The flute and Irish history

[david_h]

What key and pitch standard were they? If they were assorted band flutes and fifes they may have been set aside and lost if there was a shift to playing with other instruments, especially with free-reed instruments that couldn't re-tune or play in a big range of keys.

[Mr.Gumby]

Mildly relevant here but I just bumped into it:




From the blurb:

Meet John Ennis, child of the Great Famine, farmer’s son, pupil in the ‘quaint old village school’ of Prosperous, emigrant to America, Chicago policeman, uilleann piper and flautist, a founding member of The Irish Music Club of Chicago[...]

In stock @ NPU

[GreenWood]

Ambling off for a moment on a slightly different path to looking at flute making and playing around that time, I start with text search of "flute" at

https://www.duchas.ie/en/src?q=Flute&t=CbesTranscript

And though the remembered accounts relate back to maybe mid 19th century (I didn't calculate), so far there are already two which mention making flute from reeds. One mentions using "scout" (?) and I will guess all relate to phragmites australis

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley ... 2745.12797

Which is native and probably travelled at the edge of the retreating ice. In other words Ireland or whatever it wasn't called then has had access to flute and pipe making material as far back as the oldest known reed or wood instruments anywhere.

Double pipes from UR 2450 BC

https://www.doublepipes.info/lets-shed- ... ublepipes/

Simple similar would also have been made of single piece of reed not silver, at the time.

A reproduction demo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgtAHV4mzw

Many kinds of related instruments exist, here the aulos is looked at

https://www.doublepipes.info/phragmites-vs-arundo/

But we were talking about flutes...

Phragmites was used for flutes in America

https://texasbeyondhistory.net/ethnobot ... nreed.html

The ney

https://www.ethnicmusical.com/ney/is-th ... g-the-ney/

Or a 70cm end blown flute from Uganda

http://www.mimo-db.eu/MIMO/infodoc/ged/ ... 0683_14643


All I find from all of this is

1 All instruments could be made locally since whenever.
2 Cane does not last centuries, so evidence will be lacking.
3 Apart from selected reeds, for most the bore will be relatively narrow and that might favour fife, whistle or reed instruments.

There would be nothing to say that different materials and models could not be used and made simultaneously. The fact that few wooden flutes still exist before 1900 is more proof of climate and precarity than of absence. Also the references to flute in traditional tales from the first link suggest familiarity.

So there is that.

If I remember searching up on this previously, the bore of largest of phragmites reeds was around 15 mm or slightly larger. We have arundo donax here, so I don't know how a phragmites flute would sound for lack of . Maybe someone has made one ?

[Terry McGee]

Now there must be something going around. You'll remember Mr Gumby inconvenienced by lightning strikes messing with his internet connection a few days back. Now it's my turn. A pair of chappies in a white van were pulling new broadband fibre through pits across the road from us when suddenly our Internet died. They assured us they would fix it, but then dissappeared.

The network provider can't send anyone before Monday. I cannot forget Milligan's famous observation - "cut off from the rest of the world by modern communications". Sigh.

Oh, and they're predicting lightning strikes. If you don't hear from me....

[GreenWood]

One morning everyone is up and having breakfast, and I'm still half asleep and I say "let's see what kind of day it is" and open the front door to look out, and exactly then a lightning bolt drops in front with a terrible crack of thunder. I close the door..."maybe not". There was no lightning or thunder before that or after, and only a few clouds.

In the old days lightning was much feared. Where it strikes the ground it can leave a smooth melted pebble or rock. Locally sometimes polished stone axes were found, and even up to not too long ago locals would collect those and place them on their roofs, calling them lightning stones. Lightning isn't supposed to strike twice, they say.

I suppose that should reassure you Mr. Gumby, unless taken as a miss, but I think whoever is in charge of lightning would be pretty good at aim.

Sailing in a lightning storm is supposed to be a lot of fun Terry, with the mast like a large taunting lightning conductor.

I had a dream about whiskey last night. I don't drink, and know I should and that it is considered untrustworthy, but I have enough relatives who make up for my shortfall. Anyway, I had been writing about how drink at celebrations varied, say comparing with Spain. Well in my dream I was being talked to by an Irishman about whisky and the role it played in higher class social encounter, and ended by being asked (told) if I thought the poorer population could really afford that. In short, either he was from a lobby of some kind (but I took him as sincere) or he was explaining one more stereotype of the time. So that made me think of the temperance bands and related from a critical point of view, were they sort of using virtue signalling to conquer territory based on exaggeration. I have seen this done officially in so many ways in modern bureaucracy and media that it would not suprise me. I won't apologise for placing events and reputations into question, I find it disturbing that major historical events, ones that still govern or are used to societies, are not allowed to be even studied, much less debated.

In Australia you will be familiar Terry with how locals "adapt" to modern setting that is not their own. In Ireland similar might have applied to larger towns, which would also be the most documented, but rural Irish society might have been very different.

Another point during the famine, is that change of age demographic is important. Though population returned to pre population-boom levels, the age groups that remained would have had a strong effect on how society then became. Often it is the most able to that leave, those that are wanted a better future for, and that would be the would be future strength and leadership of society.

[GreenWood]

PB+J

"So O'Neill and his cohort were anxious to draw a line of unbroken continuity because they themselves were the product of the exact opposite--catastrophe and radical dislocation. "

Though O'Neill was slightly after the famine, and from a more sheltered family, for what it is worth my impression is that he would have been much party to the accounts of those that frequented his home, and those often being musicians, he would have had access to their perceptions of the previous decades. Whether romanticised or not I do not think we could just say that they would invent (say for sympathy) to people who were themselves familiar enough with previous events (O'Neill's family, and later O'Neill) . I don't think it is possible to say, except right before the famine, that conditions were deteriorating severely. For sure pressures and poverty were increasing, but so was population, and that fact alone says that there was a base environment to support social activity. So I view it as so, an alive local culture up to just before the famine, and then a major social shift through that and over the following decades. If there is anyone who is going to notice this shift in social reality in depth and more broadly, it will be musicians . Not only was their survival dependent on that reality, but they would be travellers, and they would not think "oh, how our village is quiet now", they would be able to say "the whole country is becoming desolate". I don't think it is possible to style O'Neill as a separate class to peasant Irish, because the middler class know what is happening to their people, as do musicians, it is where they came from and are always part of.

So to me O'Neill might have had a sense of the last of the social culture that survived, and on his return (and also by account from those arriving to america) have understood that the old culture was becoming increasingly desolate, and so he chose to document and defend it. Apart from very distinct local song and informal playing, much of which dissappeared, paid musicians and patrons of local music and art were its guardians. They knew the tunes, the styles, the tendencies of society and they were holders of that knowledge. To attempt to academically isolate that reality is not constructive or realistic, it will always escape categorisation and attempts to categorise will simply prove false or misleading, in my humble opinion.

What is more, I will say that I think the perception of O'Neill inventing continuity is misplaced, that that is in itself invention originating from newer influence that was (italics or capitals etc.) punctually introduced and disruptive, and that ideas like that (as of O'Neill inventing) were created with the aim of reducing local culture to a similar status as that of the interrupting influences. Obviously the famine itself was pivotal, but was definitely not all that occurred.

[PB+J]

PB+J

"So O'Neill and his cohort were anxious to draw a line of unbroken continuity because they themselves were the product of the exact opposite--catastrophe and radical dislocation. "

Though O'Neill was slightly after the famine, and from a more sheltered family, for what it is worth my impression is that he would have been much party to the accounts of those that frequented his home, and those often being musicians, he would have had access to their perceptions of the previous decades. Whether romanticised or not I do not think we could just say that they would invent (say for sympathy) to people who were themselves familiar enough with previous events (O'Neill's family, and later O'Neill) . I don't think it is possible to say, except right before the famine, that conditions were deteriorating severely. For sure pressures and poverty were increasing, but so was population, and that fact alone says that there was a base environment to support social activity. So I view it as so, an alive local culture up to just before the famine, and then a major social shift through that and over the following decades. If there is anyone who is going to notice this shift in social reality in depth and more broadly, it will be musicians . Not only was their survival dependent on that reality, but they would be travellers, and they would not think "oh, how our village is quiet now", they would be able to say "the whole country is becoming desolate". I don't think it is possible to style O'Neill as a separate class to peasant Irish, because the middler class know what is happening to their people, as do musicians, it is where they came from and are always part of.

So to me O'Neill might have had a sense of the last of the social culture that survived, and on his return (and also by account from those arriving to america) have understood that the old culture was becoming increasingly desolate, and so he chose to document and defend it. Apart from very distinct local song and informal playing, much of which dissappeared, paid musicians and patrons of local music and art were its guardians. They knew the tunes, the styles, the tendencies of society and they were holders of that knowledge. To attempt to academically isolate that reality is not constructive or realistic, it will always escape categorisation and attempts to categorise will simply prove false or misleading, in my humble opinion.

What is more, I will say that I think the perception of O'Neill inventing continuity is misplaced, that that is in itself invention originating from newer influence that was (italics or capitals etc.) punctually introduced and disruptive, and that ideas like that (as of O'Neill inventing) were created with the aim of reducing local culture to a similar status as that of the interrupting influences. Obviously the famine itself was pivotal, but was definitely not all that occurred.

I don't want to rehash the argument I make in The Beat Cop but O'Neill's family were not "peasants" by any stretch. They were significantly more wealthy than average--they lived in a large two story stone house, they leased over 100 acres, they were part of that class, well documented by Kerby Miller and by Ó Grada and James Donnelly, that gained the most by the famine, and as was typical of that class of people they converted to cattle rearing. Francis said his older brother "made a small fortune" in the 1850s and 60s. They had a library of books. They had no room for Francis, though, and were not willing to subdivide their holding so off to American went the younger siblings. But it would be historical malpractice not to not the class gap between O'Neill and "the peasants."

My argument is that the Famine should be seen as the culmination of a crisis that began in the 1830s at least, and I'm wondering if what he saw as continuity was in fact a culture responding to decades of radical change. Certainly the english administrators who produced reams of paper on the "outrages' committed by agrarian radical society like the Whiteboys, the Ribbonmen or Captain Rock suggest that they thought society was in crisis.

Claiming something is "traditional" is a little bit like claiming it's "human nature:" it's a way of ending foreclosing argument. What was "traditional" in a society characterized by mass poverty and social violence? Often the idea of "tradition" is posed as a counter to moments of radical change.

It's also worth considering that as cop in Chicago O'Neill's relationship to the peasants who emigrated to Chicago from Ireland was inevitably somewhat antagonistic. He stood for "order," property and authority--he put a picture of himself in full uniform in every book. And he was a union buster: If you were an Irish immigrant who was trying to turn the cause on land reform in the cause of organized labor, O'Neill was not your friend. This is not to say he was a bad person by any means: I don't think he was, or that he was being dishonest: I dnt thin he was. But it's important, it seems to me, to consider his position in the system of class and political power in both Ireland and the US when he starts talking about what's "traditional" and what's not

[GreenWood]

I suppose there is a more quantitative way to look at O'Neill's contribution, along the lines of comparing how many "older original tunes", and "possibly older original tunes", are with us from his work compared respectively from other sources ? Add to that whatever aid and enthusiasm he transmitted to playing folk music, which is not really quantifiable. I read somewhere that tune origins had been studied, however just the fact that he took so much time to note down all the tunes he could speaks volumes.

I did make clear that I understood he was not "peasant class" (for want of a better word).

"Francis said his older brother "made a small fortune" in the 1850s and 60s. They had a library of books. They had no room for Francis, though, and were not willing to subdivide their holding so off to American went the younger siblings. " and that the family were part of the class that benefitted :

Without studying the details and searching for lack of morality in any profit, I will not assume that there was. Unless communism is preferred, which is itself a perverse form of capitalism if beyond tribalism, standard capitalist dealings are not out of sympathy for the other or related to compassion, they are straightforward calculations of profit. Compassion and morality are allowed but at the discretion of the individual, the guiding principle being the fairness or voluntary nature of all transaction. If I use my capital, my sweat that is, to create something, I consider myself proprietor.

Non created or non movable wealth, such as land, has a different history. First claim, tradition, conquest and coercion all are historical factors. Working the land, as per Locke, to make claim is debatable and considered political construct. Arguments abound and the US seems to thrive on them.

However the O'Neill's I imagine did what any other would do. Cheap land, buy it for being better than to be given to the British. Higher food prices, profit because any gift of goods would be absorbed in the twinkling of an eye and leave themselves at disadvantage in the larger competition. As you say you are familiar with political economy, I will add equally. Order and property right are the foundations of economic improvement, how any existing allotment or framework is often seen as unfair is a very large topic, potentially endless. Here we talk about music, the validity of O'Neill's contribution is only related to the rest being dicussed in parallel, in terms of what it shows us of society during that time in Ireland and abroad, and so in a circular fashion and indirectly, how relevant his contribution of study and promotion of music actually was.

Tradition is straightforward to me, it is what has been handed on from predecessors. A recent tradition, an acient tradition, a new tradition, a revived tradition, the meanings are clear.

His position in the "system" I read as one of both loyalty and honesty. The values of late 19th century were quite pervasive, I should think he understood them to the best of his ability.

Unlike yourself I have not studied O'Neill in great detail, but these are my impressions, and what I read of his personality in various ways.

[PB+J]

Right so you can’t simply talk about “economics” like it was some value neutral thing here. The O’Neills could not buy the land, they could only lease it. That’s what the “land war” of the 1880s was about. In O’Neills childhood 95% of the land in Ireland was owned by Protestants and land was not available to buy. It had been that way since Cromwell— under the penal laws Catholics were in fact legally prohibited from owning land. You could call this “ tradition,” and if you were the one collecting the rents for 300 years you probably would. If you were the one forced to pay the rent you might see it differently

My point here is that the political and economic and social conditions from which music comes matter. “Tradition” tends to obscure these things.

[bigsciota]

Out of curiosity PB+J, did you research provide any clues as to the socioeconomic situation of the other emigrant musicians of O'Neill's circles? There's a particular picture I'm thinking of of some sort of Irish men's music club, a bunch of guys with flutes and pipes mostly IIRC posing for a picture. Were those of the "middle" class O'Neill would have inhabited, a mix of socioeconomic class, mostly "peasants," etc.?

[PB+J]

Out of curiosity PB+J, did you research provide any clues as to the socioeconomic situation of the other emigrant musicians of O'Neill's circles? There's a particular picture I'm thinking of of some sort of Irish men's music club, a bunch of guys with flutes and pipes mostly IIRC posing for a picture. Were those of the "middle" class O'Neill would have inhabited, a mix of socioeconomic class, mostly "peasants," etc.?

No not as much as I would have liked to. I wanted to get the book done! It would be a very good subject for research. It might be in Richie Piggot's new book which I've pre-orderd but not read yet (https://www.richiepiggott.com/). They were a varied lot in the US. Edward Cronin was trained as a weaver in Ireland but at age 68 was still working as a "grinder" at the Deering harvester works. Adam Tobin was working in a slaughterhouse up to the time of his death in 1920. Nick Whitmer's really excellent "lives of the pipers" site has a lot of info. (http://livesofthepipers.com/)

Some of the policemen were quite wealthy--Barney Delaney was well off, O'Neill writes thanks to himself, and James Kirwan, one of the two guys lying n the floor in the front, was very wealthy, so much so that the Tribune ran an article on it, see below, while John Ennis was also a patrolman but was not wealthy.


This article is not quite right: Kerwin had been a sergeant but was knocked back down to patrolman in 1898, because he refused to take the Civil Service exam that had been made mandatory for policeman.

This doesn't get to your excellent question but I found it interesting. Count me among the cynical people who think there is more to Kerwin's wealth than just not drinking.

Chicago tribune April 30 1905
"James Kirwin was born in Ireland in the famine year 1847. As a young man he came to America and finally- settled in Chicago. After a time he was appointed a police patrolman. At the age cf 58 he is retiring from the force, still a patrolman.

However, James Kerwin, with his wife and five sons and daughters, lives in his handsome house in a part of Wabash avenue where property is not cheap. Moreover, James Kerwin ia reputed, on good authority, to be worth $150,000.[roughly 5 million in today's dollars] Truly, he is a fortunate policeman. How did be manage it?

‘Graft,” will say some superficial cynics, remembering certain tales about policemen, and forgetting that easy and ill-gotten gains are seldom or never kept, and that a patrolman could not “graft" largely if he would. And then how is it that in all his thirty years' service Officer Kerwin has had no charge made against him, and never been even reprimanded?

"Pull," will add the same kind of cheap explainers of their neighbors’ prosperity. But it is evident that no “pull" could avail through thirty years of changes in superior authority to save a mere patrolman from inquiry- into his misdeeds, if there were any, and keep his record spotless. It is obvious that quite different explanations must be found of Patrolman James Kcrwin’s good fortune.

Some remarks which inquiring reporters have drawn from Officer Kerwin upon his retirement, his clear record. and his prosperity, afford the desired solution. Here are some of Officer Kerwin’s maxims:

Leave liquor alone and keep a clear head when trouble comes.
No excuse (or a policeman being “called on the carpet” If he holds his temper in check and keeps bis duty In mind.
Don't dissolve your money in liquor. Invest it in something tangible that will bring returns.
Save something when you are young—no matter how small the salary—and you will have no want to fear when the sunset comes on.

Undoubtedly his good wife’s dowry helped to enlarge the family fortunes.

But If Mary O’Leary Kerwin had inherited nothing from her father the result, while possibly not so large, would have been the same. A family governed by Officer Kerwin’s maxims was bound to prosper. Its possessions might not have been so much, but they would have been enough for comfort.

In the light of the principles by which be has regulated his life there is no difficulty in accounting for Officer Kerwin’s good fortunes. He was sober, prudent, and thrifty, and took the opportunities before him to multiply his savings. He did his duty to the letter with patience, good temper, and uprightness.

And so he is able to do what every man can do if he really tries—especially if he has a good woman to help him. He is able to confront the sunset of life in peace, prosperity, and honor."

[PB+J]

Just a note on the above--the sure way to get rich in chicago was real estate investment. the city grows both very fast and very steadily. It's how O'Neill makes his money. but it's not quite that simple, because everybody was after the real estate game and if you had inside information about where something was going to be developed, or where the streetcar line was going to go, you could make a killing. The police were of course well positioned to get and take advantage of inside information especially the officers There's famous book in US hisotry called Plunkitt of Tammany hall that describes how this worked:

"There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin‘: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”

Just let me explain by examples. My party’s in power in the city, and it’s goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I’m tipped off, say, that they’re going to lay out a new park at a certain place.

I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.

Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that’s honest graft. Or supposin‘ it’s a new bridge they’re goin’ to build. I get tipped off and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank.

Wouldn’t you? It’s just like lookin‘ ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. It’s honest graft, and I’m lookin’ for it every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I’ve got a good lot of it, too."

Plunkitt was an Alderman, not a cop, but Aldermen and cops worked closely together in Chicago, as in this carton from 1903, when O'Neill was chief.

I guess I would say that if it matters that irish music comes from the rural countryside it also matter that irish music came from the industrial city

[GreenWood]

"I guess I would say that if it matters that irish music comes from the rural countryside it also matter that irish music came from the industrial city"

It matters, and it is maybe a shame we have little view of its diversity over a larger period of time. I think the various styles of playing have survived though, and I think that the further back in time you go the more coherent it will be across the whole setting. When I listen to early recordings, often the playing is clearly to a different setting and style to today, and going further back the tunes, but adapted to say political themes, are very different. You can have a single tune played differently through all these settings, say with ten distinct versions up to the modern day. At the same time, there will be rural players that have kept a way of playing amongst themselves for centuries, or if not older transcripts of a song set to a much older style are to be found, and beyond that a historic understanding of the way music was played centuries ago.

So, that irish music came from the cities also counts in at least two ways, firstly it is tradition as carried into a more modern setting, and secondly because the actual original melodies recorded from that setting are often much older, and can be translated and played closer to their earlier styles if chosen.

To me it makes no difference how wealthy or not any musician or collector is. It matters in a sense of social standing within traditional music, or other related detail on the life of musicians, and it matters in terms of understanding the breadth of the music that was preserved. However, none of that adds or detracts from the very simple reality of a person collecting and conserving and presenting for wider access, otherwise would be forgotten melodies .

"My point here is that the political and economic and social conditions from which music comes matter. “Tradition” tends to obscure these things."


Or the inverse would be that the music, a single older tune played in various circumstance over time, is an example of tradition acting as a display of different political, economic and social conditions. By that view tradition carries and highlights, not obscures .

"If you were the one forced to pay the rent you might see it differently"

I would call it tradition also, an unwelcome one kept in place by use of force. Morally we are no different in today's world. The money you use is constructed upon national debt underwritten by future (forced) taxation. In the US property taxes are often outrageous as well. It works while it does, as long as people pretend to agree or find something in it for themselves. Technological know how has increased productivity dramatically over the last century, giving that reality the effect of prosperity.

Larger well managed farms are more productive, Zimbabwe is a classic example of failed redistribution of land that made all poorer. In Ireland clearly the distribution of land was basically feudal, along religious (and so by origin) lines. That is not an exceptional reality to Ireland though, it was that it was only fully conquered later than say Britain, which lived similar feudal realities under Roman, Saxon and Norman conquest. The catholic church apparently signed away Ireland to the Normans if I remember ? England was not a great power at the time of Henry VIII, on old maps off Cork is labelled The Spanish Sea, for example. Henry VIII claimed Ireland, after rejecting catholic oversight, based on continuity of English rule first granted by the catholic church. With catholic derived claims to Ireland a direct threat to the security of Anglican England, it was wanted conquered and converted . The Irish people just seem to have ended up caught up in it all, apart from it really being their island that is. The Scoti (since absorbing some "Pictish" culture on the mainland ) also lived in the north-east according to the Romans.

Anyway, if land redistribution was more than due and unlike Zimbabwe alleviated the condition of many, it has all still moved towards the efficiency of less but larger farms, more sheep and more cattle.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublic ... conomy/ag/

It's all a long way from Chicago though.

[rykirk]

As Ben alluded to many pages ago we would be well to take our blinders off and realise that the flute was an extremely popular instrument in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain and America as well as Ireland.

Flutes of cocus with zero to four nickel keys were quite inexpensive and common, still being listed in the 1890 Sears catalogue for example.

They occupied a place more or less like cheap guitars do today- if somebody had an instrument in the house it was likely a flute.

Fluteplayers were the Rock Stars of their day, in the 19th century filling huge venues.

A character in Dickens carries a flute in his pocket. Flutes are seen in many camp photos taken in the American Civil War.

The situation O Neill describes would be familiar to English and Americans of that time as well.

Interesting conversation so far but to my mind this is the real issue. Everyone is dead set on finding the Irish origins of the flute and the repertoire. But this is a very modern conception. The flute was widely popular and there was wide travel and commerce across the entire Anglo world. We can see from records of instruments for sale in England, Scotland, and the New World what kind of flutes and repertoire and playing styles were popular in the late 18th and early 19th Century and it's quite clear that there is no deep folk history to the vast majority of modern ITM repertoire. Lots of the earliest appearances of tunes are in mixed collections alongside Scots and English tunes and songs and alongside country dance, light parlor music aping a continental style, minuets, bourees, polkas, waltzes, cotillions, mazurkas, farandoles, etc.

It's very clear that most people playing flutes were playing common English or continental style "classical" instruments (this distinction did not exist at the time, obviously) in a learned style from tutors and traveling instructors. Landed gentry, gentlemen, merchants, etc. who were musically literate and played or learned tunes from notation and were likely to play both dance form tunes as well as what we would today consider light classical instrumental genres or popular opera arias or broadside songs, etc. Players in Dublin, Edinburgh, New York, Boston, and London were probably playing mostly the same music.

Trying to find the deep pre-famine roots of some Irish folk flute and modern ITM interpretative style is a fools errand as its mostly a product of the late 19th and early 20 Century nationalist invention, much like the Victorian highland fetishism in Scotland and modern piping "tradition".

[Mr.Gumby]

It's very clear that most people playing flutes were playing common English or continental style "classical" instruments (this distinction did not exist at the time, obviously) in a learned style from tutors and traveling instructors. Landed gentry, gentlemen, merchants, etc. who were musically literate and played or learned tunes from notation and were likely to play both dance form tunes as well as what we would today consider light classical instrumental genres or popular opera arias or broadside songs, etc. Players in Dublin, Edinburgh, New York, Boston, and London were probably playing mostly the same music.

While I would agree the boundaries between the various genres may have been blurred more, we have accounts of pipers playing operatic airs and all that. I am not so sure you can state players in Dublin, Edinburgh, New York and Boston played the same music. Some parts of society may have but Ireland was a very different society from those across the various waters. Large parts of the country were not part of Anglophone culture.