At 12:03 AM -0500 1/14/07, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
On 1/13/07, Andrew Stiller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is conventional wisdom, but it's simply untrue. Any culture, at
any time, that has an identifiable classical music must also have a
popular music lying outside those boundaries.
I do think we're getting tangled up in semantics.
Define "popular music," specify "popular among
which class or which segment of a population,"
and contrast it with "folk music" rather than
assuming they are exactly the same.
I agree. Renaissance dance music could be based on popular songs.
Heavens!! Renaissance SACRED music could be
based on "popular songs" ("L'homme armé comes
immediately to mind, of course), but once again
please define "popular songs" rather than leaving
the term hanging there.
I
believe Martin Luther used dance tunes as the basis for some of his
hymn settings.
Perhaps. But he also wrote hymns in very
appealing, dance-like rhythms. The original
version of "A Mighty Fortress" is a perfect
example. It was Bach's generation (or perhaps
those immediately preceding) that turned all the
dance rhythms into plodding quarter notes.
Telemann loved the folk music he encountered in Poland;
and it influenced quite a bit of his compositions.
See, now "popular" has become "folk." Different. Confusing.
You could argue
that this folk/popular music, would revitalize the art music of any
given period.
But you are specifically citing ethnic musics
here (plural), as did Kodály in advocating this
"music of the people" as the mother tongue of any
culture's music. Kodály educators in the U.S.
have great difficulty because of the variety of
subcultures brought here from various European
(and of course non-European) cultures, each with
very specific ethnic musics, but not in any way a
mother tongue for all Americans.
Andrew and I have disagreed before about the rise
of American Popular Music in the 19th century, he
working from the music published on the East
Coast (as do many scholars, of course), and I
looking at what seems to have been happening in
small town middle America where change was slow
and popular songs stayed fashionable for a longer
period of time. But those were true songs of the
people that cut across cultural lines, and not
ethnic folk songs, which is really the only point
I'm arguing for.
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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