Expanding the narrative: public history, music, and the Irish country house

Abstract

This chapter discusses the political context for research and interpretation of music in and around Irish country houses— the primary residences of former landowners on their estates— outlining its historical significance and utility for public history. The term “public history” refers to history in public settings, beyond academia, in museums, libraries and archives, television and film, print and social media, cultural and built heritage sites, local history societies, and wherever non-academic popular audiences are found. The term “public history” emerged in the 1970s in the United States to describe historians and historical methods employed outside of universities, and today is a “catch-all category for all public forms of representation of the past, in all media.” Disparity and inequity inevitably led to regional outbreaks of protest— organised in some places by secret, oath-bound groups— but was sometimes conflated with political and religious tensions and suppressed by magistrates tied to the landed class.