Can any one point me to a good source for printed music from O’Carolan? I would prefer an online source so that I can just print what I need, but if there is a particularly good book, that would be great too. Thanks.
(Edited to fix a goof)
[ This Message was edited by: griff on 2003-01-21 00:01 ]
There are two printed books I can tell you about. The first is titled something like “The Life and Times of an Irish Harper”. It was originally published in 1959, and tells the life story of O’Carolan, contains 213 of his tunes (melody only) and talks some of the political situation in Ireland at that time. There is also “The Complete works of Turlough O;Carolan”. I have not seen this one, the description I’ve found says 214 tunes.
Ossian at http://www.ossianusa.com/books.html is the publisher of current editions of both of these.
JC’s ABC tune finder http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/findtune.html
is a great resource, but you need to know the names of the tunes you’re looking for.
Henrik Norbeck, who hosts a great collection of tunes in ABC format also has a collection of O’Carolan tunes, which can be found at
http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-11382/abc/hncar0.abc
Of course, you will have to be familiar with ABC notation in order to use it. Alternatively, http://www.concertina.net has an online ABC → sheet music conversion service, which can be found at
http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
Hope that helps. 
Jens
The big book of Carolan tunes if a fantastic resource both because of the biography and the comprehensive set of tunes. However, many of the tunes are in keys not suitable for a simple system flute and require transposing.
I highly recommend the book, but if you just want a few tunes to play try oneline resources like http://tunedb.woodenflute.com and http://www.thesession.org (url’s from memory).
Eddie
Thank you all. That was a great help.
Griff
A quick clarification, many tunes in the big Carolan book are not in a key suitable for a simple system flute in D.
I’m looking at the “Life and Times” book. Of the first 100 tunes, 70 are in key signatures other than 1 or two sharps.
The majority of these 70 are in C (or A minor, I wasn’t looking at any notes) the next largest group is in F (or D minor, of course). Both of these keys are easily transposed one step up into simple-flute friendly keys.
Smaller number of tunes in A or E, and a few in Bb, or even more flats, but just a few of these.
There’s also a section of O’Carolan tunes in the Miles Krassen’s ‘O’Neil’s music of Ireland’, which includes some tunes not found in ‘The complete works of O’Carolan’.
Thanks again. I found the main tunes I was looking for at JC’s tune finder site. I knew about that site, but just spaced when I was trying to find the tunes. I’m also interested in the books, so thanks to those who pointed me that direction too.
Griff
The two books referred to above are actually the same thing. The original version was hard back in two volumes - history and tunes. The new paperback version is a combined volume. I think the old hard back had a few more nice old photos maybe, but that’s all that’s missing.
Ken