Away o'er the Ocean Go Journeymen, Cowboys, and Fiddlers: The Irish in Nineteenth-Century American Music.

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants and their musical practices shaped an immense amount of American music. Beyond studying the roots of direct musical descendants of Irish traditional music like Appalachian folk, however, little scholarly attention has been given to the topic. Integrating aspects of musicology, Irish studies, transatlantic history, and whiteness studies, this dissertation argues that understanding the role of the Irish in American music is crucial to understanding American music in the nineteenth century. The project examines a variety of genres and contexts that include examples of high and low culture; music directly imported from Ireland and music made in the United States; examples of popular sheet music, theatrical performances, and classical music; examples dating across the century; and music taking place in a number of locations.

The case studies approach allows for focused consideration of topics in American musical life and Irish musical practice while supporting the broader argument. Chapter 1, an American reception history of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1807–1834), reveals how American sentimental songs were shaped by Irish examples of the genre that flooded the country early in the century. Chapter 2 focuses on early blackface minstrelsy of the 1830s and 1840s, showing that key facets of the most popular U.S. theatrical genre of the nineteenth century stem from Irish dance music. Chapter 3 addresses shifting ideas about the Irish in the 1870s. As Irish-American communities gained political, social, and financial power, more positive constructions of Irishness were presented on American stages, including the variety productions of Edward Harrigan and David Braham. Chapter 4 offers a new interpretation of one of the most prominent expressions of Irishness in American classical music. The chapter challenges prevailing interpretations of Amy Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony as a statement of musical nationalism by resituating the work as a transnational encounter that also reflects local dynamics in Boston.