He realised the importance of the Irish words to the songs and Patrick Lynch was employed to collect these. This was granted and the proceeds of the festival were donated to the Charitable Society to help the poor of Belfast.īunting went on a number of collecting tours between 17, and was the first to transcribe music 'in the field' as played by the musicians. īunting organised a second festival in 1813 and wrote to the Belfast Charitable Society, based at Clifton House, for support. īunting's arrangement of the festival melodies for the piano forte and notes were published in London as A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland in 1796.

His notes on the harpists, how they played and the terminology they used is however invaluable, and also many tunes would have been lost if he had not collected them. One proof of this is that some tunes published by him were in keys that could not have been played by the harpists. As Bunting was a classically trained musician, he did not understand the unique characteristics of Irish music, such as modes, and when transcribing tunes he 'corrected' them according to Classical music rules. At nineteen he was engaged to transcribe music from oral-tradition harpists at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792. Anne's church in Belfast and lived with the family of Henry Joy McCracken. At the age of seven he was sent to study music at Drogheda and at eleven he was apprenticed to William Ware, organist at St. St George's Church, High Street, Belfast, October 2009Įdward Bunting (1773– 17 March 1843) was an Irish musician and folk music collector.īunting was born in County Armagh, Ireland.

Seventh string transcribe license key