I was hoping somebody could help me with a question about a music book I saw today called O’Neill’s Music of Ireland which has a great collection of tunes. The reviews on Amazon are all excellent, and often refer to it as a “bible” of Irish trad music. My question is: Is there a whistle edition available of this book? The one I found on Amazon is apparently for fiddle, and there is also one available at The Whistle Shop, but it has the same yellow cover with no specifications as to what key the tunes are written for, which makes me assume that it’s for C instruments. So, if anybody here owns this book, is there a version for D instruments like whistle, or is it worth it to just get the book and transpose the tunes down one step?
You don’t have to transpose down a step. The way I - and I think the vast majority of people - read music when playing a so-called ‘D’ whistle, you just read the notes and play them as they are. The standard O’Neills editions are perfectly OK to read and play tunes on a D whistle and they will come out at their normal pitch.
I have seen explanations which are clearer than mine, but the gist is that if you want the book, buy it and it will be fine for a D whistle.
By the way, what you’re looking at there is only one of the O’Neills collections. That one is called, colloquially, “the 1850” because it’s got 1,850 tunes in it. The one that I’ve always thought of as being “the bible” is a different collection - “The 1001 Gems”. I think , though not quite sure, that it is this one:
D whistles aren’t transposing instruments like D trumpets… they’re (confusingly) ‘C’ instruments in classical parlance, but named for their six-finger note of D. So the notes you read are the notes you get (sounding an octave higher than written when played on standard high Ds) and standard fiddle music is what you need, though you still have to adapt (normally by ‘folding’ notes) where you’ve got low G-string notes.
Francis O’Neill collected music from a variety of instrumentalists, pipers, fiddlers and flute players and he was a flute plyer himself. I am not sure if he used the term ‘flute’ the way older Irish player use it, including both the whistle and the concert flute under the same heading but he may well have. He also used music from old collections and music he remembered from his own early years in his colelction.
The music included is pretty much written in the keys it was found in.
Is O’Neill’s Dance Music of Ireland a good source for a beginning whistle player? I would suggest it assumes a prior knowledge of the idiom to understand the settings given. It is a valuable and very useful source of music but for a beginning player looking for readily usable versions of tunes, there may be more accessible options available.
Yes as Gumby says written in the keys the tunes happened to be played in, which are often not the usual keys used today. Also the “setting” or version is that of the source player, so that tunes have idiosyncrasies which follow from the individual source player, and his instrument.
When I was teaching a load of whistle and flute workshops years ago I made up a “O Neill’s Rosetta Stone Page” which had passages from a number of tunes as found in O Neill’s, with a whistle “translation”.
If Irish traditional whistle/flute was a sheet music-based thing it would make sense for somebody to write a translation of O Neill’s, but it is not, and such a book would have little purpose for actual practitioners. It’s why there’s no such thing as a book of tunes as actually performed on the whistle, or Irish flute, at least I’ve not seen one. I don’t mean generic Breandan Breathnach notation, but rather the specific way the tunes are played on the flute, and whistle, with phrasing, breathing, cuts, pats etc all fully notated as with a “classical” score.
Yes Francis was a fluteplayer with a great memory but musically illiterate. James O Neill (no relation) who was a classical violinist actually notated the tunes, or at least that’s what I recall reading.
About transposing, you’d have to do some listening to YouTube etc to find out the current typical key of each tune, but beware that it’s not uncommon for flutes, whistles, and pipes to be in keys other than the modern standard “D”. Just as in Francis’ day a tune might be heard in practically any key due to the variety of keys instruments are made in. Listen to sessions to hear the standard modern session keys (though sometimes sessions are in non-standard pitches, say uilleann-driven “flat sessions” in B, etc).
The tunes in O’Neill’s are pretty bare bones and will sound bland if played as written. You need to listen to a lot of music live and recorded before you start to breathe the life into them with ornaments, rhythmic playing, etc. That said, The 1000 is a great of resource for tunes.
I’ve got a book of this same title, written by Miles Krassen, sub-titled “Over 1,000 Fiddle Tunes”, ISBN 0.8256.0173.8 published by Oak Publications. I’ve not examined each and every tune in detail, but a “quick flick” through the pages shows virtually all the tunes to be written in none, one or two sharps with no notes (that I’ve noticed) lower than the D immediately below the stave.
I’d have no reservation in suggesting this publication as a suitable source of “whistle tunes”, solely on that basis. As to how this book compares to other publications with the same title, I have no knowledge.
… and it’s probably worth pointing out that many, including myself, feel that the Krassen volume is a dreadful source for the music, whatever other merits it may have. I have it. The tunes are culled from various different O’Neills collections, updated by reference to players of Miles Krassen’s age and place (I think). The tunes contain more ornamentation and variation within each setting than any player would normally play in one time through a tune. This is, as i understand it, deliberate on Mr Krassen’s part. It means that few, if any, of the setting are either the same as in the original collections or in line with current playing of the tunes. It was produced as an academic exercise and I have never understood the purpose of that - by which I mean literally that I don’t understand, not that I’m saying there was no purpose.
Personally, I’d recommend getting facsimiles of one or more of the original O’Neills collections, if it is O’Neills collections you’re interested in. The Miles Krassen work isn’t an O’Neills collection.
The Krassen book is essentially a fiddle book with the tunes using the range and keys fiddle players will use.
Like with the original edition, it’s fine if you know how to ‘read’ and interpret what is written and translate it to your own instrument/playing. However, the need to ‘filter’ the fiddle ornamentation and the various ways rolls etc are written in the collection, the O’Neill edition is actually easier to use because it has less noise.
That said, like O’Neill’s collection, Krassen’s book contains many usable tunes and I believe quite a few tunes from it were lifted and brought into circulation during the eighties. But again, a certain experience is required to filter the written ornamentation. And in itself that makes a good case for tunes not to be written with a full complement of crunchy bits written in them as the preferable form, unless the notation is meant as a means to study the style of a particular performance.
I thought I might mention that the Airs section in the original O Neill’s is very strange to us today, due to the absurdly florid arrangements of many of the tunes, with runs up and down the scale all over the place. Yes one might well do that, I’ve heard many good pipers do it, but they usually throw that stuff in a later repeat, not the first time through.
Look at Dark Woman of the Glen and Have You Been to Carrick? With The Coolin they do notate it in full, starting with a straightforward version and culminating with non-stop runs.
In the Reels section I see many instances of, evidently, the tunes being notated from fiddlers and the bowed triplets on the same note being fully written out; I’ve heard beginning whistle and flute players who didn’t know any better playing these as written, tonguing out all the notes of the triplets, and complaining about all the triple-tonguing required in Irish fluteplaying! Oh dear. (See Going To The Fair, Paddy Ryan’s Dream, The Merry Sisters etc to see all the notes indicated staccato, Miss McDonald, Tom Steele, The Chorus Reel etc to see the triplets not notated staccato but the flutist not knowing about cuts and pats having no other way than the tongue to articulate the notes.)
I would recommend instead Ceol Rince na hEireann as a good book-source. Breandan Breathnach’s simplified generic notation system works very well I think. In the introduction to Cuid 1 he states:
“It was thought at first to transcribe in full the forms of ornamentation used, but as the collection was primarily intended for traditional players who would automatically embellish the music after their own fashion, and as the form of ornamentation differs from instrument to instrument, it was more simple for all to use the symbols…”
Cuid 2 discards this approach and notates the tunes as played, and Cuid 3 returns to the symbols.
The music of Cuid 1 and Cuid 2 was notated “in person” from “genuine traditional players”. The music in Cuid 3 was notated from “commercial recordings”.
The music of Cuid 1 and Cuid 2 was notated “in person” from “genuine traditional players”. The music in Cuid 3 was notated from “commercial recordings”.
It should perhaps be added that Cuid 4 contains notations taken from 19th and early 20th century manuscripts that were also part of Breathnach’s National collection of Dance Music while Cuid 5 is again a selection of tunes taken from musicians during the middle part of the previous century. Volumes 4 and 5 were edited, and the tunes selected from the Breathnach collection of dance music, by Jackie Small after Brendan’s death.
It should be noted though all of CRE are versions taken from musicians and as such they may be, and often are, versions that bear the personal stamp of the player they were collected from and if your aim is learning standard versions and you’re not fully conversant with the music (yet), you may find some of it challenging. When you know what you’re at, these volumes are hard to beat.
I can’t immediately think of whistle specific collections that are in print, in the past the Armagh pipers club whistle collections and books like Denis O Brien’s Golden eagle collection sat comfortably in that niche, but then again, I probably haven’t kept up with that particular end of music publishing. Maybe Geraldine Cotter’s Green Book would fit the bill?
I guess a lot people in the early learning stages of the whistle (or flute) generally just thumbed through tunebooks searching for which ever tunes looked to be within the range of a D whistle which probably covers most of the tunes in most ITM tunebooks. That was what I did when learning to read and make sense of it and not being anywhere near up to par with my ear training (not that I’ve ever been up to the par I’d like to be up to).
In regards to the O’Neill books, I preferred O’Neill’s 1001 (1001 Gems) over the “1,850.” The Bulmer & Sharpley books were good sources for session tunes --I have three of them and I think there are four or five volumes total. Don’t know if they’re in still in print, but I saw where someone had posted the ABCs online for all the tunes in those books!
Geraldine Cotter’s whistle tutor book has a fair amount of tunes set for whistle --that might be the same one Mr. Gumby referred to. And there’s a tunebook entitled “Tin Whistle Legends” with settings of a few tunes from some famous whistle players in addition to a collection of “basic” settings for a some of the more common session tunes.
If you’re ever lucky enough to come across someone with a copy of the Martin Mulvihill Collection, which I’m not sure ever made it into print, borrow it if you can and make a copy of the entire thing. That was one of my most utilized and valued tunebook sources. I have a photocopy of a photocopy of photocopy of a copy of the handwritten manuscript copy that a friend loaned me long ago. Someone posted the ABCs for it online, but I’m not sure they were complete.
The Mulvihill collection did appear in print but is not easy to find. Bill Black had the ABCs up on his site, and many other collections as well, but the links to the ABC collections have been dead for a while.
Useful. Thanks. Odd that the ‘X’ fields go up in fives eh? It’s so regular throughout that it leads me to think that it was done like that just in case there was a tune which would fit better in between two others which were already in the collection. Speculation …
Is the Mulvihill collection I posted the link to the right one? With lots of tunes in keys like C and Bb, it’s not in any way especially whistle-y. And many seem to be on the obscure side? (Though maybe that’s just me not knowing the region they’re from? As a Peter Horan fan, I certainly know Fred Finn’s #2, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard it called that before.)
In any general collection of Irish music you will find a few tunes in those keys, they’re part of the repertoire. A quick look (and no more than that) shows one tune in A, one in Eflat, three in Bflat, one in C, two Gmx and one Ddor. Hardly ‘lots’ and certainly not a reason to doubt the whistle friendliness of the majority of tunes in the collection.
The vast majority of the Mulvihill Collection ABCs appear to be in workable keys for a D whistle. One thing missing in the ABCs is the tune number that appears next to each tune in the book. That would be nice to have if one didn’t have the book and wanted the number for reference purposes.