Sir, - Gabriel Rosenstock (February 13th) asks for information on Thomas Moore's indebtedness to Irish traditional music and wonders if Moore is Bunting dressed up. He will be pleased to learn that the relationship on Moore's Irish Melodies to the older Irish tradition has often been examined, by Alfred Moffat and C. Villiers Stanford for instance, but most usefully in 1959 by Veronica Ni Chinneide ("The Sources of Moore's Melodies", Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 89) Aloys Fleischmann's Sources of Irish Traditional Music c. 1600-1855 (forthcoming this year) will throw further light on the debt.
Moore's specific borrowings from the collections of Edward Bunting are dealt with throughout Donal O'Sullivan's re-editions of Bunting's three published collections (Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society vols 22-39 (1927-39), and, with Micheal O Suilleabhain, Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland, Cork 1983). The full extent of Bunting's collecting, published and unpublished, will be revealed later this year when the Irish Traditional Music Archive publishes a catalogue by Dr Colette Moloney of the Bunting music manuscripts in the Library of Queen's University, Belfast.
Bunting's musicality was directed towards preservation and arrangement, Moore's towards creation and creative transformation. No need to choose between them; we can have both. - Yours, etc.,
Irish Traditional Music Archive, 63 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.