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 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, 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. The pages in this site represent as of this writing, scans of 60+ dedications pages signed by O'Neill, gathered and saved by hundreds of collectors and archivists, documented by my graduate stunts 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 have 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 60 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: a Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 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. That his books were often published with "all the bells and whistles" in manufacturing, 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).
Dr. Scott B. Spencer
University of Southern California
Thornton School of Music
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.
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- Notes from the Curators Scott B. Spencer