BELFAST MUSICAL FESTIVAL

In our last we noticed the commencement of this Festival, which was attended by a much greater number of fashionable company than perhaps was ever before assembled in Belfast.

The reviewer then lists in detail all the concert programmes …

Tuesday's concert began with the Grand Overture Zaire by Winter, and included Bishop's glee Foresters! Sound the cheerful horn; Webbe's glee When winds breathe soft; Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute; a flute concerto played by its composer, Weidner; Mr. and Mrs. Cooke both sang solos - hers with a trumpet obligato by H. Wilman [sic] - and there was a sextet from Storace's opera The Haunted Tower.

Wednesday morning's concert in the meeting-house was an all-Handel concert, apart from a Viotti violin concerto played by Tom Cooke. Items included the Occasional Overture, the Dead March from Saul, and excerpts from Israel in Egypt, Judas Maccabaeus, Saul and Samson, ending with a Coronation Anthem.

Thursday morning's concert, also in the meeting-house, offered a selection from Creation, a Corelli Concerto, another (or the same) flute concerto from Mr. Weidner, Master Robinson singing Pious Orgies, Mrs. Cooke singing Arne's Hymn of Eve, another few songs and choruses by Handel and then that Coronation Anthem again.

Thursday evening's concert in the theatre began with an overture by Winter (a repeat of Tuesday's?), included the usual mish-mash of songs and glees (Mr. and Miss Spray sang Ye Banks and Braes), H. Wilman [sic] played Cooke's Concerto on the New Patent Kent Bugle, and there was an unspecified symphony by Haydn. Interestingly, there is no mention here of what was promised in the advertisement - music by Mozart or Beethoven.

Back to the News-Letter reviewer:

Our observations upon the performers and performances may be summed up in the few following remarks.

Mr. Cooke certainly equalled the most celebrated performer on the violin. In tone, execution or judgement, no one was more eminent, and in his accompaniment on the piano forte in several glees, his excellence was conspicuous.

Of Mrs. Cooke we have already expressed the sentiment of approbation which universally prevailed.

Mr. Jager, in the beautiful song "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows," captivated every ear. It was translucent and mellow.

Mr. Spray's song from Marmion exemplified his judgement and his taste. It was alternatively pathetically soft and characteristically bold.

Mr. Weidner's masterly performance on the flute drew forth the warmest expressions of applause. His execution and quality of tone excited great admiration.

Master Robinson is a scion of great promise. The delightful air of Pious Orgies was charmingly given. It delighted the ear, and stole the heart.

THE MESSIAH

The performance of this celebrated Oratorio was altogether so truly grand, that we are at a loss what part of it to select as most deserving of notice. A short summary is all that we can attempt.

The Overture was a sublime and finished performance. - "Comfort ye my People," sung by Mr. Spray, was a most delicious treat.

The chorus, "For unto us a child is born," was indescribably beautiful. - The words "the Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, &c." were given with such effect, as at once to charm, delight, and astonish the audience.

In the semi-chorus, "Lift up your heads, O! ye gates," the three upper parts at the beginning of the chorus had a most charming effect, and when the entire chorus came in, "He is the King of Glory," its impression was most powerful.

"The trumpet shall sound," by Mr. Weyman, accompanied by Mr. Wilman, on the trumpet, produced the most impressive effect.

The concluding chorus, "Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth," finished the whole festival, and was sublime beyond description; the audience were enraptured, and their admiration was such, that it was unanimously encored.

Of the performances on Mr. Bunting's night we shall only shortly remark that the Concerto by Mozart [the programme printed in the News-Letter mentioned a Concerto by Latour, not Mozart], which he performed on the Piano Forte, produced the most delightful sensations on the few amateurs who were within hearing of it, from the exquisitely light and delicate manner in which he executed it.

In the whole performances, both in the Meeting-house and in the Theatre, the trombones and the trumpets had the most astonishing effect in the choruses, which were magnificent and truly grand.

The Organ played by the Conductor was so judiciously introduced and finely managed, that it seemed to combine and harmonize the whole, and at the same time it was so delicately touched as to mingle its sounds almost imperceptibly.

In the subsequent review of the Ball and Supper, it is reported that "not less than five hundred of the finest company were present in the rooms. - Indeed the pressure was the only inconvenience which was experienced, as there was scarcely as much room as to admit of dancing. That, however, was obtained, though with considerable difficulty."

Soon after supper, when the health of the Marquis of Downshire was given, his Lordship rose and said, that it was with pleasure he observed so very elegant and numerous a company…he reflected that the occasion of their meeting combined rational amusement with the amiable grace of charity, and he should be happy to give all the support in his power. His Lordship then took an opportunity of expressing his thanks to Mr. Bunting, who had conducted the performances with the greatest regularity. He also expressed his approbation of the vocal and instrumental Band, who had come down from Dublin on the occasion. They had introduced into this part of the country a species of entertainment upon a scale which perhaps had not been surpassed in any part of Ireland

When his Lordship had finished, Mr. Cooke, at the request of Mr. Bunting, rose and addressed his Lordship …to return his grateful acknowledgments …

Soon after this the company withdrew from the supper tables, and returned to the ball room, where the choral band sang several glees and other charming pieces of music with great effect. After this the company renewed the mazy dance, which continued till the morning was far advanced.

© David Byers 14.04.96

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Bibliography

Letter dated 03.01.1900 from Isaac H. Ward to Charles H. Brett.

1900 typescript copy of Book of Words from 1813 Messiah performance belonging to Miss Jane Dunn (sister of Mr. John Dunn, secretary of the Classical Harmonists' Society). The original Book of Words was presented to the Belfast Philharmonic Society.

Philip Olleson The Tamworth Music Festival of 1809 - paper for a seminar at Keele University, October 1992.

H. Grindle Irish Cathedral Music The Institute of Irish Studies QUB, Belfast 1989

Ita Margaret Hogan Anglo-Irish Music 1780 - 1830 Cork University Press 1966.

Charlotte Milligan Fox Annals of the Irish Harpers Smith, Elder & Co. 1911

J. Walsh Opera in Dublin 1798 - 1820 Oxford University Press 1993

Michael Kelly Reminiscences ed. Roger Fiske Oxford University Press 1975

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Macmillan 1980

Belfast News-Letter, October 1813

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to start of section on Festival of 1813

A portrait of Edward Bunting (1773-1843)

compiled by David Byers

Family origins;

Aged 11;

The Harp Festival;

First Collection;

The 19th century musician;

Second Collection;

Manner & appearance;

Belfast Festival etc;

Marriage;

Third Collection;

Retrospective;

Bibliography

It was Edward Bunting who set about publishing a comprehensive collection of some of the treasures of Irish folk music at the end of the 18th century. He certainly wasn't the first. Seventy years earlier, John and William Neal published A collection of the most celebrated Irish tunes proper for the violin, German flute or hautboy (Dublin 1724). The only surviving copy of this (now in the library of The Queen's University, Belfast) was owned by Bunting and may have inspired him in his endeavours. Like Bunting's publications, the Neal Collection also seems to have been sourced from the playing of harpers. But Bunting reckoned his collection was the best to date.

Edward Bunting:

Before this time there had been but three attempts of this nature. One by Burke Thumoth in 1720, another by Neill of Christ Churchyard soon after, and a third by Carolan's son, patronised by Dean Delaney about 1747. In all these the arrangement was calculated rather for the flute or violin than for a keyed instrument, so that the tunes were to a great extent deprived of their peculiar character, and as they were deficient in arrangement, so were they meagre in extent. On the whole, the Editor may safely say that his publication, above alluded to, was the first and only collection of genuine Irish harp music given to the world up to the year 1796.

Bunting's piano arrangements of the airs, which he heard played by the last of the Irish harpers, were published in 1797 (more often given as 1796), 1809 and 1840. The importance of these collections was recognised by a facsimile one-volume reprint published by Waltons' in 1969, but when Bunting died there was not even one paragraph's tribute in either the Belfast or Dublin press.

Edward Bunting:

I admit that by reviving Ireland's national music, by making the study and preservation of our Irish melodies the main business of my life, I hope that in years to come I may be thought of as ranking with those worthy Irishmen whose labours have from time to time sustained the reputation of the country for a native literature.

But above all, the thing which has kept me going is my obsession: a strong innate love of these delightful strains for their own sake. Neither the experience of the best music of other countries nor the control of a vitiated public taste, nor the influence of my advancing years has ever been able to alter or diminish that love.

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Bunting's father was a mining engineer from Shottle in Derbyshire who had settled in Co. Tyrone to work at the mine in Coalisland. Bunting's mother was Mary O'Quinn, who claimed to be descended from the chief of an ancient Irish clan and it was to her that Bunting attributed his musical talents.

There were three sons of the marriage, Anthony, John and Edward - all to become organists and teachers. Edward was the youngest and he was born at Armagh in February 1773. His father died a few years later and so, at the age of nine, Edward went to live in Drogheda with Anthony, his eldest brother, who gave him music lessons for two years. Progress was so good that young Edward acted as deputy organist for William Ware at St. Anne's Parish Church in Belfast while Ware was away in London. St. Anne's occupied the site of the present cathedral and at that time it possessed the only organ in Belfast. It may be an exaggeration, but it's recorded that during his visit to Belfast, Bunting was found to be a better organist than Ware. Without further ado, Bunting was articled to Ware as his assistant.


St Anne's Church, Belfast (built 1777)

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The folk song collector George Petrie, a friend of Bunting's old age, described the attitudes of the eleven-year-old-about-town and gives a most unflattering picture of the adolescent Bunting.

George Petrie:

In addition to his duties as assistant or sub-organist at the church, Bunting had also to act as deputy teacher to Mr. Ware's pupils on the piano-forte throughout the neighbouring country.

The zeal of the young master to fulfil his duties was often productive of the most ludicrous results. His young lady pupils, who were often many years older than himself, were accustomed to take his reproofs with anything but angelic temper, and I've heard him tell how a Miss Stewart, of Wilmont, in the County of Down, was so astonished at his audacity, that she indignantly turned round upon him and well boxed his ears.

After a few years spent in this manner, he became a professor on his own account, and as his abilities as a performer had become developed, his company was courted by the higher class of the Belfast citizens, as well as by the gentry of its neighbourhood. In short, the boy prodigy became an idol amongst them.

Courted and caressed, flattered and humoured, he should have paid the usual penalty for such pampering - that his temper should have become pettish, and his habits wayward and idle - he did everything as he liked, with a reckless disregard of what might be thought of it.

Wayward and pettish he remained through life, and for a long period - at least occasionally - idle, and, I fear dissipated; for hard drinking was the habit of the Belfastians in those days. But, while still young, not more than 19, an event occurred, which gave his ardent and excitable temperament a worthy object of ambition on which to employ it, and which necessarily required a cultivation of his powers, to enable him to effect it. The event I allude to was the assemblage at Belfast, in 1792, of the harpers from all parts of Ireland.

Before reaching that Belfast Harp Festival, it's interesting to note that during Bunting's time in Belfast - almost 40 years - he stayed with the McCracken family in Donegall Street. It was a family at the very centre of the social and political problems of the time, and the young Edward Bunting, while close to them and involved in political debate, seems to have remained outside most of the actual intrigue. Just one year before the Harp Festival, Bunting had talked politics in the Donegall Arms with a company which included such notables as Thomas Russell, Wolfe Tone and Henry Joy (an uncle of the McCracken family in Donegall Street).

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It was a committee of Henry Joy, Dr. James MacDonnell, Robert Simms and Robert Bradshaw (the Secretary and Treasurer) which set about organising the Great Harpers' Festival, 11-14 July 1792. All four were members of the Belfast Reading Society (shortly to change its name to the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge), founded to set up a town library.

Belfast News-Letter 26 April 1792:

National Music of Ireland

A Respectable Body of the Inhabitants of Belfast having published a plan for reviving the ancient Music of this country, and the project having met with such support and approbation as must insure success to the undertaking, PERFORMERS ON THE IRISH HARP are requested to assemble in this town on the tenth day of July next, when a considerable sum will be distributed in Premiums, in proportion to their respective merits.

It being the intention of the Committee that every Performer shall receive some Premium, it is hoped that no Harper will decline attending on account of his having been unsuccessful on any former occasion.

This last paragraph refers to problems encountered at harp festivals held at Granard, Co. Longford in the 1780s. Many writers have questioned the altruism of the organisers (who were closely connected to the United Irishmen) and speculated about the coincidence of the Harp Festival with the annual Twelfth of July Orange marches, the third anniversary celebrations marking the storming of the Bastille, and a series of political meetings with Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen.

Ten harpers, aged from 15 to 97, six of them blind, competed for a first prize of ten guineas and Bunting, then aged 19, was one of three "practical musicians" (including William Ware) charged with notating the music.

Edward Bunting:

I was appointed to attend the Festival and to take down the various airs played by the different harpers. I was particularly cautioned against adding a single note to the old melodies which would seem to have been preserved pure and handed down unalloyed through a long succession of ages.

Wolfe Tone's diary entries, coloured by his hangovers, record the event in less than enthusiastic terms!

July 11th: Rise with a great headache; stupid as a mill horse … All go to Harpers at one; poor enough; ten performers; seven execrable, three good, one of them, Fanning far the best. No new musical discovery; believe all the good Irish tunes are already written …

July 12th: Rise again with a headache resulting from late hours … lounge to harpers …

July 13th: Rise again with headache … Belfast not half so pleasant this time as last; politics just as good or better; everything else worse … generally in low spirits … the Harpers again, strum, strum, and be hanged …

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However, Bunting was fired with enthusiasm for the music he had heard. He began to compile his first collection and during the years immediately after the Festival he made journeys to Galway, Derry and Mayo, to gather a number of airs. In 1797, he published his first book A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music: sixty-six native Irish Airs "never before published".

Martha McTier (letter to Dr. Drennan, December 1797):

Have you heard Bunting's Irish music? …To me they are sounds might make Pitt melt for the poor Irish - not a copy is now to be got - but I hear they are very unjustly going to reprint them in Dublin.

Martha McTier (letter to Dr. Drennan, February 1798):

Have you got the Irish music - it is the rage here - it would be worth your while to try if you could hear him [Bunting] play his Irish music - sugar plumbs or sweetys is his greatest temptation, for he despises both money and praise and is thought a good-hearted original.

Charlotte Milligan Fox:

The book stands as the earliest standard authority. View it with regard to its after-effect in popularising and saving Irish music, it must be classed as an epoch-making book. Not that its circulation was very extensive, for indeed it brought little profit to the young man who gave it to the world.

The subject of the compiler and of his enthusiastic supporters in Belfast was accomplished indirectly through the medium of others who followed in Bunting's track and gleaned the reward of his labours. In short, he gave the material and inspiration to Moore for his Irish melodies which are known and sung in every country of the civilised world.

"Gave the material" is not quite the right way to express it! When Moore's first volume appeared, eleven of its sixteen melodies were derived from Bunting's collection and Moore continued to draw extensively upon the collection in subsequent volumes - much to Bunting's extreme disapproval!

Thomas Moore:

Considering the thorn I have been in poor Bunting's side by supplanting him in the one great object of his life (the connection of his name with the fame of Irish Music) the temper in which he now speaks of my success (for some years since he was rather termagant on the subject) is not a little creditable to his good nature and good sense. Speaking of the use I made of the first volume of airs published by him he says: "They were soon adapted as vehicles for the most beautiful popular songs that perhaps have ever been composed by any lyric poet." He complains strongly, however, of the alterations made in the original airs, and laments that "the work of the Poet was accounted of so paramount an interest that the proper order of song writing was in many instances inverted, and instead of the words being adapted to the tunes, the tune was too often adapted to the words: a solecism which could never have happened had the reputation of the writer not been so great as at once to carry the tunes he designed to make use of, altogether out of their old sphere among the simple tradition-loving people of the Country with whom in truth many of the new melodies to this day are hardly suspected to be themselves."

He lays the blame of all these alterations upon Stevenson, but poor Sir John was entirely innocent of them; as the whole task of selecting the airs and in some instances shaping them thus, in particular passages, to the general sentiment, which the melody appeared to me to express was undertaken solely by myself. Had I not ventured on these very admissible liberties many of the songs now most known and popular would have been still sleeping with all their authentic dross about them in Mr Bunting's first Volume.

The same charge is brought by him respecting those airs, which I took from the Second Volume of his collection. "The beauty of Mr Moore's words," he says, "in a great degree atones for the violence done by the musical arranger to many of the airs, which he has adopted."

Bunting only came round to a more generous attitude to Moore at the end of his life - and after many years of feeling cheated by both Moore and Stevenson.

If Bunting's book wasn't exactly a best-seller, then life in his adopted household would certainly have provided a suitable plot for one! Henry Joy McCracken (named after his maternal uncle) was executed after the abortive 1798 rebellion but Bunting continued to reside with the McCracken family in Donegall Street, apparently taking no active part in these happenings. Henry's sister, Mary, remained one of Bunting's closest friends and advisers till the end of his life.

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By the turn of the century, Bunting had succeeded William Ware as the Belfast musician. In 1801 he promoted eight weekly summer subscription concerts in the Donegall Arms in High Street along with a concert of excerpts from Handel's oratorios in St. Anne's. There were more concerts the following year and later -probably others which were not advertised in the newspapers.

In 1806 he became organist at the Second Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street - only the second organ in Belfast.

Belfast Newsletter:

We are happy to inform the public, that the first organ which has been introduced into a Protestant Dissenting Meeting House, in Ulster, will be touched by the masterly hand of Mr. Bunting on Sunday next.

(Some days later)

On Sunday last, the new Organ in the Second Congregation was opened by Mr. Bunting. The instrument was conducted with chaste gravity suited to the simplicity of Presbyterian worship; and the finest effect produced by an admirable finger directed by pure taste.

That "admirable finger" seemed to have had more business sense when organising concerts than when publishing music. His concert promotions included the two visits to Belfast in 1807 and 1808 by the the great Italian soprano Angelica Catalani, only 26 years old on her first visit. Over the years Bunting and Catalani met on a number of occasions. Once, she was so delighted with Bunting's performance of some of the Irish airs that she took a diamond ring off her finger and presented the ring to Bunting. Another anecdote from many years later was recalled by George Petrie:

Catalani - "Well, my dear Mr. Bunting, how glad I am to see you looking so strong and well".

Bunting, with a shrug - "Ugh, ugh, no madam, I'm growing fat and lazy like an old dog as I am".

Catalani, looking alarmed and thoughtful - "Ah, indeed, Mr. Bunting - and I too am growing fat and lazy, like an old dog as I am - no, that's not the word - like an old bitch, Mr. Bunting, like an old bitch!"

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Edward, like his brother Anthony, earned some money as an agent for the sale of pianos - mainly for the firm of Broadwood. But there was no money to be earned from his second collection of Irish Airs published in 1809 as A General Collection of The Ancient Irish Music. The first collection had been of harp melodies; this new one was to include songs with English verse by "eminent poets" and "A Historical and Critical Dissertation on the Egyptian, British and Irish Harp".

Moore's first volume of Irish Melodies had been published in 1807 and Bunting's second collection was rushed out to rival Moore's ready success.

But what chance did "eminent poets" like Miss Mary Balfour, who ran a school for young ladies, or Mr. Boyd "the celebrated translator of Dante" or Stott, a Co. Down bard labelled by Lord Byron as "grovelling Stott", have against Thomas Moore?

Nevertheless, it was a beautifully produced volume. Before George Petrie passed judgement he pointed out that the 1809 publication, in the opinion of the musical world, placed Edward Bunting "in the foremost rank of British Musicians", and as the "most accomplished of those of his own country".

George Petrie:

This alas! was the only reward it procured him. Like his former collection, its sale barely paid the expenses of its publication. It was too costly, too repulsively learned with a long historical dissertation on the antiquity of the harp and bagpipes prefixed, to give it a chance of suiting the tastes or purses of the class of society which had bought the earlier work.

Bunting was at length glad, for a trifling sum, to transfer it altogether into the hands of Messrs. Clementi; and like its predecessor the work is now rarely to be seen in Ireland.

During this time, and throughout the rest of his life, Bunting paid frequent visits to London where he met writers and musicians and where he gave performances of Irish music on the piano. Just as John Field had done in earlier years, Bunting was probably demonstrating pianos - Petrie states that he was an especial favourite at Broadwood's and on his last visit to London in 1839, the firm presented him with a grand piano from its factory.

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Bunting's stature both in appearance and in Belfast society was such that a visitor to Belfast in 1812 could not fail to notice him.

J. Gamble, Esq.:

Music was the favourite recreation in Belfast and many were no mean proficients in it. They are probably indebted for this to Mr. Bunting, a man well known in the musical world.

He has an extensive school here and is organist to one of the meeting-houses; for so little fanaticism have now the Presbyterians of Belfast, that they have admitted organs into their places of worship. At no very distant period this would have been reckoned as high a profanation as to have erected a crucifix.

I was highly gratified with Mr. Bunting's execution on the piano-forte. Mr. Bunting is a large, jolly-looking man; that he should fail to be so is hardly possible, for Belfast concerts are never mere music meetings - they are always followed by a supper and store of wine and punch.

Mr. Bunting is accused of being at times capricious, and unwilling to gratify curiosity. But musicians, poets and ladies have ever been privileged to be so.

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In 1813, that capricious and jolly man organised a Belfast Music Festival which began in the Theatre on October 19th and ended in his Rosemary Street church four days later: a bargain offered as five concerts for two guineas with a benefit concert for Mr. Bunting himself at which he played a Mozart piano concerto. Not only was this Festival a unique event in the history of Belfast but it was the first time Handel's Messiah was given in anything like complete form in Belfast - and this, over 60 years after the first performance in Dublin.

Bunting was responsible for a wide range of classical music in Belfast - though strangely not the newly formed Anacreontic Society (1814) in which his brother John was a prime mover. Contemporary music was reflected in the meetings of a party of amateurs who practised Haydn and Beethoven symphonies under Bunting's direction. Apparently the Eroica symphony looked so ferocious that it was postponed by universal consent.

And still the travelling went on - this time to foreign fields.

George Petrie:

In 1815, he visited Paris, while the allied sovereigns were there, after the Battle of Waterloo. On this occasion his portly, well-fed English appearance procured him the honour of being harmlessly blown up, by a mass of squibs and crackers being placed under him as he was taking a doze on a seat in the Boulevard; the crowd of mischievous Frenchmen who surrounded him followed up the explosion with roars of laughter, and exclamations of 'Jean Bull'!

Here, too, he made intimacies with many of the most eminent musicians, whom he no less delighted by the beauty of the Irish airs, which he played for them. He surprised them by the assurance which he gravely gave that the refined harmonies with which he accompanied them were equally Irish, and contemporaneous with the airs themselves. "Match me that", said Bunting, proudly, to the astonished Frenchmen, as, slapping his thigh, to suit the action to the word, he rose from the piano-forte, after delighting them with the performance of one of his finest airs.

Led by his love for music and particularly of the organ, which was at all times his favourite instrument, he passed from France into Belgium where, from the organists of the great instruments at Antwerp and Haarlem, he acquired much knowledge, which it was our good fortune to have often heard him display on our own organ at St. Patrick's.

Bunting's appearance was quite distinctive and Petrie describes his 'somewhat English face' as symmetrical, manly, independent, full of intelligence and character.

Well, all that about independence was about to be changed.

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In 1819, at the tender age of 46, Bunting married Miss Mary Anne Chapman, daughter of the lady principal of a Belfast school. Just prior to the engagement Mary Anne's mother took up a new post in Dublin. Mary Anne obviously wished to be near the family, for thither went the newly-weds and Edward had to begin a whole new pattern of life.

His eldest brother, Anthony, had been based in Dublin for many years and with this contact and his many Northern connections - not least the influential McCracken and Joy families - he soon established himself as a respected teacher and was appointed organist of St. Stephen's Church.

There were other problems, not least a period of residence with mother-in-law.

Charlotte Milligan Fox:

A problem was the fact that the newly-married couple, elderly husband and young wife, at first resided with Mrs. Chapman. Bunting had not known since his early childhood the loving rule of a mother. The rule of a mother-in-law would naturally have been all the more irksome, and he was a man who, by his own avowal, suffered from irritability of temper.

After a brief experiment, the joint residency was soon abandoned.

An intimate glimpse into the happiness of his married life is provided by a letter to Mary McCracken. It is dated 29 December 1820 when his heart was still tender with rejoicing over his first-born child and only son, little Anthony.

My wife seems happy now to what she did during her mother's superintendence of the household, in consequence of my altered behaviour perhaps. My little darling son is grown handsome. All the people are delighted with him.

There were three children of the marriage and that picture of happy family life is probably the reason why Bunting disappears from sight for the next fifteen years or so.

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But in the mid-1830s he again turned his thoughts to the publication of Irish Airs - obviously with thoughts of posterity in mind but probably not a little influenced by Dr. James MacDonnell, his friend from Belfast who had helped organise the Harp Festival.

Dr. MacDonnell (October 1836):

Dear Bunting,

You will not recollect my hand-writing, but I wish to bring to your recollection a subject we were speaking of when you were last here. It was about some songs or dirges.

I think you told me that you had gotten some of them which you had arranged and harmonised.

When you publish your music, which I now never expect to see, as I am so old and you so indolent, be sure to print some commentary upon the tunes stating all the conjectures that you can form about them …

In fact MacDonnell did live to see Bunting's magnum opus which was published in 1840 as The Ancient Music of Ireland, Arranged for the Piano Forte. And despite the help of his wife, of George Petrie and of the young poet, Samuel Ferguson, the effort just about killed him.

Edward Bunting:

My labour at the Irish music is all but closed, which I'm sure you're pleased to hear!

I begin to fear for the sale of it; first the taste for Irish music is so wane, or rather weaned; and secondly the price which we must make (at one pound ten shillings each book) stands much in the way of selling a great number.

I truly think that in trying to restore a page in the history of man, the book has in some degree shortened my stay in this world. What will that serve me when I shall be asleep in the grave?

Three years later, December 1843, at the ripe-enough old age of 70, he died - a crusty, bad-tempered old man, forgotten by all but a few loyal friends.

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But for Bunting we would have lost a treasury of Irish music and an account of the last of the great harpers; yet over-riding all that, his work is more often belittled nowadays because of his conformity to the musical language and niceties of his time. It is a sad fate, but Bunting's collections are damned for the self-same reasons that this 19th century critic gave for liking them:

The Irish melodies, as performed by the old harpers, were very frequently barbarised by rude harmonies. Under Bunting's refined and educated taste, these were replaced by harmonies the most suitable and delicate that have probably ever been joined to the native melodies of any country.

While we have the melody or air religiously preserved without change or variation, in Bunting's arrangements, all harshness and crudity disappeared, and the result is a work of consummate art.

Bunting's piano arrangements are very much of their own period; the traditional melodies are adjusted and "improved"; new words are provided and the original ones discarded; original harmonies are lost - replaced by the conventional ones of the time. On the other hand, but for Bunting, so much might have been lost.

His legacy is more than just the three published volumes. The Queen's University of Belfast has a collection of his manuscripts and notes with all his workings and reworkings. Donal O'Sullivan and Míchéal Ó Súilleabháin, between them, have published the original manuscript versions corresponding to Bunting's three volumes, complete with the original Irish texts. Perhaps the last word should be left to Derek Bell who for many years has been the harper in the Chieftains traditional music group:

I am most grateful to Bunting for collecting, preserving and saving these wonderful tunes from total extinction; and for at least occasionally trying to write down exactly what the harpers actually played, however fragmentary it all was; and since a little intelligence, knowledge and discretion can enable any sensible musician to get rid of Bunting's errors of musical judgement, I readily forgive him most of these.

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Select Bibliography

Jonathan Bardon, Belfast, An Illustrated History (Belfast 1982)

Derek Bell, Review of the Cork 1983 publication (Belfast 1983)

George Benn, The history of the town of Belfast (Belfast 1823) Charlotte

Edward Bunting, A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (London 1796)

Edward Bunting, A Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland (London 1809)

Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland (London 1840)

Nicholas Carolan, Neal's Celebrated Irish Tunes (Dublin 1986)

Milligan Fox, Annals of the Irish Harpers (London 1911)

J. Gamble, A view of Society and Manners in the North of Ireland, in the summer and autumn of 1812 (London 1813)

Janet Harbison, Bunting and the Belfast Harper' Festival of 1792 (Linenhall Review, Belfast 1986)

Janet Harbison, Setting the scene in Ireland for The Belfast Harpers' Festival, 1792 (Linenhall Review, Belfast date?)

Roy Johnston, Concerts in the musical life of Belfast to 1874 (Belfast 1996, unpublished thesis, Queen's University)

Mary McNeill, The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken (Dublin 1960)

Donal O'Sullivan, The Bunting Collection of Irish Folk Music and Songs (Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society Vols. XXII to XXIX (London 1927-39)

Donal O'Sullivan & Míchéal Ó Súilleabháin, Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland (Cork 1983)

George Petrie, Edward Bunting (Dublin 1847)

Gráinne Yeats, Féile na gCruitrí (Dublin 1980)

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