Irish Music Center

Mission/Purpose | User Profile | Facilities | Services | Resources |
Research Guides

Mission/Purpose
The Irish Music Center of the Burns Library is located in the MacNeil Room of the Bapst Library building. Serving the music needs of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, the Irish Music Center is also available to the community of musicians and researchers beyond the university. Established in 1998, the Center is committed to documenting, preserving, and making accessible a comprehensive record of Irish music as performed in America. Among the Center's major goals are: a) to facilitate research about musicians, musical styles, and Irish music history, especially in relation to the Irish diaspora;  b) to assist students, faculty, and the community in locating particular recordings, song lyrics, and sheet music in the Irish tradition;  c) to work with the Gaelic Roots Festival, the Irish Studies Program, and the Music Department in recording unique performances at Boston College; and d) to record, collect, and preserve oral history and other materials relevant to Irish music in America.

Through the Irish Studies Program, members of the Boston College community are able to attend classes in Irish fiddle, tin whistle, and dance during the academic year. The program also offers occasional seminars and lectures on Irish music and culture, and sponsors the annual world-renowned Gaelic Roots festival of Irish music, song, and dance. Music majors in the Music Department have the option of graduating with a concentration in Irish traditional music.

User Profile
The user community of the Irish Music Center includes the students, faculty and staff of Boston College, the university's alumni, area musicians, and researchers throughout the U.S.

Facilities
The Irish Music Center provides access to a networked PC with printer, a listening station with audio equipment and headphones, and a shared VCR. The MacNeil Room provides comfortable seating for several patrons at once. Patrons have convenient access to a photocopier and other resources in the Bapst Library. The Burns Library Reading Room is available for researchers using rare printed items. Equipment resources for staff include 2 reel-to-reel tape players, a DAT recorder with microphone, and an Edison Standard Phonograph for playback of wax cylinders. The Center is currently acquiring equipment for analog-to-digital preservation recording on compact discs. The Center works closely with the Audiovisual Department on campus in tape duplication and equipment purchases.

Services

Reference
The Irish Music Center provides in-depth reference service to the Boston College community and area researchers. The Center responds to E-mail requests for information whenever possible.

Library Instruction
Each semester, the director of the Irish Music Center offers one or two sessions introducing music students to the resources of the center. The director also assists in teaching the beginning fiddle class offered through the Music Department.

Exhibits
The center has exhibited material from the Frederick M. Manning Collection of John McCormack, as well as music manuscripts of Pádraig O’Keeffe and photographs of Leo Rowsome.

Resources
The Center provides access to materials in the Irish Music Archives, founded at the John J. Burns Library in 1990. To date, the Irish Music Center has acquired over 4,000 items in approximately 80 separate collections. The archives include recordings in all formats; sheet music; books about music; manuscripts; photographs; memorabilia; and musical instruments. Many of the Center's collections have been generously donated. While most of the materials pertain to Irish traditional music from Ireland or America, some collections include traditional music from Scotland, Cape Breton, and French Canada, and "old time" music from the United States. Most of the Center's materials are stored in, and retrievable from, the Burns Library's closed stacks. The Center itself maintains a selection of reference materials and current recordings. Important research materials pertaining to Irish music are housed in the Burns Library Irish Collection and in the O'Neill Library. The Center works closely with the O'Neill Library to maintain a circulating collection of commercially-produced recordings in the Media Center.

Recordings:
Professional and other recordings of Boston College music events, including Gaelic Roots Festival events and interviews, on digital audio tape, A-DAT, videocassette, and compact disc.

Commercially-produced 78 rpm, 45 rpm,  33 1/3 rpm, and compact discs.

Commercial and field recordings on reel to reel tapes, audiocassettes, and videocassettes.

Sheet music and books about music: selected items
Armstrong, Robert Bruce. Musical Instruments. Vol. 1: The Irish and the Highland Harps. Edinburgh, 1904. (Irish Room).

Armstrong, Robert Bruce. Musical Instruments. Vol. 2: English and Irish Instruments. Edinburgh, 1908. (Irish Room).

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

Joyce, P.W. Ancient Irish Music. Dublin, 1906.

Joyce, P.W. Old Irish Folk Music and Songs. London: Hodges and Figgis, 1909. (Burns Library).

O'Neill, Francis. Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby. Chicago, 1910. (Burns Library)

O'Neill, Francis. Irish Minstrels and Musicians. Chicago, 1913. (Burns & O'Neill Libraries)

O'Neill, Francis. Music of Ireland: Eighteen Hundred and Fifty Melodies. Chicago: Lyon & Healy, 1903. (Burns Library).

Petrie, George. The Complete Collection of Irish Music. London, 1902-1905. (Burns Library).

Walker, Joseph C. Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards. London, 1786. (Irish Room).

Music Manuscripts: selected items
Bowles, Mícheál. Amhráin Aniar, an unpublished collection of Irish-language songs and airs, edited by Mícheál Bowles and Ríonach Uí Ógáin.

Donaldson, Malachie. Music manuscript, 1772. Compilation of handwritten tunes and country dance instructions. In the Anne Thompson Collection of Irish Music.

MacDonagh, Donagh. Approximately 488 versions of song lyrics from the Irish radio broadcaster (photocopy). In the Donagh MacDonagh Collection of Irish Music.

O' Keeffe, Pádraig. Music manuscripts from the legendary Sliabh Luachra fiddle player and teacher. In the Johanna Horan Collection of Pádraig O'Keeffe.

Bell, Derek. Music for the 1992 Irish harp festival at Boston College. In the Derek Bell Collection of Irish Music.

Hudson, Henry. Music manuscripts (photostats and negative microfilm). Seven notebooks of Irish airs.

Selected Collections of Note:
The Frederick M. Manning Collection of John McCormack, the largest collection of materials in the United States devoted to the great tenor's career. The collection includes photographs, personal correspondence, letters from dignitaries, sheet music in its original cabinet, books, recordings, and the artist's handwritten memoirs (unpublished).

Approximately 500 early editions of the printed music of Thomas Moore.

Master recordings of Boston College Irish music, song and dance events from 1990 to the present.

Photographs of the great piper Leo Rowsome and his contemporaries.

Photographs from the renowned accordion player Joe Burke.

A collection of broadside ballads (sheet music) printed in Ireland and the U.S. in the 19th century.

Recorded songs and narrative of Irish poet and Burns scholar Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, 1999.

The Philip J. McNiff Irish Music Collection, 1950-1985.

The William Woods Irish Music Collection (over 1,200 recordings).

The George Madaus Irish Music Collection (over 1,500 items).

Miscellany:
Photographs, letters, recital programs, poems, newsletters, newspaper clippings, magazines, posters.

O'Neill Library Media Center Holdings:
Over 700 circulating Irish music media items (compact discs, audiocassettes, LP's, and videos).

Selected Electronic Resources Available to Users of the Irish Music Center:

• Subject index to folklore and folk literature: Modern Language Association Bibliography
• Subject index to music: Music Index (CD-ROM)
• General indexes: BC Libraries have numerous multidisciplinary online databases that point to material pertinent to the study of Irish traditional music.  These include Arts & Humanities Citation Index (Web of Science), Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, Expanded Academic Index ASAP (InfoTrac), UnCover Reveal and others.
• Full-text Irish-American newspapers, including the Boston Irish Reporter and the Irish Voice, available through Ethnic NewsWatch.

Research Guides
The site, Research Guide: Irish Studies provides useful information on researching all aspects of Irish culture. The Irish Music Center page provides additional information about the Center's holdings.

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