Is e an aidhm ata leis an taighde seo no go mbeadh tuigbheal nios iomlaine againn ar an leargas a thugann amhrain Ghaeilge iarthuaiscirt Thir Chonaill duinn ar an phobal ar diobh iad. Lena chois sin, ta se mar sprioc agam anailis a dheanamh ar fheidhm agus ar ionad na hamhranaiochta i gcomhtheacs a saol agus a n-aite duchais. Glactar sa staidear seo le pobal Gaeltachta ar leith a mhair i sleibhte agus ar chladai iarthuaisceart na hEireann on chianaois. Pobal a bhfuil sliocht a sleachta le fail sa duiche sin go dti an la inniu. Amharcfar ar na traidisiuin a freamhaiodh sna daoine seo. Traidisiuin a caomhnaiodh agus a thainig anuas 6 ghluin go gluin de reir an tseanchorais— an slabhra gan bhriseadh ata de shior ar bhru eaga ag nua-aimsearthacht agus domhandu. Direofar go sonrach ar ghne ar leith den bhealoideas, .i. traidisiun na n-amhran agus na hamhranaiochta. Scrudofar an tabhacht agus an usaid a bhainti as an ealain seo i gcaitheamh a saol, i ngneithe da mbeatha chomh maith leis an bhas. Deanfar taobhanna airithe den sceal a chur san aireamh le pictiur a fhail ar na dalai saoil a mhunlaigh agus a d ’fhag againn na hamhrain ghra, imirce, caointe agus de reir sin. Deanfar mionscagadh ar na foinsi seo le tuilleadh eolas a shu astu a bhearfaidh leargas duinn ar ‘stair shoisialta na ndaoine’. Cuireann an traidisiun amhranaiochta dioscursa ar fail duinn ar shaol na ndaoine a bhi agus ata pairteach ann, agus cuireann na hamhrain fein ar ar gcumas stair an phobail seo a bhreith as an nua, mar, new history from below) Is anailis ar an dioscursa sin ata idir lamha, de reir dhearcaidh agus faoi mar a mhol Martyn Lyons:

Pioneering research has identified that Playing-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (PRMDs) are an issue for Irish traditional musicians. The purpose of this research was to analyse the “Wicked Problem” of PRMDs which affects Irish traditional fiddle players, determine key issues, and define appropriately designed solutions which provide a preferred or improved state of play. A design-led mixed methodology was deployed, and three research studies were conducted. As there was limited research to the extent of PRMDs in Irish traditional music, a bespoke survey was employed to build a holistic picture of Irish traditional fiddle players and identify problem areas for design development. The response rate to the study was 77.5% (n = 79). A high prevalence of PRMDs 70.9% (n = 56) was reported. Prolonged playing was highlighted as a significant risk factor. A design brief was established to analyse in-play ergonomic solutions which reduce or prevent the effects of PRMDs associated with prolonged playing time. Secondly, an empathic observation was conducted to further inform the design process by developing product specifications. Findings from the study suggest that the chin rest and shoulder rest are not fit for purpose in this context; the bow hand grip was also highlighted as a problem area. Two new products were designed, including a head and neck support and a hand support. These were validated using a formative usability study. The findings highlighted that both new products high level functions preformed as intended. The positive nature of these findings, indicate that both products have valued benefit in the opinion of Irish traditional musicians. These results indicate that both products may be viable solutions for reducing the extent of wellbeing issues associated with PRMDs, during prolonged playing in Irish traditional fiddle playing. Intellectual property, through patent applications have been established and the commercialisation pathway has begun.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the complex relationship between western music and municipality in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai. The objective is to carry out an inquiry into musical venues, municipal policies and ideas of musical sound in a fragmented administrative geography. Music historians have yet to research in tandem municipalities of the British and French settlers, Japanese military and the Chinese Nationalists—an alternative historical modelling that nuances studies of 1930s and 1940s Shanghai as a global and colonial metropolis. In terms of the evidence, the thesis draws on documentary sources in Chinese, English, French and German from Shanghai’s treaty port, war and postwar years. Surviving materials extend from concert programmes, used scores and musical advertisements to venue licences and tax correspondence. The four main chapters function as case studies; each is located in a specific municipality. Chapter One discusses the International Settlement: British settlers’ sonic values and the aural phenomenon of the Shanghai Municipal Brass Band in the parks. Chapter Two discusses the French Concession: the sonic regulation of the French Municipal Council and the jarring but no less ‘French’ entertainment of eateries. Chapter Three discusses ‘Little Vienna’ in Japanese-occupied Shanghai: the landscape of European Jewish cafés and their sound worlds of Unterhaltungsmusik in the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees. Chapter Four discusses Nationalist Shanghai: eateries’ claims of a distinct musical sound in the context of an anti-music tax policy. The Epilogue shifts from ‘1930s and 1940s Shanghai’ as a matter of music history to matters of historiography, first exploring reproduction maps and repositories, then outlining some further directions for an archival musicology. In terms of its overall contribution, the thesis brings to light not only Shanghai’s western musical venues and municipal policies, but also the peculiar geography of a city of cities, multinational yet divided.

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In order to capture and reproduce sound all around the listener in a perceptually realistic way, a recording technique (microphone layout) and a reproduction system (loudspeaker layout) capable of accurate 360° imaging are required. In order to develop the reproduction system, binaural and loudspeaker-based localisation cues were investigated in a literature review. The necessary loudspeaker-based localisation cues to manipulate the location of a sound image were analysed, and these showed that the common 5.1 surround sound loudspeaker arrangement could produce stable images to the front of the listener but not to the side. An 8-channel loudspeaker configuration arranged as a regular octagon was therefore chosen based on attempting to recreate plausible interaural cues for all locations. The performance of this was compared to a 5.1 loudspeaker system in terms of localisation accuracy. It was shown that the octagonal loudspeaker configuration produces more stable and more accurate images all around the listener. The octagonal loudspeaker arrangement required new microphone techniques for optimum recording and reproduction. An overview of the current literature showed how localisation curves can be used to design microphone arrays, and the other physical and perceptual parameters that need to be considered in microphone array design. This showed that it is useful to derive localisation curves for the new loudspeaker configuration, as these can be used to optimise the microphone array's sound imaging accuracy. An experiment was therefore conducted to measure the localisation curves, and it showed that localisation curves are different for the loudspeaker pairs to the front, side or the rear of the listener. It also showed that to the side of the listener, interchannel time differences have little influence on the perceived location of the sound event. The derivation of these localisation curves enabled the development of a microphone array design tool that predicts the localisation profile of a microphone array as a function of its geometrical set-up and the directivities of the microphones. The predictions of this tool were evaluated by comparing sound image positions for recordings of ten sound sources with ten different microphone arrays. This showed that the error of prediction is small when the crosstalk due to the microphone array is low. A linear regression model was created and shown to reasonably model the error of prediction as a function of the crosstalk level and crosstalk delay.

William Gillies Whittaker (1876-1944) was one of Britain's most influential musicians during the first half of the twentieth century. Though he is now sadly neglected, during his highly productive life his name was ubiquitous in almost every branch of indigenous music-making. This study seeks to explore in depth a musical life and achievement which has until now remained cursory in detail and lacking in critical appraisal. Since little is known of Whittaker's life, the first two chapters attempt to redress this balance by charting the direction in which Whittaker, an autodidact, forged his career. A man strongly linked with the North East of England (his unpublished Autobiography of a Provincial Musician accentuates this association), he did much to elevate music in Newcastle and the surrounding regions whether through folk-song arranging, school teaching, choir training, concert promotion, playing the organ, composing and as an academic lecturer. Before World War One, a period which might be described as his apprenticeship, he remained a provincial figure, but with the formation of the Newcastle Bach Choir in 1915, he was able to project his seminal interests in the music of J. S. Bach and the works of his contemporary compatriots. A close friendship with Hoist and other modern British composers located the Bach Choir at the cutting edge of new music and performances of Bach's choral works (which led to the posthumous publication of his pioneering The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian: Sacred and Secular in 1959) established his reputation on a national scale. Finding Newcastle too restrictive he eventually secured a newly-created appointment as Principal of the Scottish National Academy of Music and Professor of Music at Glasgow University, an appointment which, though productive, proved disappointing and embittering. As a national figure, galvanised by his work for the Bach Choir (see Chapter Three), Whittaker was engaged as the General Editor for Oxford University Press's newly-founded Educational Music Department through which his name became known in schools and choirs throughout the country and gave rise to germane publications such as The Oxford Orchestral Series, Oxford Songs from the Old Masters and The Clarendon Songbooks (See Chapters Four and Five). This and his position as a member of three Musical Advisory Committees for the newly inaugurated BBC allowed him to 'network' and befriend a large number of fellow musicians throughout the country, and his chauvinism on behalf of British music between the wars was well known for its pugnacity and single-mindedness, as can be measured by his leadership of the ISM in 1934 and the international exposure of his choral masterpiece Psalm 139 in Frankfurt. One further important facet of Whittaker's career was composition, for which he had no formal training. Encouragement from Hoist, who was not only a major stylistic influence but also believed in his abilities, gave rise to creative work, much of it shaped by practical circumstance. For schools there were simple unison and part-songs; for larger choruses there were fertile folksong arrangements and more extended canvases such as The Lyke-Wake Dirge, The Coelestial Sphere and Psalm 139; he was also prolific in the province of solo songs (where he was arguably most successful) and during his period at Glasgow he produced a substantial amount of Gebrauchsmusik; and he was a Carnegie winner for his piano quintet Among the Northumbrian Hills. Chapter Six seeks to explore the range of Whittaker's mainly unpublished output which acted as a process of catharsis during the many periods he spent abroad in Australia, America and mainland Europe

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The emergence of 'groove' in Western popular music around the turn of the twentieth century was a distinct departure in the organisation of musical time. Though in many ways prefigured by the metrical system of the previous three centuries, groove appears to intensify meter to a qualitatively new level. Occurring at roughly the same historical moment as musical modernisms began systematically to challenge temporal regularity, groove can be regarded as a move in the opposite direction: an acceptance or even a celebration of abstractly measured time. This thesis undertakes a historical and hermeneutic investigation into the phenomenon of groove. It begins by analysing the way that it works musically in order to justify the claim that groove is an aesthetic of measured time. It then challenges the notion that groove derives from African musical traditions, transported to the Americas through slavery, arguing instead that groove's roots lie in the changed social circumstances of the industrialised world, precipitated by the emergence of monopoly capitalism. This move is central to the thesis, which proceeds on the basis that the ways in which musics organise time - that is, the temporality internal to them - reflects, or is an aesthetic response to, the experience or consciousness of time prevailing in the societies which produce them. The middle portion of the thesis is an examination of philosophical arguments about measured time and their musical implications, from Bergson's claim that authentic time is reduced to space by measurement, through Bachelard's critique of Bergson, to Schutz's application of phenomenology's theory oftime consciousness to musical time. At the heart ofthe thesis is an examination of Adorno's writing on musical temporality and his critique of the abstract time of popular music. The thesis argues that, though extremely perceptive and useful, what Adorno's position lacks is a sufficiently dialectical analysis of the ways in which the temporalities of advanced capitalism are experienced and in turn find expression in music. Such an analysis is attempted in the latter part ofthe thesis, deploying the work of Marxists who argue that capitalism is responsible for the abstraction of time and, moreover, that this abstract time is a 'real abstraction'. Because it is generated by the inner workings of the capitalist economy, it is not something that can be wished away at the level of thought or that aesthetic representation can simply refuse, as Adorno and other modernists suggest. Groove, therefore, has the virtue of dealing with time as it really is under capitalism, rather than seeking a Utopian escape from it. The thesis concludes by considering the relationship of abstract time to historical consciousness, arguing that groove is an aesthetic mode which figures time differently from previous musics: immanently rather than narratively or representationally. As a result, groove generates a heightened experience of the present or the 'Now', while simultaneously retaining the sense of the Now's location within a temporal, or historical, continuum. Using Benjamin's concept ofJeztzeit, groove music is thus revealed to be a modernism, albeit one distinguished from others by its nonUtopianism, and one capable, at least in its best incarnations, of expressing our potential to make history, rather than simply be subjected to it. Therein lies groove's political charge.