September 2002 Edition

Interest in musical activity in eighteenth-century Dublin has brought to fruition several publications in recent years giving a comprehensive overview of the thriving musical life of Dublin during the century. However, the relative inaccessibility of archival material for sacred music in Dublin has meant that secular music has received more attention. In the absence of other significant sources, the best guide to the repertoire in the Dublin cathedrals during the eighteenth century is the printed music and music manuscripts which have survived from that period in the cathedral libraries.

The inclusion of the library of St Patrick's Cathedral in analytical catalogues and other scholarly works is spasmodic and the citations are often incomplete. This is largely due to the absence of a catalogue—a severe disadvantage which has resulted in the collection being treated in a cursory manner by scholars. Access was difficult and the rewards were very uncertain. Most studies of post-Restoration music have either missed sources in St Patrick's completely or given partial citations. The omission of sources held at St Patrick's has continued in the most recent edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

The earliest surviving catalogue which makes any significant references to sources at St Patrick's is contained in Oxford Bodleian MS Tenbury 1240. This is an Index to the Services and Anthems composed for the use of the choirs in England and Ireland since the Reformation compiled by John Jebb in 1857–8. However, it is not clear from this index which books were consulted or whether the whole collection was considered.

The indexes to the books at St Patrick's are not a reliable source of information and this difficulty is presented well by an annotation in the index of one of the part books "N.B. Assignment of authorship in this set—anon anthems will often be found under the name of the best known author!" Just under one third of the anthems in the collection have no attributions in the surviving manuscripts although in many cases clues to the authorship are given in the later indexes.

The missing or incomplete information given in publications and the manuscripts themselves are misleading so the compilation of a new catalogue was an essential starting point for making any assessment of the collection.[1]

The music library at St Patrick's Cathedral contains both manuscript and printed music. There is no clear chronological division between material currently used by the choir and the older music withdrawn from choir use. For example, the cupboards still contain nineteenth-century editions of Boyce's Cathedral Music which was in fairly regular use until the mid-1970s.

The surviving manuscripts were copied over a period from about 1738 to the present day and twenty-eight date from before 1800. Some of the earliest manuscripts have direct links to the early Restoration period. Most were re-bound in the nineteenth century, and some contain nineteenth-century additions bound with eighteenth-century material.

The most interesting material both musically and historically is the manuscripts copied before 1800. The Act of Union in 1800 marked the beginning of a decline in the prosperity and importance of Dublin as a major European city, and the fate of musical establishments suffered in direct proportion to this economic decline. According to John Bumpus,[2]

The pre-1800 section of the new catalogue for St Patrick's has been completed and work is advanced on the later manuscript material. The challenges of this project include examining sources in Ireland and Britain to resolve inconsistent and confusing attributions and to identify unattributed works. This work also establishes details of performance practice and the relationship of the library with other collections.

The criteria used to divide the surviving material into pre- and post-1800 groups were:

The amount of information required to enable a user to unravel the complex nature of the collection includes details of authenticated sources that have been used to verify the attributions or to identify unattributed pieces.

The cathedral accounts are very fragmentary before 1718 but they are complete after that. They throw some light on the gradual renewal and growth of the music library at St Patrick's during the eighteenth century by recording expenditure on music copying and the purchasing of paper. However, the accounts do not give much detailed information and the linking of payments to surviving manuscripts must be speculative in many cases.

The accounts contain payments for expenditure on cathedral repairs also and many of these payments outline the damage sustained by the music library. Payments for items such as "wading threw the water to save the books" are alarmingly frequent.

Although, the books were safe from water damage in the twentieth century, they suffered further accidental loss when the decani side of the choir stalls and its music presses were badly damaged by a fire on Good Friday 1940. The charred state of some of the surviving books verifies the damaged suffered in the fire. In fact, all of the charred items are miscellaneous books that do not form complete sets, and it seems likely that other members of these orphans' families perished on that fateful Good Friday morning.

Despite flooding and fire at St Patrick's, the eighteenth-century library is more intact than libraries at many English cathedrals and contains important information with regard to repertoire at cathedrals such as Salisbury and Winchester where virtually no early music material has survived.

The music libraries at St Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedral are closely related and contain very similar repertoire—to a certain extent it may be considered that they do not have independent identities. It was essentially the same body of musicians that provided music at both institutions from the Restoration until the middle of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, work is advanced on a catalogue of all music manuscripts in both cathedral libraries which is being prepared by Susan Hemmens and Kerry Houston. It is due for completion in 2004.

Kerry Houston
St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin