Sources Of Irish Traditional Music By Aloys Fleischmann

Would any of you who have purchased this book please share your thoughts. I understand only what I’ve read and it’s an intriguing work but the price gives me some pause.

As so often here I find myself ignorant, and your post has set me to reading about the man.

This is fascinating https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2.749/how-one-man-helped-shape-a-tradition-1.631561

I bought it when it first came out and never regretted it ( it was around $200 USD back then so I can’t imagine what they go for now!). It has 6841 tunes…its enormous. If you are looking for common session tunes, this set is not for you. It is packed with historical collections from the 16th through 19th centuries and a lot of the tunes, if not most, are obscure and a lot of it is from rare manuscripts. To me its been worth every penny I paid but I revel in unusual early melodies.

Robert Mouland
www.wireharp.com

I have the set (two volumes); got them as a present from my wife several years ago. They’re fascinating, if you like old tunes and you like history. As an example, when I was learning the slow air “The Wild Geese”, I found it in “Sources” and learned that it has been in print for almost 300 years. But if you’re expecting a catalog of complete tunes like the Goodman manuscripts from ITMA or O’Neill’s, you will be disappointed - many of the tunes just have snippets, a few bars written out, and often times in keys not friendly to modern instruments pitched in D. The organization of the books is not entirely intuitive, but it includes a good index. They are certainly unique, and contain old tunes and information about them that you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

It’s available on Amazon (US site at least, I haven’t checked others) in Kindle and several hardcover editions for around US $450. You can get a fairly extensive preview on the Amazon product page.

In my opinion, pricing a book like that at a price like that is a crime against culture.

At $450 and up I wanted to fish for some opinions. I love the accessibility the internet provides but I sure do miss the days of thumbing through a book such as this.
Thanks - Especially to Robert Mouland. That was just what I was after. I’m getting close to the point that I need a resource such as this.

I get it via Inter-Library Loan through my local (US) public library. In fact, I have it now.

The original cost of the two volume edition in Ireland was £230 (that’s sterling since the publisher, Garland, issued the book in London). There’s probably a copy held by ITMA in Dublin, but Libraries Ireland reports that there’s only around ten or so copies held by Irish libraries, most of these in County Cork and a couple in Dublin, and they cannot be borrowed, but only accessed in situ.

Bearing in mind the single edition’s size (1400+ pages) and its limited print run, it really is not surprising that a bookseller is looking for more than $400 for it. It’s €435 on the Book Depository site. The price shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about, say, the cost of rare records.

JWiseman, I see that you live near Chicago. You might want to check the library at the city’s Irish-American Heritage Centre - https://irish-american.org/in-the-center/library/.

Before forking out over £300, you can get a taster at Google Books

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nb-zaArKu3EC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I’m convinced - I believe I was already. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something less than I would expect considering the reputation and work of the people involved. This is nearly 1/3 of a Bb flute that I won’t buy as soon as I would like.

JWiseman, be happy that you are not a piper then. ;^)

JWiseman - how did you get on with this??