Folk music

“ What interest he can create, what effect he can produce, must be through melody alone. Now, I venture to assert that the folk music of the English peasantry has been surpassingly rich in melodiousness, and that no tune has had a chance of living and being transmitted from generation to generation, unless it have a distinct individuality in it, in a word, contains a melodious idea. ”

“ Don’t you believe that studying history through folk tunes would be fascinating? People today have found out much about the different races and tribal events through them.
It is impossible to find out who wrote the five thousand folk songs of England and the more than five thousand of Russia and of Ireland and all the others, for it was not until the 19th century that folk songs and dances became a serious study. The fact is, that a true folk song doesn’t want to find its composer for it loses its rank as a folk song if its maker should turn up! ”

“ But beyond the fact of its intelligibility, music possesses different attractions for different people. The folk song preserves to us the very savour of the country in which we were born; it recalls the air, the climate that we breathed and knew. When we hear it, it is as if all our ancestors should suddenly present themselves. I realize that my tastes may be barbaric, but if there could only be one kind of music, and I were obliged to choose between the universal and the local, my preference would be wholly for the latter, which is the popular music. ”

“ National Portraits in Folk Music There is one particularly lovely thing about folk songs and dances and that is the natural labels which they bear, marking them as belonging to France, Spain, Germany, Russia and so on. As with people, they all have similarities and yet no two are the same in looks or in actions. It would not take you long to know whether you were hearing a Spanish folk dance, an Irish Jig, a Russian Hopak, a Norwegian Halling or an American Foxtrot, because each has its own kind of rhythm and melody. ”

“ The rhythmic nature of folk song carries us into another field of speculation, namely, the influence of the people’s daily occupations, the close relation between daily life and song in ages when life in its individual and social manifestations could be reduced to simple formulæ. Occupational songs have from earliest times (cf. Chap. IV) been an important factor in folk music, and it is obvious that early in the Middle Ages such songs were closely associated with the movements of the human body in various occupations. ”

“ What are folk-songs as we know them to-day? The songs which have been taken down from the lips of the peasantry, mostly in very recent years. They owe their preservation to the tenacious memories of country folk through countless generations. In other words, they are traditional.
They are to be found in all nations, savage or civilized, all over the world. And in civilized nations the melodies of folk-song have been little affected by the musical changes which civilization has brought to the art of music. ”

“ Now that America is able to boast the beginnings of a sophisticated art, it is beginning to be more deplored that there is not present the rich vein of folk-music to lend to our native art that vital and distinctive touch that should give it its place among the nation's music. ”

“ Folk-music it is called, and it gives untrammeled utterance to human longings, human grief and despair, and human wondering over the mysteries of life, death and the great Beyond. Untutored people had always found vent in this kind of music for pent-up feelings, and the folk-music of the Christian world, during the Crusades, gained a new element in the fragments of Oriental melody transplanted into its midst. ”

“ And this with a melody denuded of every merely decorative tone, written in a scale of just five notes!
Everywhere in folk-music we find this power of expressing the highest things in the fewest notes. Only the very greatest of conscious composers have been able to compete with the folk-song on its own terms, within its rigid limitations. Art-songs have elaborated and refined. But it seems as though the essence is always in the folk-tunes. ”

“ We unite people of all nations under one flag and one government, but we have been sung to sleep and amused as children by the folk songs of the European nations to which our parents and grandparents belonged! And so we have heard from childhood Sur le Pont d’Avignon, Schlaf Kindlein Schlaf, Wurmland, The Volga Boat Song, Sally in our Alley, or The Wearing of the Green, none of which is American.
In spite of all these obstacles to the growth of a folk music in America, we have several sources from which they have come. ”

“ Is it not plain that, in the light of this principle, every phenomenon of folk-music becomes clear and intelligible? Is there any other hypothesis which will account for the most striking characteristics of folk-music? Every student must answer these questions for himself. ”

“ Folk-song, beginning in the prehistoric age of music, has kept pretty much to itself until recent times, and has had a development parallel with art music. From time to time it has served as a reservoir for this art music, opening its treasures richly when the conscious music makers had run dry. ”

“ One point must be very distinctly understood, namely, that what we call harmonization of a melody cannot be admitted as forming any part of folk song. Folk melodies are, without exception, homophonous. This being the case, perhaps my statement that the vital principle of folk music in its best state has nothing in common with nationalism (considered in the usual sense of the word) , will be better understood. ”

“ The collection and preservation of mountain folk music is a singularly gracious work and one of rare value to history. Collected in its natural environment, it is perforce authentic both in tune and idiom, and sincere collectors are not content with this alone—they complete the record by tracing the songs to their origins. ”

“ In general, of course, the question of the age or authenticity of a folk-song is one for the musical archeologist, rather than for the mere lover of music. The folk-songs that are in the hands of the general public are in all stages of authenticity and purity. ”

“ If we can answer these questions, we shall know not merely what the instinctive melodies of folk-songs mean, but what all true music means and expresses, and partly, at least we shall understand the unique power which music exerts over human beings, now as in the dim past, when Orpheus was not a singer only, but a magician, when a song was not a melody and words only, but an incantation and charm, a spell. ”

“ American Folk Music We come now to a question that has been the subject of many arguments and debates. Many claim that we have no folk music in the United States, and others claim that we have. It would take a whole volume to present both sides and we must reduce it to a sugar-coated capsule.
Although we know that Stephen Foster wrote Old Folks at Home, The Old Kentucky Home, Uncle Ned, Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground, and Old Black Joe, they express so 141perfectly the mood and spirit of the people that they are true folk songs. ”

“ At the foundation of all the art of music lies the folk-song—simple melodies which spring up in every country and are easily learned, and pass from one to another until they become current over large extents of territory. The folk-song had its origin, most likely, in the dance ”

“ We know that the nucleus of melody lies in one note, just as the origin of language is to be sought for in the word. Therefore folk music proper must be separated from what may be called barbaric music, the most primitive type of the latter being the “one-note” strain from which spring the melodies of the people. This one-note form passes through many rhythmical changes before song becomes developed to the extent of adding several notes to its means of expression. ”

“ And again speaking of Stephen Foster, Mr. Milligan says: “Although purists may question their right to the title ‘folk songs’ his melodies are truly the songs of the American people.”
The folk music of which we have told you has been the music portraits of different peoples such as the Russian, the Polish, the French, the German, the English, the Irish and so on. If there has been a mixture of peoples or tribes as in England where there were Britons, Danes, Angles, Saxons and Normans, it happened so long ago that they have become molded into one race. ”

“ Tonal variety is a marked feature in folk-songs, many of them being in the old Gregorian modes, while others show a decided inclination to our modern major and minor scales. Great is the historical importance of Folk-music, because in it we see a dawning recognition of the principles of instrumental form, i.e., the need of balanced phrases, caused in the songs by the metrical structure of the words, and in the dances by the symmetrical movements of the body; a recognition above all, of the application of a definite system of tonal-centres, and of repetition after contrast. ”

“ The folk-song is a naïve product, springing almost unconsciously from the hearts of simple people, and not intended to convey any such definite expression of the meaning of the words as is conveyed in modern songs. While there are specimens [2] of the art song that closely approach the simplicity and beauty of the folk-song, the art song in general is not only of wider range and of wider application to men's thoughts and feelings, but it also has, as an integral part of it, an accompaniment of which the folk-song, in its pure state, is entirely devoid. ”

“ On another occasion, we took down four or five airs all beginning alike, because one singer had impressed this beginning on the minds of the others. At another time, when this impression was worn off, they would sing correctly, and then the beginnings would be different. Experience taught us never to take down too much at one sitting.
In a very few years all this heritage of traditional folk music will be gone; and this is the supreme moment at which such a collection can be made. ”

“ In folk-song we see its beginning, and at the present stage of human history we also see, from the folk-songs which have survived, just how far music, under the sole guidance of the voice and of instinct, is able to advance. For the day of folk-song is over. There won't be any more. Civilization inevitably kills it. When music is made for people by experts, they stop making it for themselves. ”

“ After a few years of strenuous work he realized that it was more important for him to collect and study folk-music than to acquire the technique and theory of the art of music, and with this in view he undertook excursions to the villages during the summer vacation, collecting folk-songs, attending festivals and social ceremonies of the peasants. ”

“ Outside this one example, England produced little but moderately good polyphonic music in the form of motets and madrigals, and in the time of Gibbons and Purcell, sonatas and operas. There were also anthems, the old plain chant and much Folk-music, but nothing that can be considered as important. The Folk-music is all that can claim originality, and that ranks favorably with the best examples of other nations and is, indeed, in advance of that of other nations considered more musical. ”

“ He has collected an enormous amount of folk songs that were sung by the woodman as he wielded his axe, by the boatman plying his oars, by the peasant as he plowed his acre, scattered the seed, mowed the field, and reaped the harvest. ”

“ There is no harm in a simple accompaniment to a folk-song, but in teaching them to children an accompaniment does for them precisely what we want them to do for themselves, namely, reproduce correctly the metre and the rhythm, the pitch and the contour of the melody. ”

“ Folk-music is indeed a very considerable advance on the music of primitive savages, and it shows the growth of power to attain to real orderliness, as the basis of art, by the employment of simple and clear forms of organization, which are evolved quite irrespective of any collusion or imitation between the races that resorted to it. ”

“ In folk song itself we must seek the germs of the art which bore such rich blossoms as the Troubadour and Minnesinger lyrics and which in turn refreshed by its influence the music of the church itself. ”

“ The important point is that, in England and Ireland at any rate, the folk-song, orally transmitted, has practically evolved as a separate art-form with its own ways and means of expression. And the outstanding feature of the movement is the recognition of this art-form as a thing of beauty, of vitality, and of necessity to the nation. One might make a very fair division of English composers into those who do not use folk-tunes, those who do for cheque-book reasons, and those who do because they must. ”

“ When in such music this inflection rhymes with the words, that is to say, when the speech finds its emotional reflection in the music, we have reached the highest development of folk song. In its best state, this is immeasurably superior to much of our “made” music, only too often false in rhythm, feeling, and declamation. ”

“ On the side of character, also, it is parenthetically observable that folk tunes reflect the temperamental qualities of the races and localities to which they belong most truthfully—such as the vivacity and love of orderly design of the French, the pathos and pugnacity of the Irish, the sober simplicity and deliberation of the English, the sentimental reflectiveness of Germans, the spasmodic vehemence of Hungarians, and the love of elaborate ornamentation of Orientals. Slavonic folk-music is also most characteristic, but it is most difficult to define. ”