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Grattan Flood - A History of Irish Music, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 60

Grattan Flood - A History of Irish Music, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 60
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periodical Publisher
Browne and Nolan Ltd, Dublin 1913
periodical Editor
[none]
periodical Title
Grattan Flood - A History of Irish Music
volume Number
1
issue Content
HISTORY OF IRISR MUSIC.IRISH MUSIC IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 105Warbeck p ot complicated matters ; but it fizzled outngloriously in 1494, and Warbeck was hanged atTyburn, with his friend, John Waters, Mayor of Cork,on November i6th, 1499.England, from 1450 to 1500, can only boast a fewcompositions of any merit, for which Davey apolo-getically explains as follows : So much of Flemishwork remains, and so little of the English work, thatthe English appear to be more inferior than theyreally were. If this apology seems satisfactory asregards music in England at this period, it is of stillgreater force in the case of Anglo-Irish music, both onaccount of the Wars of the Roses, the Lambert Simneland Perkin Warbeck plots, and the internecine conflictsof the colonists themselves, as also the destruction ofmanuscripts. In any case, practically the only secularmusic in Ireland at the close of the fifteenth centurywas the old Irish music, whilst, as regards sacred music,matters were pretty much as they had been a centurypreviously. But of this latter phase I shall treat in aseparate chapter.CHAPTER X II.IRISH Music IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.MANY of our old annalists tell of the fame f harpmaking in Ireland during the first decade of the six-teenth century. This statement is accentuated byDr. Petrie, who describes for us a very beautiful harp,which bore the date 1509, but which has, unfortunately,disappeared since i8io. It was small, he writes,and but simply ornamented, and on the front of thepillar, or forearm, there was a brass plate on which wasinscribed the name of the maker and the date 1509.The poor harper [ a wandering minstrel in 1809), hadoften expressed his intention of bequeathing this harpto his kind entertainers [ Mr. Christoper Dillon Bellewand his lady, of Mount Behlew]; but a summer camewithout bringing him to his accustomed haunts, andthe harp was never forwarded, nor its fate ascertained.For contemporary criticism of this period, one mayadduce the learned John Major, (d. 1525) who givesunstinted praise to Irish music and musicians, especiallyto harpers: Hibernenses . . . qui in illa arte praecipuisunt.To those who are interested in the bag-pipes, it isworth mentioning that though we have no pipes of thesixteenth century now existing, ther is, in Vienna, anexcellent representation of an Irish piper, with thedate 1514, from the world-famed master-brush ofAlbre ht Durer; and, in Fergusons Dissertation, thereare two illustrations given of a piper and pipes of this
issue Number
1
page Number
60
periodical Author
Grattan Flood, Wm. H.
issue Publication Date
1913-01-01T00:00:00
allowedRoles
anonymous,guest,friend,member

Grattan Flood - A History of Irish Music

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