Herbert,
If you mean popular music rather than 'folk' (which I believe is a
1960s concept, so not yet relevant in the 1560s), Thomas Ravenscroft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ravenscroft) made his fame
collecting and publishing it with the express aim to preserve it from
oblivion. Another very important source for the 16th century are the
single sheet ballads -- a lot (1000s of those) have survived and most
are available in facsimile formats. The University of Santa Barbara is
hosting a project to make those ballads more digitally available (see
http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/). Very few of those single sheets have
printed music but they usually carry a mention of the tune they should
be sung to, so they give a good idea of what tunes were popular: most of
those exist in one or several solo lute version of some kind -
Packington's pound being an example among dozens. I mention the Robert
ap Huw manuscript as an effort to preserve very early harp music at
http://musickshandmade.com/lute/collections/view/50 .
Attaingnant's publications for the lute in France covered the type
of material that we might identify today as 'folk': popular and even
regional. I think it even preserves the tunes used by tradesmen to get
attention and sell their goods in the streets, "les cris de Paris".
Many folk tunes have their origin in good old 'classical' music, i.e.
compositions by highly educated and professionally trained musicians.
Gabriel Bataille's publications of the 'Airs de cour' for instance would
have provided much material for provincial folks to emulate. In the 17th
and 18th century in England, much if not all of the theater songs were
published and popularized.
You might find it interesting to compare those 2 versions of the same
French popular tune on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXiY2A8nAM and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfJZu_Bz6Yo&feature=related.
I heard that the beautiful italian tune "Vestiva i colli" is still sung
in some areas of Italy as a favorite folk tune making it one of the
longest lasting melody in Europe - whether Palestrina actually composed
the melody or arranged it from a popular source.
My 2 cents on this rather complex and fascinating subject,
Alain
On 08/08/2012 08:40 AM, Herbert Ward wrote:
I've always assumed that little of the folk music
from 1400-1650 has survived, except for that preserved
as lute arrangements (Go From My Window, Fortune
My Foe, etc.), because of the low literacy and the
high cost of paper.
Is this accurate?
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