Note from Scott Spencer
As COVID began to close institutions and impact researchers and archivists far and near, many academics began scrambling to find a new role for our training and invent a new means for our scholarly pursuits.
For ethnomusicologists, the practice of ethnography was effectively over, save for intentional Zoom conversations. Fieldwork was temporarily a remnant of an earlier era. Archives were suddenly closed, though some still had beleaguered archivists scurrying about in solo masked forays.
With my two main research methods being effectively closed off, I had to quickly figure out a new approach (while pivoting to online teaching). As I had been messing around with digital humanities sites and saw their potential (and also noted how digital humanities projects had not yet been recognized as serious academic work by most universities and tenure review boards), I came up with an idea. What if a digital humanities project could be peer reviewed? And also, what if an archival project could be crowd-sourced? That is, if archives are closed and a means to collect primary source materials is shut down, what options are left open? Certainly, some archives have digitized materials which could be assembled and contextualized. And there are traces in archives of the things deemed of less importance than the content of books—as dedication pages are often marked in library MARC records, but are not always scanned in as a part of the publication. Also, though the printed content of a publication may be constant across copies, it struck me that O’Neill’s florid dedication pages (thanks to Dan Neely for gifting me an original O’Neill book with a dedication, which he purchased for $4 in New York while we were attending NYU—see Seamus McManus in this site) offered context beyond that of printed page. (Also, it was outside of copyright!)
I knew that the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin had multiple copies of O’Neill books, and that there were many O’Neill books in private hands around the world. Why not try to gather these dedication pages through a crowd-sourcing effort? Archivists would be happy to help as they could, and private collectors would probably love to have their copy featured and placed in a larger context of time and place. With the support of the Ward Irish Music Archives in Milwaukee, and the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, the project found a home. Aileen Dillane, Daniel Neely and Michael Walsh agreed to review and advise, Sean Williams was there for the overview and details, and the idea to form a peer-reviewed and curated Digital Humanities site for O’Neill’s dedication pages was started.
A token of a harsh Covid reality, I hope that this site may serve as a means to contextualize Capt. Francis O’Neill’s efforts to capture Irish traditional music, and also to contextualize O’Neill’s struggle for recognition of his painstaking research and advocacy for Irish music in decades of great change, removed from the center of the tradition (or perhaps re-centering the tradition). The pages in this site represent, as of this writing, scans of 70+ dedications pages signed by O'Neill, gathered and saved by hundreds of collectors and archivists, documented by my graduate students and collaborators, and filled in with details by those enthusiasts who have also been curious about the names on their dedication pages and the moment in which they were signed. In the following pages, I have tried to acknowledge the voice of each archivist, librarian, collector, traditional music enthusiast, and musician who has helped to make this project possible. In a dark moment of sequestering and quarantine, those who cherish Irish traditional music and work tirelessly for its greater good have proven once again that the whole of the tradition is greater than the sum of its parts. Thank you to all who have contributed here, and I hope that you discover some treasures in the following pages.
A Few Thoughts
As of this writing, we have documented roughly 75 O'Neill dedications pages. While this is by no means a definitive collection (who knows how many copies he signed, and how many of those were saved), it has offered a few insights into the realms in which O'Neill was operating. A few of these trends are obvious in this site's Timeline, as well as noted in the Key Figures section. I would like to also point out that O'Neill was often incredibly fastidious in his handwriting and clever in his choice of words. His handwriting demonstrates a keen attention to detail, and I believe is intentionally used to position himself in an educated social sphere. (See Tamara Plakins Thornton's Handwriting in America*). His precision in writing is evidenced in his dedication page to Seumas McManus (my own personal copy of O’Neill’s Music of Ireland: 400 Choice Selections, thanks to Daniel Neely). The page still holds the pencil lines he laid down before signing, to ensure that his hand was even and placed well on the blank page. His attention to detail in the dotted line of the X in "Xmas" and filagree around the date and under his signature show a man very interested in presentation and reception. His humor shines through: "Distinguished Letterature," describing a component speller of literature... That his books were often published with "all the bells and whistles" in printing and graphics, and that he was so considered and precise in his dedications (see the poetry included in Selena O'Neill's copies) it strikes me that O'Neill may have been intentionally aiming to have his works included in libraries of influential members of society. (Thornton's Handwriting in America also has a section on autograph collection that may be applicable here).
Throughout this project, I have been using the term "provenance" to describe the life of each copy of a book. and I do so quite intentionally (if a little incorrectly). "Provenance" means "origin" or "place of origin" or "source". Each copy of an O'Neill book represented here has a provenance of Lyon&Healy publishing house in Chicago, most likely. But the life of the book and the journey it has taken is often much more complex and fascinating. To each of the many owners (or holders) of that book, there is a personal story of provenance. These combine over time to be stages of provenance, or layers of history: provenances. Each book in this collection has a singular story, and one that is often known only by the current owner. I have tried to include those stories, even if they are not documented or provable, and have also tried to acknowledge those amazing archivists and librarians who have captured and shared those histories with this project. When I started studying ethnomusicology at NYU under Gage Averill and Mick Moloney, I remember reading an article by Chris Goertzen* in which he undertook an exhaustive study on movement and change in the fiddle tune "Billy in the Lowground" in the south eastern region of United States through a careful deployment of the Finish Historic-Geographic method on tune variants over time. After reading the article and noting how it reminded me of Francis Child's application of scientific method to the "oral literature" of balladry*, and the generations of scholars who then challenged his method of finding "urtexts" of each ballad variant, as well as tried to correct his avoidance of melody or regional variation, I came to a realization. Why not ask the fiddle players / ballad singers where they got the tunes and how they have changed? Surely they knew and would be happy to share. And invariably they do, and they are. In the same way, I have asked "where and how" of each book documented in this project, and some of the stories are magnificent. So, forgive me the imprecise use of the term "provenance." In my use of the term, it is both singular and plural, to encompass the story or stories of an individual copy of a book, as known and freely shared by its current owner.
A Few Questions
O'Neill may have had a skewed understanding of his audience. While his recipients (as seen through this project) may have been extensions of his personal and social network (or people he aspired to have as friends and colleagues), it is difficult to get a good understanding of a few aspects of his audience. Here are a few questions I'd love to pose:
Did the recipients know O'Neill? I think that the answer to this question is "mostly yes." The extent of this is up for debate, and I hope that this project brings a few more answers to this question. We have letters to accompany a number of the books in this project, and we know that a good number of dedication pages listed here are to collaborators and family members. Whether the clergy members, editors and society members knew O'Neill, or knew of him, is not always certain. Maybe some of these books were intended to start a conversation or foster a relationship.
Did people buy these books? It is noted by many historians that O'Neill's books did not sell well, and that O'Neill was puzzled as to why that was. Mike O'Malley details this in some of his writings. I don't have evidence that O'Neill sold copies through a subscription, and I'm not even sure where the books would have been sold, other than Lyon&Healy publishers and music house. I'm also not sure of the price that they would have commanded. I hope this project brings in some answers.
Were the recipients musicians? Certainly a number of his recipients were. He sent books as tokens of thanks to a number of musicians who helped in his projects, and to a few who were known as music scholars. Most of his books were tune libraries, but his massive "Irish Minstrels and Musicians" (1913) had little if any written music, and served more as an Irish music encyclopedia. His later books, scored for piano with chordal accompaniment, I would assume were less for traditional musicians and more for those who would want to play Irish melodies on their parlor pianos - a shift to cater to a more affluent audience, or a deliberate attempt to land Irish traditional music in a different social class. Of course, this was just at the moment that the recording industry was invented and exploding, and by the time that O'Neill's later books came out, parlor pianos were quickly being replaced by gramophones.
How did these books impact Irish music? O'Neill's is often referred to as "the bible" by traditional musicians. It wasn't the first book of tunes, but it became the most important. This may have had to do with the moment—mass emigration during an Gorta Mór (the Great Hunger, or the Famine) combined with nostalgia and a critical political moment in Ireland at the turn of the century, with echoes and impact across the diaspora. It also may have had to do with a moment in which reading musical transcriptions was becoming more commonplace. Certainly O'Neill's books documented a huge number of tunes in a critical moment.
Did the musicians who learned O'Neill tunes change Irish music? His early books were transcriptions of dance tunes and airs, often filtered through the ear and bow (or piano keyboard) of his collaborators, as O'Neill himself didn't read or write music well. This of course begs the question of accuracy in transcription, and I hope to answer this in a project that compares O'Neill's transcriptions with the wax cylinder recordings he made contemporaneously of some of his source musicians. At first listen to some of the wax cylinders in the Ward Irish Archives, Irish Traditional Music Archive and elsewhere, it is obvious that modality and variation are often ironed out in transcription. Pat Mitchell and Jackie Small's work* on accurate transcriptions of piper Patsy Touhey's wax cylinder recordings, when compared to O'Neill transcriptions of his playing, proves this beyond a doubt. And of course, any attempt to codify an oral tradition is problematic to begin with, as change is inherent in the "folk process."
As more pages roll in, and as more eyes are on this resource, I hope to expand and revisit this section. Please feel free to send comments, and I hope that you enjoy Capturing O'Neill.
Thanks to my collaborators, my wonderful graduate students, and a host of people who put their eyeballs on these pages: Deirdre Ní Chonghaile, Joseph Lennon, Maeve Gebruers, Liam O'Connor, Mark Redmond, Emmett Gill, Helen Lawlor, Simon McKerrell, Jeff Ksiazek, Barry Stapleton, Mick Moloney. Thanks especially to Sean Williams for her keen eyes and impeccable contextual acumen.
Dr. Scott B. Spencer
University of Southern California
Thornton School of Music
scottspe@usc.edu
Trained in Ethnomusicology, Scott Spencer investigates the musical intersections of oral tradition and digital technology. Much of his work has been through the lens of Irish traditional music, though his publications have also looked to American balladry and sonic design in museums.
Citations
Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Cambridge University Press, 2014. (Originally published in 1857)
Goertzen, Chris. “American Fiddle Tunes and the Historic-Geographic Method.” Ethnomusicology 29, no. 3 (1985): 448–473.
Mitchell, Pat and Jackie Small. The Piping of Patsy Touhey. Dublin: Na Píobairí Uilleann, 1987.
Thornton, Tamara Plakins. Handwriting in America: a Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996