The Keeper's Recital traces the development and cultural dislocation of music in Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the death of Sean O Riada and it thereby identifies the function and status of music in those cultural and political ideologies of nationalism, colonialism and revival which it helped to foster.

Although The Keeper's Recital is primarily concerned with such figures as Turlough Carolan, Edward Bunting, Thomas Moore, Thomas Davis, George Petrie, Douglas Hyde, Heinrich Bewerunge, Charles Villiers Stanford, Arnold Bax and Sean O Riada, its scrutiny of the condition of music in Irish cultural history notably embraces Irish political and literary thought throughout the period 1770-1970.

While not offered as a history of music in Ireland, it engages with the principal themes of that history in order to identify and distinguish between the symbolic power of Irish music (particularly in terms of its preservation) and its failure to generate a durable aesthetic of comparable significance to that which infused the Literary Revival.