Lyric Feature: The Chicago Police Chief who collected trad tunes

RTÉ News​

07-05-2025

Derry-born composer Seán Doherty is best known for his choral compositions, but in Sunday's Lyric Feature, 1001 Gems, he goes back to his roots in Irish traditional music - listen above.
Below, Seán tells us how he was unexpectedly drawn back to the tunes of his childhood and set out to find out more about Francis O'Neill (1848-1936), Chicago Police Chief and Irish music collector, and to research and analyse his music.
As a composer, I write new music for choirs, string quartets, orchestras, and opera, but a family tragedy brought me back to my childhood bedroom in Derry, where I rediscovered my copy of The Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems by Captain Francis O'Neill. Published in 1907, this landmark collection is often called simply The Book or The Bible of Irish traditional music.
As I leafed through its pages, I began to recognize recurring patterns in the tunes. I systematically labelled each pattern with a letter and number, eventually compiling a vast spreadsheet of all 1001 melodies. Over the course of a year, I was astonished by how much I had learned. What stood out most were four fundamental melodic structures that appeared across all tune types—jigs, reels, hornpipes, and more. Eager to delve deeper, I collaborated with computer science experts at the University of Galway to analyse this massive dataset in new and innovative ways. This research will serve as a foundation for a broader study of Irish traditional music.
To truly understand 1001 Gems, I needed to uncover the story behind its creation. This led me on a journey to trace the life of Francis O'Neill, a towering figure in Irish traditional music. Who was he, and how did he gather these tunes? To find out, I spoke with leading O'Neill scholars—Nicholas Carolan, Aileen Dillane, Mike O'Malley, Harry Bradshaw, and Marta Cook—who shared his remarkable story. Born in Bantry during the Famine, O'Neill traveled the world as a sailor before rising to the top of the Chicago police force, where he undertook a monumental effort to collect and preserve Irish music for future generations.
I followed his footsteps in the U.S., playing in a session at Chief O'Neill's Pub on Chicago's North Side, exploring his personal library at the University of Notre Dame, and listening to his original wax cylinder recordings at the Ward Irish Music Archives in Milwaukee.
Along the way, the renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes offered his own insights into tune structures and the significance of O'Neill's collections. At the outset of this journey, I saw 1001 Gems as a standard reference for Irish music. Now, I recognise it as something far more profound—a unique snapshot of a living tradition. More than a century after its publication, 1001 Gems remains an invaluable resource, a goldmine for musicians and researchers alike.