Kiely-Ferris, Catherine Mary Pia
(2005)
The music of three Dublin musical societies of the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries: The Anacreontic Society, The Antient
Concerts Society and The Sons of Handel. A descriptive catalogue.
Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The assimilation of this thesis began as an attempt to highlight that which lay
uncatalogued, and therefore unknown about, in libraries. This was due to an
unfortunate lack of qualified staff, time, or funding. Enquiries into the collections in
The Royal Irish Academy of Music revealed the music of the three societies upon
which this thesis focuses. Although musicologists have attempted to gather
information from these collections, it was almost impossible. The scores and
manuscripts were distributed throughout the entirety of the storage stacks of the
library in disarray: uncollated and uncatalogued. The librarian, Philip Shields, had
attempted to collate the items. However this was a time-consuming task and one
which was impractical due to other responsibilities.
The first task in compiling these catalogues was to examine every item which was
stored in the stacks of the library to ascertain those which may have been used by the
three societies under examination: The Anacreontic Society, The Sons o f Handel or
The Antient Concerts Society. A large quantity of scores and manuscripts were
discovered from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The decision was
made that, for this purpose, only items which bore the mark of the society would be
included in the catalogue. A digital image was then taken of the title page of each
item (if one was extant), and of each distinguishing feature of the items. This
resulted in a ‘virtual’ copy of the collection, from which the catalogue was
compiled. These digital images are used throughout the catalogue for reasons threefold.
First, the items are at least 150 years old, and many are in bad condition. One
will now be able to view the scores and manuscripts without touching the items.
Secondly, the inclusion of the images removes subjective descriptions of the
imprints, stamps, signatures, pictures and other idiosyncrasies found within the
collection. Thirdly, musicologists will be able to compare or identify, with relative ease what was not ascertainable within the scope of this project.
The accompanying
CDs include photographs taken from the aforementioned ‘virtual’ copy of the
collection. Each contains directories which divide the photographs into specific
areas e.g. copyist signatures, markings of societies, publisher’s markings, local
supplier’s markings etc. The individual photographs names are referenced within the
context of the catalogue. These photographs highlight other possible areas of
further research, for example into publishing in the nineteenth century.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(Masters)
|
| Keywords: |
The Anacreontic Society; The Antient
Concerts Society; The Sons of Handel; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music |
| Item ID: |
5378 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
09 Sep 2014 13:34 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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