Mike Brennan wrote:
O'Neill's Music of Ireland
s1m0n wrote:
Mike's right: O'Neill's is the landmark achievement in ITM tune collections, and for generations of musicians, it's been known simply as "the book".
Sorry if this seems picky, but I always thought that it was the "1001 Gems" that was thought of as "the book". O'Neill's Music of Ireland (known as "The 1850" because it contains 1,850 tunes) is a great collection, right enough, but it's always seemed to me to be more of academic use than what strikes me as the more practical and, for a long time, more well known, The Dance Music of Ireland (subtitled 1001 Gems), also by O'Neill.
Maybe I'm wrong about which "the book" is. Anyway ... get both!
Unless Mike meant "O'Neill's Music of Ireland" by Miles Krassen, in which case, personally, I wouldn't bother. It's too fussy for me, and the settings are not based on the same original source material as O'Neill himself used - they're from more modern musicians, and it was, as I understand it, an academic exercise to show all of the possible variations put into a tune in one setting ... or something like that. For me, I've never found it particularly usable, so I'd recommend sticking with one or other of the facsimile editions of O'Neills or, as I've said above, with both of the two I've mentioned.