Concert Programmes of the Music Association of Ireland, 1950-1984
The creation of the original website, Concert Programmes of the Music Association of Ireland, 1950-1984, formed part of a PhD study which assesses and examines the history and contribution of the Music Association of Ireland (MAI) to music and music-making in Ireland from 1948 to the present day. Employing the extensive archives of the MAI stored at the National Library of Ireland, the thesis will address the changing cultural climate over the period and delineate the debate on musical identity, national policy and music education. Many of the initiatives set up by the MAI, as a voluntary body, now function as separate, professional organisations, for example, the National Youth Orchestra, Music Network and the Contemporary Music Centre.
The extensive scholarship on musical activity in Dublin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has highlighted the neglect and dearth of online information relating to music performances in Ireland in the twentieth century. By digitising a selection of concerts organised by the MAI it is my aim to provide the academic and enthusiast alike with a user-friendly database of information focusing on the area of professional music-making in Ireland from 1950 to 1984.
Information for each concert has been derived from MAI concert programmes housed at the National Library of Ireland. The Archives consist of fifty-three uncatalogued boxes and material relating to concerts was randomly spread across these. However, further information was also extracted from other records, such as Concert reviews from the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and MAI's Counterpoint and Soundpost magazines. This research will make a valuable contribution to the field of Irish musicology and dispel the myth that Ireland had a poor classical music infrastructure during the mid-twentieth century.
You can read about the history of Music Association of Ireland (MAI) and you can find out more detail about the project from the editorial notes.
Sources
The information for each concert has been derived from MAI concert programmes housed at the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin. As the information from the concert programmes was not always complete, other sources such as Concert reviews from the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and MAI's Counterpoint and Soundpost magazines had to be consulted.
This project provides a representative sample of a cross-section of concerts organised by the MAI from 1950 to 1984 and although not a comprehensive list, it forms part of an ongoing project which will eventually provide information on all concerts organised by the MAI during its lifetime. It will stimulate further research in the area and highlight the neglect and dearth of online information relating to music performances in Ireland in the twentieth century.
Whilst every effort has been made to present an accurate and detailed account of a selection of concerts organised by the MAI, errors and omissions may occur.
Credits and licensing
This digital humanities project was supported and funded by St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin(SPD), Dublin City University (DCU) and An Foras Feasa: The Institute for Research in Irish Historical and Cultural Traditions (AFF) in collaboration with the Digital Humanities Observatory (DHO).
Access to the MAI archives was kindly granted by the National Library of Ireland and last, but by no means least, a special word of thanks to my fellow PhD candidates, Gaye Ashford and Anne-Marie Herron for their encouragement and collegial spirit throughout.
The content is freely available for fair use under the Creative Commons Attribute-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license.
Database development followed TEI Guidelines and is presented using the Exhibit Framework from MIT's SIMILE project.
Download
As of August 30, 2013, the activities of Digital Humanities Observatory have ceased and since then, the original website for the Concert Programmes of the Music Association of Ireland, 1950-1984 has been unpublished. As a result, the files necessary to enable individuals to run this site themselves are available as a downloadable zip. Please see below instructions for details.
Instructions
"This site uses a JavaScript framework called Exhibit (http://www.simile-widgets.org/exhibit/) developed by MIT. In order to work, the data, stored in a file called data.json, must be hosted on a web server. For this reason, most of the site content and functionality will not be available when hosting the entire site locally on a user's own computer. To enable the full functionality of this site, the site should be hosted on a web server. Ensure the following:
- Unzip the website using your prefered software package.
- Ensure you have access to a web server (this would usually be hosted on a hosting service such as Blacknight or a Cloud-based solution such as Amazon Web Services).
- Copy the entire contents of the website to an accessible location on your web server (either in or below the web root) using an FTP client (such as WinSCP or Cyberduck).
- Access the site by navigating to the index.html page, e.g. http://www.mydomain.ie/index.html
Alternatively, if you do not want to access the full site externally, you can host only the site data file externally. You will still need access to a web server, but you need only copy the data.json file to your web server. If you do this:
- Take note of the fully qualified web address of this file, e.g. http://www.mydomain.ie/data.json
- In every HTML file where the line: <link href="data.json" type="application/json" rel="exhibit/data" /> appears, replace the reference to the data file with the new location, e.g.: <link href="http://www.mydomain.ie/data.json" type="application/json" rel="exhibit/data" />
Please note that due to changes in the licensing model for Google Maps, mapping functionality may not work as intended.