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Irish Music Collecting is an area of musicology concerned with preserving the large body of traditional Irish music.

Very little Irish music composed before 1700 survives. Some airs from this period are preserved in manuscript, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book being one of the more notable examples. A reference to Callen O Costure Me/Cailin O Chois tSuire Me in William Ballet's book of lute music in the late 16th centureyis the first known record of an Irish song being set down in musical notation.

Irish tunes were recorded in Playford's The Dancing Master (mid 17th century), and Durfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (late 17th century).

In 1726 the first recorded collection of Irish Music, A Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes was published by John and William Neale of Christ Church Yard, Dublin. The only surviving copy is now held by Edward Bunting at Queens University Belfast

The next collection was Wright's Aria di Camera 1730 contained Scottish and Welsh airs and borrowed from Neales without acknowledgment. The Burke Thumoth Collection (two volumes, 1750) contains many airs. The two Lee collections the first from 1774 contain a collection of tunes by Rev. Jackson d.1798 a rector from Limerick (ref: Brendan Breathnach, Piper Jackson, Eigse Cheoil Tire 11/0 1974-5,p.41-57). In 1780 John Lee published a collection of the compositions of Turlough O Carolan. In the appendix of Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards by Walker 1786 there is a collection of 43 tunes.

In Scotland, Bryson published in 1790 A Curious Selection of Favourite Tunes rith Variations and it contains Fifty Favourite Irish Airs. In 1793 Cooke published a Selection of Twenty-one Favourite Original Irish Airs arranged for Pianoforte, Violin or Flute containing many tunes.

• Comhaltas Tre
• Tomas O Canainn, Traditional Music in Ireland, Routledge & Keegan Paul 1978 ISBN 0-7100-0021-9
• Sean O Riada, Our Musical Heritage, The Dolmen Press, 1982, ISBN 0-85105-389-0
• Irish Music Centre, Boston College

• List of Irish Music Collectors