Ó Corragáin pulling the strings

One of the country’s most famous music collections has been transformed for the digital age.

For the first time ever, volume one of Edward Bunting's Irish harp music has been recreated digitally by Cork musician and researcher Dr Fiachra Ó Corragáin ahead of National Harp Day on Saturday.

The collection's 66 pieces, first published in 1797, have been recorded on the harp as a single body of work.

Dr Ó Corragáin said: “The process of developing the Bunting Archive involved a number of phases, transcribing Bunting's scores, practicing and playing the music, recording each piece, and building a website on which to house the outputs. It was a wonderful way to dive deeply into Bunting's collected music and I became intimately familiar with Bunting's arrangement style. His collections are precious links to the music of the great historical Irish harpers.”

The collections of Edward Bunting are some of Ireland's most significant historical and musical artefacts. Published in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, Bunting's collected harp music offers a glimpse into the past of the once-mighty Irish harping tradition; one of the oldest musical traditions in Europe.

The recordings follow Bunting's exact notation and scores of all the pieces are free to download at buntingarchive.ie.

Dr Ó Corragáin will perform music the Bunting Archive in the Crawford Art Gallery from 2-4pm on Saturday 19 October for National Harp Day.