Even where social and political conditions were favorable to the growth of art, the prac tice of the complicated artistic polyphony of the 14th and 15th centuries required resources which could only be found in the courts of princes, in large cathedrals or in rich abbeys. Notwithstanding the great intercourse between Ireland and France and the Low Countries at the period When Flemish polyphony was at its zenith, the unhappy political and social state of Ireland was wholly incompatible with the artistic cultivation of music. The introduction of Protestanism arrested the fusion of the native Irish and the English colonists, and the growth of those political institutions which would have been the necessary outcome of such a fusion; it also completely isolated Irish music. Irish harpers no longer wandered over Europe; French jongleurs and minstrels had indeed al ready ceased to visit Ireland, according as Eng lish supplanted French as the language of the Norman nobility. The Catholics, deprived of their cathedrals and abbeys, and ultimately for bidden all public worship, could no longer use even the simple chants of the Church. The new harmonic music, which received in one direction so powerful an impulse from Protes tantism, was introduced into the Protestant churches of the cities; but it exerted no influ ence Whatever on the popular music, owing to the impassable gulf which existed between the Irish people and the whole English system, political and religious.
At the beginning of the 18th century the native Irish were for the moment effectually crushed; the Catholic gentry were either pau perized or in exile. At the cost of the intel lectual death of the majority of the Irish people, the minority at home purchased a certain kind of tranquillity, and this in turn led to the par tial revival of art and learning among the Protestant Irishgentry. Protestant hymnology, and especially the fine choral service of the English Church, created a taste for artistic music, and the works of foreign composers accordingly found their way into the circles of the wealthy. The influence of this foreign music is perceptible in the Irish music which was composed or modified about this time. Carolan, the best known composer of Irish airs in the 18th century, is a good example, being influenced by Geminiani, Corelli, Vivaldi and others of his contemporaries. This influence is especially perceptible in his 'Planxties,> or dance tunes.
It would appear that the transformation of the Irish homophonous music into harmonic music really began about this period. But the change was soon arrested. For while on the one hand the political and social slavery of the majority of the nation—of that part who pos sessed and cherished the tradition of the Irish past — rendered the rise of a school of genuine Irish music impossible, on the other hand the increasing wealth and facilities of traveling brought the Irish gentry more and more under English and foreign influences, and diminished day by day that taste for Irish music which they had begun to imbibe during the brief period of their previous seclusion. The Irish harper, no longer meeting with the same welcome at the festive board, gradually became extinct, and Irish music found a last refuge in the homes of the peasantry. But this isolation, while pre serving it for some time longer from being transformed like the popular music of other countries, also shut it out from all true artistic development, and left it entirely in the hands of itinerant pipers and fiddlers.
Harmonic music has now penetrated the last retreat of Irish music. The piper, like the harper, is gradually becoming extinct, and in a few years more every sound of the old music of Ireland will be extinct. The irresistible in fluence of the opera and of harmonized sacred music, which have now penetrated into every part of Ireland, would have been sufficient of themselves to rapidly eject old Irish music; the more so, as a modification in the esthetic feeling of the people has been slowly taking place dur ing nearly a century. Another patent influence has been the introduction of bands. Since the music of a modern band must necessarily be harmonized, the popular ear is being gradually trained by these bands to harmony.
This disappearance of Irish music before harmonic music is as inevitable as the disap pearance of the red man before the ever en croaching white.
A few Irish melodies figure in modern operas; as for example 'Eiblin a ruin,' which under the name of air ecossais,> constitutes the principal theme in the overture of Boiel dieu's dame blanche,> and Last Rose of Summer,' in Flotow's The com pass of the harps was from C to d'". Their scale was sometimes C, but, mostly that of G. It has been proved that the old harpers played with their nails, not the fleshy tip of the fingers.
Examples of almost all the church modes are to be found in Irish airs, as in those of Great Britain, France and other countries. The old Irish bagpipe was blown by the mouth, like the Scottish, but the later bagpipe, the Uillean or Union pipe, blown with a bellows became popu lar in Ireland. From this cause, and the deli cacy of its reeds, the tone is softer. Burney remarked upon the perfection of the intervals of the Irish chanter, or melody-pipe, which he had never met with in the pipes of North Brit ain. The scale of the Irish bagpipe is from C below the treble stave to C above it, with all the semitones. The Irish instrument is also fur nished with a sort of tenor harmony of chords, The pipe of Scotland has nothing of this sort, and its scale is only nine notes in extent, and does not correspond with the normal diatonic scale. There generally are two drones in the Scottish pipe, A and its octave; and three in the Irish instrument, generally C, c, and c'. The ancient Irish bagpipe, like that of Scotland, was an instrument of shrill and warlike tone, by which the natives were animated as other people are by trumpets. The bagpipe, perhaps the old est and most widely known instrument in the world, still subsists in Ireland; the harp, how ever, is almost extinct; both have been in a great degree superseded by the violin and flute, which are cheaper, more readily repaired, more portable; most of the ancient minstrels of Ire land maintained attendants to carry their harps. From 1775 to 1782 the Volunteer Bands did much toward the cultivation of music in Ire land, and during the 19th century the bands of the Father Mathew societies, the semi-military organizations and the political organizations have made brass and reed bands popular. Choral classes are now popular in all parts of the country. Among the ancient Irish wind instru ments were: the Ben buabhal, or wild-ox horn: the Buine, a kind of oboe, the Guthbuine, a type of bassoon; the corn, a pipe; the Stoc, a small trumpet; the Sturgan, a trumpet; the Feadan or fife, the tympan, played with a bow, and the craobh ceoil, or musical branch. All pipes were curved, no straight pipes have been found in Ireland. The harp was the instrument most highly developed, and the specimens of this in strument which are extant show a wide variety, thus the so-called Harp of Brian, in Trinity College has 30 strings, the Robin Adair harp, now at Holybrook, County Wicklow, 37 strings ; and the Fitzgerald harp, of 1621, 52 strings. Among the great perforiners on the harp were Rory Dall O'Cahan, Miles O'Reilly, Thomas and William O'Conellon (1640) ; Cornelius Lyons; O'Carolan (1670) • Charles Byrne (1712); Mongan (1715) ; Kane (1720). The last-named traveled on the continent and per formed before the Pretender, and was hos pitably received by the exiled Irish in Spain and France.
It may be interesting to Irishsome estimate of the total number of Iris airs which have been preserved. Buntings' three volumes (1796, 1809, 1840), contain about, 295 airs; Petries' (Ancient Music of Ireland), 182; Hoffmann's edition of another part of the Petrie collection, 202; Joyces' (Ancient Irish 100; The Stanford edition of Petrie contains 1,000 airs not printed elsewhere. There are 2,851 airs in Francis O'Neill's two volumes on Irish folk music and 842 in Joyce's Irish Music and Songs.) Allowing for duplications a safe sum total of about 3,100 different Irish airs are now preserved in these printed collections. There remain in known MSS. hundreds of airs, which require careful examination to avoid duplica tion.
Bibliography.— Consult the collections men tioned in preceding paragraph; Grove, (Dic tionary of Music) (Vol. II, New York 1906) ; the journals of the Irish Folk-Song Society; Levey, R. M. Dance Music of (London 1870) ; Grattan-Flood, W. H., (His tory of Irish Music) (London 1905).