the Bunting manuscripts

1792 - c.1843

59 manuscripts and printed books comprise the Bunting Collection, at Queens University Library, Belfast. (PDF handlist)

Edward Bunting collected music from the last of the old Gaelic harpers. MS29 is his first field notebook; it contains quick notations of tunes as taken down from the harpers between 1792 and 1805. Many of the tunes are single melody lines but a significant number have bass markings as well. MS5 was his field notebook from 1805 to 1810. MS29 is now available online at the Queens website. Other important early notebooks are ms33 I-VI.

Edward Bunting published three volumes of Irish music arranged for pianoforte, in 1792, 1804 and 1840. The music in these volumes is mostly selected from his manuscript notebooks, but the tunes are adjusted to fit with the newly composed basses and harmonies, suitable for performance on the pianoforte. This made them popular at the time (for example a number were plagarised by Thomas Moore for his songs), but leaves them all but useless for the early harp student.

Bunting and his correspondents also collected material on the techniques and terminologies used by the old harpers. The manuscript drafts of this material are now lost, but the information was published on pages 21-27 of the dissertation to the 1840 volume. Some have cast doubt on the reliability of the printed tables but in contrast to the tunes, this technical material does not seem to have been modified and is an essential resource for early Gaelic harp students. Clarsach.net had an online edition of the tables (now archived here at earlygaelicharp.info)

For an online facsimile of MS29 p.58, p.158 & p.159 showing Cumha Caoine an Albanaigh (Scott's lamentation), and analysis of the music, see Alasdair Codona's article Gaelic Harmony

Facsimiles of individual pages from MS29 can be found e.g. 7 pages in Janet Harbison, The Legacy of the Belfast Harpers' Festival, 1792 Ulster Folklife vol. 35, 1989.

MS29 is now available online at the Queens website

The portrait of Bunting at the top of this page is from C.M. Fox, "Annals of the Irish Harpers", 1911. Fox discovered the manuscripts in 1907, and bequeathed them to Queens in 1916. She published "Annals of the Irish Harpers", a narrative acount of Bunting's work including extensive quotations from letters and papers in the mss. She also published some music from the mss in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society (of which she was in charge) from 1908 to 1910. It seems that some of the material she had at her disposal may not be at Queens.

There is an etching portrait of Edward Bunting viewable online at the National Portrait Gallery.

Published books

Roy Johnston
Bunting's Messiah
Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, 2003
A comprehensive and readable biography of Edward Bunting, which covers his whole musical life from his training and apprenticeship, to his organisation of an important performance of Handel's Messiah in Belfast in 1813, and also his work with the harpers. This book provides the essential context for Bunting's collection of the ancient Irish music.
Available here from the Early Gaelic Harp Emporium. Click here to order your copy

Edward Bunting
A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music
Preston & Son, London, 1796
This book was Bunting's first published collection of some of the tunes which he had collected from the old Gaelic harpers. It contains a short preface and 66 tunes "adapted for the pianoforte", and hence of limited value to Gaelic harp students. The 1st edition was reprinted as a limited edition facsimile by the Linen Hall Library, Belfast in 1996. A different edition (there were a number of contemporary pirate rip-offs) is included in a facsimile reprint of all 3 of Bunting's volumes by Walton's of Dublin (1969, 2nd edition 2002).
Free PDF facsimile download from Seamus Taylor

Edward Bunting
A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland
Clementi & Comp^y, London, 1809
Bunting's second pubished book contained a long preface and 77 tunes. The tunes are in romantic piano arrangements, some with specially written songs in English as was the fashion of the time. The preface is a historical overview of the evolution of the harp, and is only of antiquarian interest. Included in a reprint of all 3 of Bunting's volumes by Walton's of Dublin (1969, 2nd edition 2002).
Free PDF facsimile download from Seamus Taylor

Edward Bunting
The Ancient Music of Ireland
Hodges and Smith, Dublin, 1840
This, the third and last of Bunting's publications, is the most important historical source for the techniques used by the old Gaelic harpers; in the introduction, Bunting lists the various fingering and damping techniques used by each hand, as well as discussing tuning and nomenclature. The book contains many tunes, though they are of limited value as they are arranged for the pianoforte. Included in a reprint of all 3 of Bunting's volumes by Walton's of Dublin (1969, 2nd edition 2002); Available in facsimile from Dover Publications (2000).
Free PDF facsimile download from Seamus Taylor
 

Colette Moloney
The Irish Music Manuscripts of Edward Bunting (1773-1843): An Introduction and Catalogue
Irish Traditional Music Archive, 2000
This large and expensive volume is an heroic attempt to impose some order on the Bunting manuscripts in Queens University Belfast. Each manuscript is described and its contents listed in order with details of annotations and titles. Music incipits are also given (the first 4 bars of a tune) though these are poorly presented. There are extensive indices, which combined mean that a particular tune can easily be located in draft or arranged versions in various manuscripts, and Bunting's titles and notes compared. There is also a substantial introduction describing the manuscript collection and the music and song texts in it, but unfortunately although the technical descriptions of ink, handwriting, paper, and bindings is illuminating and useful, the musical discussion is seriously naive and often misleading - for example in the section on musical style and technique Ann Heymann's work is not mentioned; in discussing the instruments played by Bunting's informants there is no mention that a number of them survive in museums; and piano arrangements are accepted as being more honest representations of Gaelic harp idiom than the draft notations in ms29. Although irritating in many ways this is an indispensible book.

Donal O'Sullivan
The Bunting Collection of Irish Folk Music and Songs
Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, 1927-39
Each tune in the first two (1796 and 1809) of Bunting's published volumes is here given as a transcription of the melody taken from Bunting's manuscripts, and notes on who and where Bunting obtained it from, parallels, other sources, and also includes words to all the songs along with English translation. A useful resource for the scholar as well as for the Gaelic harp student. The work was published serially in the Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society between 1927 and 39. Facsimile reprint by Dawson & sons, London, 1967. Available as a photocopied facsimile from the Wire Branch of the Clarsach Society.

Donal O'Sullivan with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin
Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland edited from the original manuscripts
Cork University Press, 1983
Donal never completed his work on Bunting's third published volume (1840), so after his death the material he had compiled was edited and completed by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. The notes are almost inevitably less full, and there are fewer lyrics, but Mícheál has made a point to include discussion of the few harp basses, which were overlooked by Donal.
Occasionally available for sale secondhand

Charlotte Milligan Fox
Annals of the Irish Harpers
Smith, Elder & Co, London 1911
Charlotte discovered the papers of Edward Bunting in an attic in 1907; in this book she published anecdotes, stories and historical documents from them, including documents relating to the 1792 Festival, the Memoirs of Arthur O'Neill, the Diary and Letters of Patrick Lynch, letters to Bunting from Dr. James MacDonnell. Also a biography of Bunting and six portraits.

Simon Chadwick