Cellofun Repertoire Library: UK and Ireland

William Byrd (1540-1623), John Dowland (1563-1626) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695) were astonishing English composers of the Pre-Classical period. We can’t really count Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) as British because although he worked most of his adult life in Britain, he was born, grew up and studied in Germany, only coming to the UK at the age of 27. Unfortunately, after Purcell we have to wait until Edward Elgar (1857-1934) to find something really remarkable again, but the music of even the best of Elgar’s contemporaries (or later) such as Delius, Vaughan-Williams, Bax, Walton etc tends predominantly to resemble a thick pea-soup of amorphous pretentious upper-class sludge.

In contrast to this sophisticated, stuffy, self-congratulatory, elite gentlemen’s club atmosphere are the worlds of folk music, music hall and then pop-rock, where all the vitality, creativity and earthy sentiments missing from British/Irish “classical” composers seem to be found. Irish folk music in particular is an Aladdin’s cave of totally unpretentious musical treasures and, looking at the ancestry of its members (and listening to the songs), we could even consider the music of The Beatles to be very much “Irish music”.

Here, you will find cellofun editions of music by British and Irish composers:

1.  Beatles
2. Dowland
3.  Elgar
4.  Elton John
5.  Gimme Some Lovin’
6.  Lloyd-Webber
7.  Purcell
8.  Van Morrison

And here, you will find a collection of Irish folk music and fiddle tunes:

1. Irish Folk Music and Fiddle Tunes