O'Neill's Music of Ireland (1903)
O'Neill self-published his Music of Ireland in 1903 through Chicago publishers Lyon & Healy. Featuring 1,850 tunes, it was quite an expensive run for a book, as the copies had lovely covers with iconic gold printing. Music of Ireland did not sell well (you can read more about this in Mike O'Malley's book The Beat Cop) and O'Neill ended up sending a good number of copies - with lavish dedication pages to each recipient, accompanied by a florid signature and occasionally a letter - to friends, family, and influential members of Irish society in America and abroad. Fortunately for us, a number of these survive.
It is difficult to put into words the importance of this book. O'Neill managed to put onto paper aspects of an oral tradition that was somewhat fleeting, and that was moving through an Irish diaspora in a pivotal moment for Ireland, for America, and for music. Edison's wax cylinder recorder had been on the market for only a few years in 1903 - allowing music to be recorded for the first time in human history; Ireland was in the throes of a folk revival and on the edge of a major political upheaval; and O'Neill was echoing pursuits of the Gaelic League and others to elevate the "folk" into the parlors of respectable society as he himself was climbing the ranks of American society.
Of course, there can be arguments made that O'Neill - who did not read music well but could play by ear and had an excellent musical memory - worked with Early and James O'Neill (his colleagues on the Chicago police force and accomplished musical transcriptionists) to iron out and codify many of the nuances of an oral tradition onto paper. We know by listening to some of the wax cylinders recorded in O'Neill's parlor as he worked with musicians passing through Chicago that tunes were never played the same way twice. Variation, ornamentation, individual expression, and a focus on what is played (or not played) between the notes are all hallmarks of Irish traditional music. The nuances of performance practice are what makes for regional style, personal expression, and that in-the-moment spark and rapport with dancers. And so O'Neill's act of codifying these traditional tunes, and Selena O'Neill's later settings of them for piano are almost antithetical to the true nature of folk music.
Yet ... O'Neill's invasive act of writing down these tunes also helped to save them, and brought them to a larger audience during a moment in which "the folk" was absolutely essential to the political and personal identity movements of the time, all while the epicenter of performed music was suddenly being shifted onto recorded media. His books of tunes became known among traditional musicians for a century as "the book" or even "the bible" - an almost sacrilegious term that demonstrated to outsiders the importance of O'Neill's impact. His codification of traditional dance tunes and airs ripped those cultural treasures out of a larger oral tradition. But his books also allowed others to access that tradition in a safe and comfortable way. Ironically, the wax cylinders that O'Neill and Early recorded in O'Neill's parlor in the early 1900s helped to ignite a revival in traditional music circles a century later, in part because the live performances on those cylinders - from which O'Neill and Early's transcriptions were based - are so far from what is published! But you will have to listen to the Dunn cylinder collection in the Ward Irish Music Archives, and turn to the Irish Traditional Music Archive to hear these nuances between oral tradition and printed music for yourself.
This site is designed to allow the reader a better understanding of O'Neill's endeavors as he encountered a changing world - looking back to Ireland as it defined itself against a colonial power. It is also designed to help frame and contextualize O'Neill's lifelong climb up a social ladder and his struggle against a power apparatus that was designed to keep newcomers out. That he succeeded in so many of his efforts, including his effort to tame a wild musical tradition, is all the more impressive.
