Explores the world of women's professional and amateur musical activity as it developed on and beyond the island of Ireland. In a story which spans several centuries, the book highlights representative composers and performers in classical music, Irish traditional music, and contemporary art music whose contributions have been marginalised in music narratives. As well as investigating the careers of public figures, this edited collection brings attention to women who engaged with and taught music in a variety of domestic settings. It also shines a spotlight on women who worked behind the scenes to build infrastructures such as festivals and educational institutions which remain at the heart of the country's musical life today. The book addresses and reconsiders ideas about the intersections of music, gender, and Irish society, including how the national emblem of the harp became recast as a symbol of Irish womanhood in the twentieth century. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 surveys women musicians in Irish society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part 2 discusses women and practice in Irish traditional music. Part 3 studies gaps and gender politics in the history of twentieth-century women composers and performers. Part 4 situates discourses of women, gender, and music in the twenty-first century. The book's contributors encompass musicologists, cultural historians, composers, and performers.

From Irish Working Lives: "I have learned a very simple truth about the necessity to live and to take care of ourselves and each other. Captains of industry, or wealthy men, or people of social status who have done great deeds, or those who are well known and celebrated, or tramps on the street who have nothing, when they are dead, are all the same. Imagine that. All the same. It's the only job in the world where that is a guarantee. It is very enlightening; freeing in fact. The dead have taught me that we are fragile creatures and nobody ever knows what is around the corner. Sometimes we do not respect life, and we take our happiness, our freedom and our health for granted. We should be more observant of our own lives. Saying goodbye to the dead is not the same as saying goodbye. We must love people in the living years. That is what the dead have taught me." Joe Cronin, embalmer Work accounts for so much of our waking lives, yet we rarely reflect upon or celebrate the contribution of those whose vocations and careers are the bedrock of a thriving society. As a broadcaster, Marie Louise has had the privilege of spending 'work time' and 'thought time' with a broad array of individuals across Ireland, gaining a unique insight into the practicalities of their particular occupation and learning about what inspires or motivates them in their chosen field. Irish Working Lives is the story of the encounters - by turns candid and lyrical - that illuminate the ways in which these individuals perceive their chosen occupation, its day-to-day demands and the inextricable relationship between work life and spiritual life. In these impassioned, remarkably diverse vignettes, Marie Louise relates her travels across the length and breadth of the country, engaging with a selection of committed Irish men and women whose work forms the lifeblood of our island nation. Whether spending a day on the road with a postman in Co Wicklow or meeting the Galway gardener who has used her own experience of personal tragedy to help others heal, Marie Louise's assiduity and innate curiosity enlivens each and every encounter. Alongside each testimony, award-winning photographer Eric Luke's stunning images explore each contributor's relationship with their trade or calling and are a wonderful complement to Marie Louise's evocative prose.

The image of the harp - symbolic of the political and cultural landscape of Ireland for centuries - evokes strong sentiments in the collective Irish imagination. This iconic instrument became the emblem on Irish coinage in the sixteenth century. Since then it has been symbolic of Irish culture, music, and politics - finally evolving into a significant marker of national identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most important period in this evolution was between 1770 and 1880. In these years, the instrument became central to many utopian visions of an autonomous Irish nation and the harp's metaphoric significance eclipsed its musical one. Mary Louise O'Donnell uses these fascinating years of major social, political, and cultural change as the focus of her study on the Irish harp. From the revolutionary symbolism of the harp to the cultural curiosities that were the blind Irish harpers, the many permutations of Ireland's harp are thoroughly examined. O'Donnell also discusses how the protection and patronage of the Irish harpers passed from the aristocratic Gaelic order to the Ascendancy and affluent middle classes in Dublin and Belfast.Ireland's Harp brings to light the monumental importance of this instrument by highlighting the central place the harp occupied in the formation and expression of Ireland's cultural and national identity.