Michael Murphy & Jan Smaczny (eds), Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2007, 336pp.

The history of music is not the prime concern of the JMI, or presumably of its readers, but some very fine pieces of writing on the subject have appeared in its pages. Many of them have concerned music in nineteenth-century Ireland, in particular the relationship between nationalism and the composition of art music in that period, which has been the subject of articles and letters by Patrick Zuk, Barra Ó Séaghdha and others. These contributions were all responding to, and critical of, a view...