Sixty Irish Songs for High Voice.(Voice)

This volume is an unabridged reprint of the original volume published in The Musicians Library Series by Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, in 1915. The tunes are traditional Irish, and the texts are by modern Irish poets. While preparing the original edition, the editor collected hundreds of Irish traditional tunes and about 2,000 modern Irish poems with lyric potential. To create each song in the collection, a traditional melody was carefully selected for each poem chosen in the final draft. Then, the editor composed accompaniments that would not overwhelm the melodies, but on the other hand, would be artistically satisfying.

The procedure of combining new poems with old traditional tunes is not unique to this volume. It is a common practice in the folk music of the British Isles; whereas, in the United States, folk songs tend to retain the traditional words with which they have become associated. In fact, in this volume some of the melodies were actually instrumental in origin.

In the preface to the original edition of 1915, the editor dairies that the poems come largely from the Celtic Revival period (late nineteenth and early ...