Background
In 1978, H.S.H. Princess Grace of Monaco purchased a collection of more than 1,600 Irish and Irish American music scores, dating from 1840 to 1970, collected by Michael E O’Donnell from Philadelphia, who originated from County Mayo like the Princess’ grandfather. This was also fitting, since her uncle Walter Kelly had performed this kind of material in the United States of America.
The collection was housed at the Prince’s palace until 1984, when it was moved to the Princess Grace Irish Library. In March 2019, some of the song sheets were selected by Dr Fintan Vallely to be used as part of the programme for the inaugural evening of Irish music at the restored Kelly House in Philadelphia, where Princess Grace grew up. During his time as The Ireland Funds Monaco, Academic-in-Residence, Dr Vallely started work on cataloguing the collection. This was completed in 2021, and the listing was put online in 2023.
Uniqueness of the Princess Grace Sheet Music Collection / Introduction
Although the collection is not a definitive archive of song-sheets, its materials are unique for the period they cover in Irish American culture history – from famine times until after World War II , the key area of development of Irish American society. Its variety is a visual inventory of the music taste or interests of different social strata of this society. It casts light on not only blue- and white-collar clientele who frequented vaudeville and other venues where many of these songs were sung, but also on those who had a disposable income, stable accommodation and some classical -music taste.
The breakdown of song titles shows that the Gaelic league and Irish Revival era poets, which were popular in Ireland, and in England, and had audiences in America. This mix is perhaps the collection’s strong point; it has Irish lyrics and settings, including those by the twentieth-century James Joyce, also Alice Milligan and her sister Charlotte Million-Fox, as well as many by the nineteenth-century Samuel Lover and Thomas Moore. There is also writing by non-Irish scribes – vaudeville – theatre comic song and nostalgic love-song from Tin Pan Alley writers, much of which was being performed contemporaneously by “big” names.
This collection is a window on to the passing traffic of Irish American music indulgence and expression over the period of a century.
Interpreting the collection
The sheets are, for the most part, printed by commercial, American music publishers – 346 of them, some large companies, some individuals. Many kinds of information can be deduced from the song lyrics, not least the over-arching feature that they show the gradual negotiation of Irish American identity by the immigrant Irish to the United States.
Though Irish in style, the songs in the collection are a step away from older, traditional Irish songwriting. The newer compositions have many of the characteristics of Irish song but embody a different set of experiences – those of the new immigrants to the United States, wherein each nationality tended to stick together and live in areas inhabited largely by its own people. These are Irish-interest songs, about people who saw themselves as, and took great comfort from being, Irish first, American second.
Elements and features of the collection
There are 1698 sheets, 599 of which are duplicates, meaning that there are 1,099 discrete song-sheets. Among the 1,099 individual song-lyrics, there are occasional duplicates in the form of different editions (51 in all), reducing the number of actual songs represented to 1048; several of these lyrics however have different music setting. Overall, 1,040 lyrics- writers are named, some of them having more than one song to their credit. The commercial music lyricists and composers of this period are generally assumed to be independent of nationality in their work. These were the “Tin Pan Alley” writers of the early 1900s who drew on various palettes of” “national” characteristics – such as metaphor, allusion, melodic principles and themes – for the express purpose of appealing to and making money from various nations’ city communities.
The Princess Grace Song-Sheet Collection is only a partial inventory of such commercial songwriting, however, for circa 10% of its material was published in England, many of those lyrics and melodies being already long established as Irish, not least on account of having been written by songwriters such as Thomas Moore (41 songs). Furthermore, at least 368 of the songs (33%) and 232 of the music compositions (21%) have surnames of Irish origin; yet, of course, many of these were writing for New York publishers.
As for gender, 172 of the lyricists of the 1099 songs (16%) were female, as were 140 (13%) of the composers. But among these, Irish women were prominent – 36 % of the female lyricists and 30% of the female composers overall have Irish names.
The songs’ content
The content of the songs tells us much too. While all of them relate to Ireland and Irishness, a quick, initial survey suggests that 360 of them (33%) deal with love, 90 (8%) with emigration and exile. Irish American society is the subject of 200 (18%) of them; there are 180 (9%) on Irishness per se, and 56 (5%) deal with Irish national political identity. Nostalgia is a feature of 18% of the songs, while a narrative structure is the dominant style in 33% of them. A comic or satirical approach is taken in 200 or more lyrics (c. 18%), all of those being on social aspects of Irish American culture, politics, work and life.
Irishness in these songs is somewhat ridiculed, especially in the earlier period, but it is romanticised in the latter part of the song-sheets’ era.
Dr Fintan Vallely / The Princess Grace Irish-American Song-Sheet Collection Catalogue”,
2020, Monaco.
Dr. Fintan Vallely is an awardwinning musician, lecturer and writer on traditional music; among his numerous books is the encyclopedia Companion to Irish Traditional Music. In 2022, he was honoured as an Adjunct Professor with University College Dublin, and in 2023 was awarded the national TG4 lifetime achievement award, Gradam Saol. In 2019, Dr. Vallely undertook the vast project of cataloguing the Princess Grace collection of 1,099 song-sheets.