I'd be more circumspect about the proportion, and the integrity, of
folk material surviving from the renaissance until the age of the
collectors, at least as far as the British tradition is concerned. No
doubt there are some songs which survived that time, but in probably no
case would it be very close to its original tune and words, and so
identifying them from style etc would be problematic. Aside from
Greensleeves, which is arguably a special case, and which is widespread
in the written literature, I have come across no material known from
the lute/keyboard arrangement ballad setting era which appears in the
Child/Sharp material - not that I've made a special study of this.
Even with literary references, eg Shakespeare one is always plagued by
the problem of different tunes and lyrics going by different names at
different times.
I would say that certainly as far as the overwhelming majority of
material is concerned, most items in the folk tradition tended to have
a lifespan of about three generations before either being forgotten or
changed out of all recognition by the 'folk process' (eg gradual
change).
If there are any notable contradictions to that view I'd be very
interested to see the evidence.
Stephen
--- Original message ---
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Survival of folk music from 1400-1650.
From: <[email protected]>
To: Herbert Ward <[email protected]>, Alain Veylit
<[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, 10/08/2012 4:30 AM
Thanks Herbert for this question, and thanks Alain for this
information.
I'd like to add that a lot of true folk music, at least in the
English and French
languages, IS preserved. It was transmitted via oral tradition and
recorded
and transcribed by collectors in the later 19th and early 20th
centuries.
In English, Francis Child and Cecil Sharp saved much valuable
material
from oblivion. In French Canada, Marius Barbeau, E. Z. Massicote and
others did the same. Many of these songs originated with jongleurs
and
often date back to the early Renaissance and Medieval times.
Although
it is all but gone now, the oral tradition was still very much alive
in rural
areas into the 20th century, and many source singers were recorded
by
Barbeau, Sharp and others as early as 1916 on Edison cylinders.
I'll be happy to share some bibliographies if anybody is interested.
Tom
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
([1]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
[2]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
[3]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:
[4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXiY2A8nAM and
[5]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?
To get on or off this list see list information at
[6]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
Tom Draughon
Heartistry Music
[7]http://www.heartistrymusic.com/artists/tom.html
714 9th Avenue West
Ashland, WI 54806
715-682-9362
--
References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ravenscroft
2. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/
3. http://musickshandmade.com/lute/collections/view/50
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tXiY2A8nAM
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfJZu_Bz6Yo&feature=related.
6. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
7. http://www.heartistrymusic.com/artists/tom.html
