Portable Organs and Stencilled Plainchant: Music at Irish Continental Colleges in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This article looks at the history of music at the Irish continental colleges in the eighteenth century, demonstrating that musical training was often a part - or was at least intended to be a part - of the education offered by these institutions to students preparing for the priesthood and, in many cases, a return to Ireland and the Catholic mission there. Particularly rich examples of musical life can be found in the histories of the Irish Franciscan colleges of St Anthony’s, Louvain and San Isidoro, Rome, and the Irish Dominican colleges of Holy Cross, Louvain and San Clemente, Rome. They show that music has its place in the history of the Irish continental colleges and, indeed, in the history of Irish Catholicism in the eighteenth century.