manx celtic music and dance

Research article by David Speers

01 Mar 2014

Histories and Mysteries – the secret life of  traditional music in the Isle of Man by David Speers

The full article can be read online here

Summary

The tunes in the three music books that are part of the Clague Collection, held in the Manx Museum Archive, form the bulk of the traditional music recorded in the Isle of Man in the 1890’s.  They have not been arranged or changed in any way and are the best record of how the music sounded when it was collected.

This is the second in a series of articles that sets out to explore some of the links between the traditional music collected in the Isle of Man and that found in Ireland and Britain, to discover some of the hidden histories behind our traditional music, and to show that the Island has produced beautiful music to match any found elsewhere.

The article takes a look at Mona’s Delight - Eunyssagh Vona and discusses links with other tunes in other collections such as Playford’s The English Dancing Master.

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