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Elias Howe, William Bradbury Ryan, and Irish Music in Nineteenth-Century Boston

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2010

PAUL F. WELLS
PAUL F. WELLS*
Affiliation:
pfwells@mtsu.edu
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Abstract

Ryan's Mammoth Collection is a compendium of fiddle tunes assembled by William Bradbury Ryan. Originally published in Boston in 1883 by Elias Howe, Jr., it has remained in print in one form or another ever since. It has been used as a source of tunes by many generations of fiddlers in different stylistic traditions, but its value as a descriptive document of the repertoire of late-nineteenth-century Boston, particularly the Irish community in that city, has largely been overlooked. Ryan, rather than Capt. Francis O'Neill of Chicago, should be regarded as the first great documentarian of Irish traditional music in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 4 , Special Issue 4: Irish Music in the United States , November 2010 , pp. 401 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2010

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