"What do we mean by Irish music? The politics of state-sponsored music publication in independent Ireland

This essay considers the politics of music publication by the Irish state in the early decades of independence alongside the prescription of 'Irishness' in education, collection and composition. It surveys the roles played by individual government ministers and state officials in developing or thwarting these aspects of musical activity arguing that personal rather than collective attitudes resulted in state initiatives - and these we re typically concerned with developing music as an aspect of national culture. Few, if any. steps appear to have been taken in consultation with members of the music profession for the purposes of developing music per se after the establishment of the Irish Free State (Saorscat Eireann) in December 1922. Instructive in this regard are the responses of mu sic professionals - composers and members of the Music Association of Ireland especially - who, by direct submission or indirectly through the pages of popular journals , magazines and newspapers, advi sed successive governments of the urgent need to have a comprehensive centralized state policy for the development of all aspects of music in Ireland . In the context of such commentary,underlying questions of modernism and national identity will be considered using published and unpublished records of Irish cultural history including state department reports and archives, and transcripts of debates in Dail Eireann (Assembly of Ireland), the lower house of parliament, and principal chamber of the Irish legislature.