Folk song

“ As has been said, the chief value of folk-song is in its genuineness, in the accuracy with which it reflects not only the emotions, but the habits and customs of the people, so that their peculiar life becomes visible before our eyes. There is an indefinable charm, not only in the impression of reality, but in the very rudeness and imperfection of the speech, which gives an effect beyond literary art, when deep emotion or domestic pathos are seen through it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The beginning of all folk-song is in the cooing melodies which the mothers chant by the inspiration of nature by the cradles of their drowsing infants, and in which the affections of their hearts take an articulate form as naturally as the songs of birds. The berceuses, or cradle songs, of the Breton peasantry have all the elements of deep feeling and childish simplicity of expression which characterize the voice of motherhood in every clime and every station in life, and unite the queen and the peasant in a common bond. ”

“ To be sure, there is the singing of folk songs handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. When the mountain people are asked the origin of their music, the usual reply is “My grandsir larnt me this fiddle tune,” or “My Granny larnt me this song-ballet.”
Since mountain people have brought their music out of the coves and hollows for the world to hear through their Singing Gathering and Festivals, the nation is fast becoming aware of the importance of folk music in the life of Americans today. Great singers have taken up the simple songs of our fathers. ”

“ Generally speaking, of course, a folk song is not the work of one individual, but of many; it is essentially a local product, that grows with the years, and reflects truly the spirit of the land which gave it birth. Yet, strangely enough, this particular song, though it has all the virtues of its kind—the simplicity, the melody, the descriptive, pastoral, and amorous characteristics of a semi-southern race—is an exception to the general rule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their essential quality was that of an improvised chant, and the dominant feeling was to be found in the intermingling of the words and the cadence, as in the apparently meaningless refrain of the old ballads. They expressed, through all their rudeness and uncouthness, and more through the melody than the words, the minor chords which distinguish all folk music, the underlying element in the human heart oppressed by the magnitude and solitude of nature, as well as the enlivening spirit of strong exertion ”

“ 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. ”

“ The beginnings of melody are older than the beginnings of language, and spring from a different human impulse. But the fact that folk-songs have words as well as melodies easily leads to confusion of thought; for, at the stage of civilization in which we live, it his become, for the majority of people, more natural to talk than to sing. It is obviously more natural to sing than to talk ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The folk-poet sings because heaven has given him a sweet voice and a fair mistress; because the earth brings forth her increase and the sun shines, and the spring comes back, and rest at noontide and at evening is lovely, and work in the oil-mill and in the vineyard is lovely too: he sings to embellish his labour and to enhance his repose. He lives on the shield of Achilles, singing, accompanied by a viol, to the grape-pickers; he is crowned with flowers in the golden age of Lucretius as he raises his sweet song at the festa. ”

“ From such primitive music as this to the beautiful "folk-song" of the modern nations is a long step indeed. Even in the simplest real folk-songs, the means of varied repetition of ideas that we have been discussing are used with an ingenuity which places them on an infinitely higher level than these primitive efforts of savages. It is true that in folk-songs, which were sung by a single voice instead of a group of voices, the device of "imitation" was used hardly at all:—that is available only where there are several different voices to imitate one another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The folk-song of the nation naturally disposed itself in the tonality most esteemed by the people, and, accordingly, we find in some countries that most of the folk-songs are in major tonality, while in others minor tonality prevails; the rhythm being determined by the favorite dancing step of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ FOLK-SONG BY F. B. GUMMERE
s in the case of ballads, or narrative songs, it was important to sunder not only the popular from the artistic, but also the ballad of the people from the ballad for the people; precisely so in the article of communal lyric one must distinguish songs of the folk—songs made by the folk—from those verses of the street or the music hall which are often caught up and sung by the crowd until they pass as genuine folk-song. For true folk-song, as for the genuine ballad, the tests are simplicity, sincerity, mainly oral tradition, and origin in a homogeneous community. ”

“ For the purposes then of this article, art-song may be distinguished from folk-song by the fact that it is the work of trained musicians and is designed, at any rate after the close of the 16th century, for voice with instrumental accompaniment, whereas we shall restrict the term folk-song to such melodies as appear to have been the work of untutored minds, and to have arisen independently of any felt necessity for harmonic support. ”

“ The mere collecting, collating, and setting forth of folk-songs, attractively arranged for instruments or even orchestrated, such as we have seen much of from all countries in recent years, is no more musical art than a pile of bricks is a building, or a series of anecdotes literature. So far as it tends to content the public with such potpourris, the fad for folk-song is positively injurious to taste, in something the same way that our modern floods of petty journalism are injurious to the capacity for sustained reading. ”

“ But, it must be remembered that the vocal method of the folk-singer is inseparable from the folk-song. It is a cult which has grown up side by side with the folk-song, and is, no doubt, part and parcel of the same tradition. When, for instance, an old singing man sings a modern popular song, he will sing it in quite another way. The tone of his voice will change and he will slur his intervals, after the approved manner of the street-singer. Indeed, it is usually quite possible to detect a genuine folk-song simply by paying attention to the way in which it is sung. ”

“ 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 tunes of the secular folk-songs came into the religious environment—into the folk-hymns and spiritual songs—with little change. What one could sing by himself to secular words all could sing in a gathering to religious words. The new surroundings made only one added demand,—that the singers indulge in fewer vocal liberties than they might have enjoyed when singing the same tunes in their homes and alone. I refer to those liberties in personal interpretation, a quaint characteristic of individual folk singing which has given the collectors their numerous variants of one and the same song. ”

“ A herdsman or tiller of the soil strings together a few verses embodying some simple thought which came into his head whilst he looked at the green fields or the blue skies, or it may be as he acted in a humble way as village poet-laureate. One or two friends get them by heart, and possibly sing them at the fair in the next hamlet: if they hit, others catch them up, and so the song travels for miles and miles, and may live out generations. ”

“ The folk song was ignored successfully for a thousand years, but in certain happy days of the Middle Ages it wooed and won the fugue, and modern music, strong with the strength of musical science, beautiful with the beauty of spontaneous emotional utterance, was the fruit of this union. ”

“ The question then, whether folk-songs should possess for us a poetic interest, or on the contrary repel us to some extent, depends on the kind of situation and emotion they portray. That which appears admirable to the imagination of one people, will readily strike another as wanting in taste, horrible, and offensive. There is, for example, a folk-song which tells us the story of a wife who was immured at the command of her husband, and all that her plea for mercy could effect was that apertures should be left open for her breasts, in order that she might suckle her child ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may now investigate the growth of musical structure and expression, as manifested in the fields of the Folk-Song and of Polyphonic music, beginning with the Folk-Song—historically the older and more elemental in its appeal. We cannot imagine the time when human beings did not use their voices in some form of emotional outpouring ”

“ The future choreography does not necessarily need to be based upon syncopated rhythm only, but upon the various factors of the style, the method of expression and the spiritual issues.
The physical and spiritual bases of every folk-art lie in the rural life. A folk-song or a folk-dance is and remains the product of idyllic village atmosphere. ”

“ The folk-tunes may not have a special dramatic rôle. Out of the text of folk-song, to be sure, all the strains are woven. Here and there we have the collective voice. If we have watched keenly, we have heard how the tune, simply though it begins, has later all the line of Till's personal phrase. ”