The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland

By George Petrie

Subjects: Folk music, In literature, English drama, Irish authors, History and criticism, History

Description: ...George Petrie (c. 1790–1866), a Dublin professional artist, was a leading figure in the cultural and intellectual life of nineteenth-century Ireland. The benefits of his work in the areas of Irish art, archaeology, history, topography, architecture, the establishment of cultural institutions – and traditional music – are felt to this day. From his youth Petrie had the habit of noting down traditional melodies in manuscript on his sketching tours around Ireland and in Dublin, and he contributed to the publications of the older collector Edward Bunting. After the devastation caused to traditional culture by the Great Famine, Petrie was prominent in the 1851 establishment in Dublin of the Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland. His own collection was the first mooted publication, and with the assistance of colleagues he undertook to edit selected melodies with a commentary. The first volume was published in 1855... After 1855 Petrie continued work on a second volume drawn from his collection, but this was only partially completed at the time of his death and it ends abruptly in the middle of a note on a song. This incomplete volume was published almost twenty years later, in 1882, without a title page... ...Both volumes have been republished in one-volume print editions: in 1967 and 1969 in facsimile by Gregg International, Farnborough, Hants, UK; and in 2002 in a re-set edition (David Cooper ed., with Lillis Ó Laoire) by Cork University Press.... [From the Irish Traditional Music Archive]