Tag Archives: irish music

A Review of ‘What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music’ in Sound Post magazine

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What Ireland Can Teach the World about Music – and other essays
By Toner Quinn
Published by: The Journal of Music
Available from: https://journalofmusic.com/shop

Book Review
By David Agnew
Published in Sound Post magazine (published by the Musicians’ Union of Ireland), Autumn 2024. Visit https://mui.ie/

I like creative doers. People who do something different, find a way to set out their stall, for themselves as much as for everyone else to take part. Toner Quinn wanted a space for regular, thoughtful writing on music and culture in Ireland, to stimulate deeper intellectual debate, without being academic, and started it himself in 2000 through The Journal of Music. This book is a compilation of his writings in four sections on that journey. Initially in hard-copy to 2010, exclusively online from 2014, with a stark pandemic section 2020–2022, finishing with a list of impossible ideas for the future, all of which are entirely reasonable, if utopian.

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A Tribute to Charlie Lennon

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Remembering the great traditional musician and composer who passed away on 8 June.

When the sad news came that the great fiddle player, piano player and composer Charlie Lennon had passed away on 8 June, my mind turned to something that had happened just two evenings before and which I had, somehow, already been thinking about repeatedly.

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How Ireland Thinks About Music

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Does Ireland have its own way of thinking about music? How might this perspective have developed? And could it explain the current dynamism in Irish musical life? In this essay, the edited text of a talk given at Farmleigh House on 11 May, Journal of Music Editor Toner Quinn explores these questions and more.

Almost four months ago, I published the book What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and I realise this title may sound presumptuous, but in reality every country has something to teach the world about music, because every country has its own history and musical traditions. Ireland, therefore, should have something that it can offer the world, particularly given the impact our music has had, and even if, publicly, we tend not to talk too much about what that might be.

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A review of my new book by Sherry Ladig in the Irish Arts Minnesota Newsletter

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An Leabhragán/The Bookcase

What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, and Other Essays
Toner Quinn (The Journal of Music, 2024)

This new book on Irish music has been a quarter of a century in the making. The fifty or so essays and articles are drawn from Toner Quinn’s work as editor of The Journal of Music in Ireland, first published in print form in 2000, now entirely online since 2010. Quinn saw that there was no real public discourse about music in Ireland; all Irish music, not just classical, jazz, traditional, or popular music. There have been separate forums for all of these. But where was the discussion about what it means to be an Irish musician of any kind in Ireland today? Toner Quinn saw a space for this discussion and created it. Twenty-four years later, the magazine has become a respected and valued place for musicians, composers, collaborators , organizers and listeners to discuss and inform on the topic of Irish music. Many subjects, some of them controversial, have come up: what, exactly, is trad music? How is its practice different from two or three generations ago? How do we value an art form which has been highly praised publicly, but underfunded and underpaid to those who create the music? What classical music is being created and performed in Ireland? How about jazz, collaborative works between classical and traditional artists, experimental music?

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Toner Quinn’s New Book Launched by Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive

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See a news item from the Journal of Music on the launch of my new book below. The original is here.

A new book by Toner Quinn, What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music, has been launched by fiddle player Martin Hayes at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin.

A collection of writings on Irish music, the book contains more than fifty essays and articles drawn from Quinn’s work as Editor of the Journal of Music as well as a number of radio essays and public talks.

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What about England?

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I am supporting England in the World Cup this summer. As an Irishman, that is easier to write than it will be to act upon. There is history, and the Irish are traditionally sensitive to the English imperiousness that tends to appear on football occasions. But I want to think about our two islands differently. England is our close, island-dwelling neighbour. In the new peacetime that has been created, can the Irish learn to love it? Sporting and cultural events may offer us that chance.

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