Minnesingers

Along the river Rhine in Germany near that part of France where the trouvères sang, lived the Minnesingers. They sang love songs,—minne was the old German word for love. Like the troubadours the minnesingers were of the nobility, but they rarely hired jongleurs or anybody to perform their songs; they sang them themselves, playing their own accompaniments on lutes or viels (viols).

Many songs expressed adoration of the Virgin, and others praised deeds of chivalry. Differing from other minstrels, they made songs about Nature and Religion full of feeling, fancy and humor, but the minnesongs were not so light-hearted or fanciful as those of their French neighbors. They had marked rhythm, beauty of form and simplicity, and were more dramatic, telling the exploits of the Norse heroes in many a glorious story.

Their story was far more important to them than the music which for a long time was like the stern plain song of the Church. “We should be glad they were what they were, for they seem to have paved the way for the great Protestant music of the 16th century,” says Waldo Selden Pratt in his History of Music.

You can get an excellent idea of the minnesong in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Oh Thou Sublime Sweet Evening Star, which Wagner wrote in the spirit of the ancient minnesingers in the opera Tannhäuser. Tannhäuser was a real minnesinger, taking part in a real song contest, held by the Landgraf (Count) of Thuringia, 1206–7, who offered his daughter Elizabeth’s hand to the winner, whatever his rank. We find Elizabeth also in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, so when you hear it you will know that it is history as well as beautiful music! How remarkable that, in the days of feudalism, when the nobles practically owned the so-called common people, talent for music and verse stood even above rank! After all there is no nobility like that of talent. Even in the 13th century this was understood, and to either commoner or peer winning the song tournament, the lady of rank was given in marriage.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, the minnesinger, visited the courts and sang in many tournaments. Giving Wagner a character for the opera Tannhäuser was not all he did as Eschenbach wrote a poem from which Wagner drew the story for his Parsifal.

Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the most famous minnesingers, was so fond of birds, that when dying he asked for food and drink to be placed on his tomb every day for the birds. There are four holes carved in the tombstone; and pilgrims today, when they visit this singer’s grave, still scatter crumbs for them, who probably in their bird histories record that Walther loved song even as they!

Prince Conrad, Konradin he was called, son of the last Swabian King, was the last famous minnesinger. Everyone battled for other people’s countries and lands then, and so Conrad, heir to the crown, joined a Sicilian rebellion against France, and was killed by a troubadour, the Duke of Anjou.

Mastersingers

After poor Conrad’s time, the art of minnesinging declined, but as people must have music, a new activity sprang up among the people or “folk” instead of among the gentry and knights. The folk who took part in this were called the Meistersingers or mastersingers and their story is very thrilling and picturesque.

This was the day of the Robber Baron, when Germany was broken up into little kingdoms and principalities. Any rich and powerful noble could start a war to steal away the rights of another ruler, and become ruler himself. This was no pleasant state of affairs for the people, for they were in constant terror of death, of the destruction of their crops, or new taxes. Life became so perilous that people left the farms and went to the cities for protection. The feudal system began to fail, for the people would no longer be slaves, and gradually took up trades and formed themselves into guilds. The warring nobles had neglected music for conquest, so these workers and artisans, hungry for it, formed music guilds as well as trade guilds, drew up rules for making music and poetry, and held prize competitions. In these music guilds there were six grades of membership: first, member; second, scholar or apprentice; then, friends of the school; singer, poet, and finally mastersinger or Meistersinger. You can get a real picture of their day in the greatest comic opera ever written, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, and you can make the acquaintance of Hans Sachs, the most famous Meistersinger (1494–1576).

Heinrich von Meissen, known as Frauenlob (Praise of Women), is said to have founded the Meistersinger movement over a hundred years before Hans Sachs’ time.

Til Eulenspiegel, whose merry pranks have been delightfully told in music by Richard Strauss, a present day composer, was also a Meistersinger.

The origin of the name “Meistersinger” is disputed. One historian tells us that it was given to every minnesinger who was not a noble,—in other words, a burgher-minstrel. The other historian claims that the title Meister or master was given to any one who excelled in any act or trade, and afterwards came to mean all the guild members.

From the 14th century to the 16th, hardly a town in Germany was without music guilds and Meistersingers. Although they lost power then, the last guilds did not disappear until 1830, and the last member died in 1876. They must have passed the long winter evenings pleasantly for they met, and read or sang poems of the minnesingers or new ones composed by the members themselves. These guilds must have been great fun, for they had badges and initiation ceremonies and the kind of celebrations one loves in a club.

They had complicated, narrow-minded rules called Tablatur which today seem quite ridiculous, so much has music matured and thrown off the chains which once bound it!

When the guilds grew too large to be held in the different homes, the churches became the meeting places for practise and for the contests.

The highest praise we can give the Meistersingers is that they carried the love of music and song into every German home and made it a pastime of domestic life. Their influence spread not only through Germany, but throughout all lands. The composers who followed were glad to have their songs from which to draw inspiration for the popular religious songs at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Even though they did not make up any very great words or music, they spread a love for it and made people feel that the following of music as a career was worthy and dignified.

It is interesting to know before we close this chapter, that the English, well into the 16th century, after the passing of the troubadours, trouvères, minnesingers and mastersingers, still celebrated the exploits of the day in ballads called the Percy Reliques.

Vielle or Hurdy-Gurdy

If you had lived in the Middle Ages you would have seen the strolling players traveling around with a queer looking instrument known by many different names,—vielle, organistrum, Bauernleier (peasant lyre), Bettlerleier (beggar’s lyre) or hurdy-gurdy. This was a country instrument, not often seen in cities, and was shaped like the body of a lute without a long neck. It had wire strings, sometimes gut, and a set of keys; the sound was made by turning a little crank at the bottom. The vielle or hurdy-gurdy is a cross between the bowed and the keyed instruments. In the 12th century it was called the organistrum, a large instrument which took two men to play. It flourished in the 18th century throughout Europe.

And so, now on to folk songs, although we would like to linger in this romantic period of wandering minstrels.

CHAPTER IX
The People Dance and Sing

Folk Music
All the World Has Danced and Sung

We have watched the human race grow out of its state of primitive yells and grunts, or babyhood, telling its stories and expressing its feelings in crude music. We have seen it sing and dance its way through the ages during which its men were semi-barbarians, like the Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Saxons, Celts, and Angles into the period when these same tribes became the French, German, Belgian and English nations.

Music was not a thing of learning as it is today, it was merely a way of talking, of enjoying life, and of passing on to others deeds and doings of the time. Early people said in poetry and song what was in their hearts. They knew nothing of musical rules and regulations and passed their songs along from father to son through the long years when the world was young, and their best songs have in them the seed of musical art! A modern Greek folk singer said: “As I don’t know how to read, I have made this story into a song, so as not to forget it.”

This music of the people, by the people and for the people is Folk Music and we shall see how these simple, tuneful bits have influenced the world of music because, as H. E. Krehbiel said, “they are the heartbeats of the ... folk and in them are preserved feelings, beliefs and habits of vast antiquity.” 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! Isn’t that curious? But it is not quite fair, for surely we should accept as folk songs those which have sprung up among them, or have become a part of their lives through expressing their thoughts and feelings, even though the composer’s name has not been lost. We divide folk songs into two classes,—Class A, the composerless songs, and Class B, those tagged with a name.

Isn’t it exciting to think that folk songs and dances of the ancient Greeks, the Aztecs of Peru, the Chinese, the Irish and Russian peasants and our American negroes have things in common? It seems as if they might have had a world congress in primitive times and agreed on certain kinds of songs, for every nation has

1. Songs of childhood, games, and cradle songs. 2. Songs for religious ceremonies, festivals, holidays, and Christmas Carols. 3. Love songs and songs for marriage fêtes, and weddings. 4. War songs, patriotic songs and army songs. 5. Songs of work and labor and trades. 6. Drinking songs, comical, political and satirical. 7. Songs for dancing, rounds, etc. 8. Funeral songs and songs for mourning. 9. Narratives, ballads and legends.

So it comes to pass, that many a time when nations, due to wars and wanderings and vast passings of time, have forgotten their origins, the singing of a song will bring back the fact of some far distant relationship.

One day a party of Bretons, in 1758 (long after the Welsh and Bretons had forgotten they were of the same race), were marching to give battle to some Welsh troops that had descended upon the French coast. As the Welsh soldiers marched forward, the Bretons were amazed to hear their enemies singing one of their own national songs! They were so surprised and so overcome with sympathy that the Bretons joined in and sang with the Welsh. Both commanders, speaking the same language, gave the order “Fire!” But neither side would or could fire. Instead, the soldiers dropped their weapons, broke ranks and in wild enthusiasm greeted each other as long lost friends. The song they sang is probably seven hundred years old or older.

(1) Songs of Childhood, Games and Cradle Songs

From the day of the obelisk to the day of the radio, every baby that has ever been born has been put to sleep to the soothing sound of the mother’s song. The Greek mother sang to her baby,

Come, Sleep! come, Sleep! Take him away.

Come, Sleep, and make him slumber.

Carry him to the vineyard of the Aga,

To the Garden of the Aga,

The Aga will give him grapes; his wife, roses; his servant, pancakes.

Many early lullabies were sung in honor of the infant Jesus, which really gives them a very blesséd beginning. It is related by a Sicilian poet “When the Madunazza (mother) was mending St. Joseph’s clothes, the Bambineddu (Bambino—the Infant Jesus) cried in his cradle, because no one was attending to Him. So the Archangel Raphael came and rocked Him and said these sweet little words to Him, ‘Lullaby, Jesus, Son of Mary.’”

The Indians, too, sang lullabies, for you know the squaw is a gentle soul and takes beautiful care of her papoose. The Chippewas think of sleep as a big insect and they have named him Weeng. Weeng comes down from the top of a tree where he is busy making a buzzing noise with his wings and puts you to sleep by sending many little fairies to you who beat your head with tiny clubs!

We all know our own Bye, Baby Bunting, Father’s Gone a Hunting, etc., and Rockabye Baby on the Tree Top.

The Germans, whose children songs and lullabies are so lovely, have the familiar Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf! It is a sweet name the Italians give their lullaby, the ninne-nanne! And the mothers in Lyons, France, call sleep souin-souin and have a charming little song:

Le Poupon voudrait bien do(r)mir;

Le souin-souin ne peu pas venir.

Souin-souin, vené, vené, vené;

Souin-souin, vené, vené, vené!

The infant wants to go to sleep;

Sleep does not wish to come.

Sleep come, come, come;

Sleep come, come, come!

Games

We all have sung The Farmer in the Dell, London Bridge is Falling Down, Ring Around the Rosy and many other game-songs. We have told you of the Indian moccasin game, and we know that in all the other nations the children have had their game-songs.

(2) Songs for Religious Ceremonies, Holidays, and Christmas Carols, etc., May Songs and Spring Festivals

Spring is so full of the beginnings of life, and people can see the flowers begin to bloom and take on color and glory. Even as you and I, they have never been able to see them without rejoicing and every one’s rejoicing sooner or later is a cause for music. In many countries this renewal of life is celebrated by rites and ceremonies that have been the source of much folk-lore and music.

The Greeks, as early as the 6th Century B.C., celebrated the coming of the spring with a religious festival named after the god Dionysus. Many songs and dances accompanied these festivals. On the evening before the festival, which lasted five days, there was an impressive procession by torch-light in which an image of the god Dionysus was carried to the theatre where the festival was held, accompanied by many handsome youths and a very splendid bull which was sacrificed.

In the excavations of Crete this ancient hymn has been found,—a spring song and a young man-song in one:

Ho! Kouros (young man), most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daemones. To Dickte for the year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.

In Germany, it was thought that on Walpurgis-nacht (May night) witches rode on the tails of magpies and danced away the winter snows on the Brocken, one of the highest peaks of the Hartz Mountains. In Germany too, it was the custom for children to set May-flies (Maikäfer) free and to sing this song:

Maikäferchen fliege,

Dein Vater ist in Kriege

Dein Mutter ist in Pommerland

Pommerland ist abgebrannt

Maikäferchen fliege.

or

May-fly, fly away,

Your father is at war,

Your mother is in Pommerland.

Pommerland is all burned up!

May-fly, fly away.

Don’t you think it is like our rhyme?

Lady-bug, lady-bug,

Fly away home.

Your house is on fire

Your children will burn.

And here is the French:

Avril, tu t’en vas!

Car Mai vient la-bas

Pour balayer ta figure

De pluie, aussi de froidure.

Hanneton, vole!

Hanneton, vole!

Au firmament bleu,

Ton nid est en feu,

Les Turcs avec leur èpée

Viennent tuer ta couvée.

Hanneton, vole!

Hanneton, vole!

or:

April, away!

For here cometh May

With sunshine again

To banish the rain.

May-beetle, fly!

May-beetle, fly!

Afar in the sky,

With flames leaping high,

The Turks with swords rude

Have slaughtered your brood.

May-beetle, fly!

May-beetle, fly!

The first comic opera, a pastourale six hundred years old, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion by Adam de la Hale, is full of May songs.

The King and Queen of the May and May Pole dancers and the English Jack-in-the-Green, the Thuringian Little Leaf Man and the Russian tree dressed up are only a few of the many examples of the rites of spring. And we have seen how the Druids and the Aztecs celebrated spring.

One of the most modern composers, Igor Stravinsky, has written a ballet called Le Sacre du Printemps (Rites of Spring) in which he has used the ancient Russian pagan rites of celebrating the spring. The music is wild and the rhythms primitive.

Religious Ceremonies

From legends, we know that songs and dances of the Polish people accompanied their religious ceremonies before Christianity. When they exchanged their pagan gods for the teachings of the early Christian fathers, many of these songs were lost, but some of them were handed down merely by changing the pagan name to the Christian. These songs have been traced by the fact that many of them are based on the old pentatonic scale. The Slavs, the Lithuanians and the Germanic races have kept this scale in Eastern and Middle Europe, and the Greeks, the ancient Italians and the Celts brought it into Western and Southern Europe. These scales are supposed to have come from Indo-China, for it must not be forgotten that the Polish along with all Slavs migrated from Asia, the cradle of the human race.

Two festivals,—St. John’s Eve and Christmas, came down from the pagan era in Poland and the manner of celebration has changed little throughout the centuries.

Christmas Carols

The Polish Christmas Carol was also handed down from the days before Christ. The word “carol” comes from the old French carole which was a dance, and gave its name to the song by which it was accompanied. In the pagan time there were summer carols, winter carols, Easter carols and carols that celebrated a religious winter festival. As the winter festival occurred about the same time of the year as the Nativity or birthday of the Saviour, it was celebrated in the Christian Church as Christmas. In England, the old Yule-tide of the Druids has influenced the present celebration of Christmas with its fun, festivities and Christmas trees!

Throughout Germany, Christmas Carols are still sung early every Christmas morning, and many of the old hymns have thus been preserved.

The Christmas Carol in France is called Noël and the old English word was Nowell.

(3) Love Songs

It is safe to say that there are more love songs than any other kind of folk music, and among them is some of the most beautiful music in the world. You will find charming folk love songs of every nationality on earth.

Different countries have different marriage customs which give an intimate picture of the life in different periods, of countries and tribes far apart. Again we can trace forgotten relationships in like customs of bygone days. Singing and dancing are very important in all marriage celebrations, and some wedding music is of great age.

In Russia, for example, the marriage customs and wedding music are very beautiful and impressive. At the same time no folk dancing is wilder or gayer than that celebrating a peasant marriage.

Before going to a wedding ceremony, the Polish bride sings one particular song built on the pentatonic scale, that has probably been sung for more than two thousand years! There are other wedding ceremony songs that can be traced back almost as far.

In Brittany, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the priest demanded a “nuptial song” from the newly-weds on the Sunday following the wedding, as a wedding tax!

In another place the feudal lord demanded that every new bride should dance and sing before him and in return he decorated her with a bonnet of flowers.

You haven’t forgotten the Indian and his love music played on the flute, have you?

(4) Patriotic Songs

In the recent World War, we had examples of how folk songs were made. There were popular songs like Over There (George Cohan), The Long, Long Trail (by Zo Elliot), Tipperary, Madelon, that were sung by millions. They were songs of the people, by the people and for the people, and no one cared who wrote them.

Most of the national hymns and patriotic songs were born in a time of storm and stress. Words inspired by some special happening were written on the spur of the moment, and often set to some familiar tune. America was first sung to the tune of God Save the King on July 4, 1832. The words of Star Spangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay, and was set to an English drinking song, Anacreon in Heaven. Yankee Doodle, a song first sung to make fun of the young colonists, became the patriotic hymn of the Revolution! Where the tune came from is a mystery, but it shows a family likeness to a little Dutch nursery song, a German street song, an old English country dance, a folk tune from the Pyrenees and one from Hungary! But we love our old Yankee Doodle anyhow! Hail Columbia was adapted to a tune, The President’s March, which had accompanied Washington when he was inaugurated, in New York, as our first president.

England’s God Save the King was composed, words and music, by Henry Carey, and it was used first in 1743 during the Jacobite uprising. It has since served America, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. Auld Lang Syne of Scotland was written by “Bobby” Burns and set to an old Scotch tune. St. Patrick’s Day was originally a jig, and The Wearing of the Green was a street ballad of the Irish rebellion of 1798 mourning the fact that the Irish were forbidden to wear their national emblem, the shamrock. The Welsh song Men of Harlech, a stirring tune, dates from 1468.

The French have several thrilling national songs. If you heard Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre (Malbrouk to war is going) you would say, “Why! that’s For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” So it is, and it has had a long and chequered career. It is supposed to have been brought into Europe by one of the Crusaders, and was lost for five centuries; it cropped up again in 1781 when Marie Antoinette sang it to put the little Dauphin (the French prince) to sleep. Paris picked up the tune and it was heard in every café and on every street corner. Napoleon who had no ear for music hummed it. It crossed the English channel. Even the Arabs sing a popular song like it which they call Mabrooka. Beethoven used the air in a Battle Symphony (1813).

The stirring hymn of France, is the Marseillaise written by Rouget de l’Isle (1792) on the eve of the Revolution. It became the marching song of the French Army and was sung during the attack on the Tuileries (Paris), the king’s palace. It has always been the Republican song of France.

In almost every book you read about the French Revolution, La Carmagnole and Ça Ira are mentioned. They accompanied thousands of victims to the guillotine. Ça Ira (It will go!) was a popular dance which Marie Antoinette played on her clavecin. Little did she know that the same tune would be shouted by the infuriated mobs as she was driven through the streets of Paris in the tumbril to the guillotine!

The Italians show their natural love for opera by the fact that their national hymn is adopted from Bellini’s opera Somnambula.

The Rakoczy March of which you will hear later in the chapter is the Hungarian national hymn.

We could write an entire book on this subject, but this is only to give you a suggestion of how these songs grew and where they came from.

(5) Songs of Work and Labor and Trades

We have shown you the American Indians singing their songs as they fish and pound the corn; the boatmen rowing to the rhythm of their songs; and we have tried to show you that everybody loved songs as much when they worked as when they danced. Haven’t you, too, hummed or sung while working? People who accompany dish cloths and dusters with songs work better!

American negroes have used song to ease their work in the hot sunny fields. They not only sang, but men were hired to sing and act as song leaders in the slave days, to set the pace for workers, for more work was done when the slaves moved to the rhythm of music. In modern factories today, music is used to relieve the drudgery.

In Southern States the stevedores sing as they unload and load ships. And haven’t you often heard a rhythmic sound uttered by men hauling ropes on ships or buildings?

The world over, sailors have their songs and dances, farmers their reaping and planting songs, spinners and weavers their songs, boatmen songs like those on the Nile and the Volga boat song.

While few Greek folk songs have come down to our time, we know that they had songs for reaping the harvest, for grinding the barley, for threshing the wheat, for pressing the grapes, for spinning wool, and for weaving. They also had the songs of the shoemaker, the dyer, of the bath-master, the water carrier, of the shepherd, etc.

There are innumerable spinning songs of all nationalities, and shepherds’ songs,—you probably know the French Il etait une Bergère.

In Africa, we hear that the workers when cleaning rice were led by singers, who clapped their hands and stamped their feet to accompany the song. One man reports that he heard the negro women singing a national song in chorus, while pounding wheat always in time with the music.

Charles Peabody tells of a leader in a band of slaves in America who was besought by his companions not to sing a certain song because it made them work too hard!

The difference between the negro songs and the labor songs of other peoples and places is, that the negroes had no special labor songs but sang their religious songs, which they adapted to all purposes and occasions, while the true labor song was composed to fit the occasion.

In old England we hear of the “Labor-lilts” which were all work songs of spinners, milk-maids and shepherds. And we must not neglect the old night-watchman whom we meet in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. Neither can we let go by unnoticed the “town-crier” who told the news, good and bad. The street calls and cries of the Middle Ages were labor songs, later, in England and in France made into real compositions.

We, in America, have the old Cow-boy songs, the Mining songs of California, and the Lumberjack songs of Maine. These are not exactly labor songs but are first cousins to them.

The stage coach postillons with their fascinating horn calls are really music of trades or occupations, too. Isn’t it too bad that the inartistic jangle of the tram-car and the “honk-honk” of the automobile tear our ears instead of the tuneful hunting horns and postillon horns which are still occasionally heard in European forests!

The world’s workers sing to make work slip along easily, so you see song is a great lubricant.

(6) Drinking Songs

In the great dining halls of the Middle Ages, when hunting parties gathered, and guests were received from near and far, or at Christmas time, when in old Britain the Wassail-bowl flowed freely, drinking songs were an important part of the banquet. At the splendid feasts in Rome, drinking songs were popular. In fact, all over the world there are thousands of this kind of folk song.

The name Wassail dates back to the day when Vortigern, King of the Britons, visited Hengist, the Saxon. Rowena, Hengist’s daughter greeted him with, “Was hail hla, ond cyning!” which mean in plain English, “Be of health, Lord King!” to which the king replied, “Drink heil” (Drink health).

The Word Vaudeville

In the second half of the 15th century, two men named Basselin and Jean de Houx wrote many drinking songs. As they lived in the little valleys (in French called vaux) near Vire in Normandy, drinking songs came to be called vaux-de-vire. At the same time, songs that were sung in the streets, in fact, any folk songs with gay melodies and light words, were called voix-de-ville, (or voices of the city). So, in some way, these two terms became mixed, and the familiar word, vaudeville is the result!

(7) Dancing Songs

In the folk dance, man shows the feelings and dispositions of his race. From this dance of the people, all music gradually took a measured form, a rhythmic thing that is lacking in the song of primitive people. In primitive times, all dances were sung, particularly was this the case with the Slav race. As instruments were perfected, they took the place of primitive drums and singing as accompaniment to the dance.

The plain chant, and in fact all music of the church, lacked the element we call rhythm. It followed a metre or measure needed by the words, but this was much more like talking than like singing. Even the ornamented chant of the soloists in the churches had no definiteness of time or of phrase.

Rhythm as we feel it today, occurs in two ways,—through the singing of verses and through dancing. We must not forget that early peoples were much like children, and took pleasure in jingles, and in moving their feet and bodies in repeated motions which became dances.

It is most fascinating to see that the people who have the saddest songs, have the gayest and wildest dances! Maybe it is because the sadder the nation the more need it has for some gay way of forgetting its woes. The Russians, the Poles, the Norwegians and the people of all north countries where the songs are minor and tragic, have the wildest dances. The clothes, too, of the folk in these countries are decked in colored embroideries, and the decorations of the houses giddy and jolly. When the Russians get together they forget their sorrows in wild and almost frenzied dances, and directly after they will sing songs of deepest gloom.

Polish Dances

The Poles have several folk dances that are easily recognized by their rhythm and style. The great Polish composer Chopin used these folk dances in some of the loveliest piano music ever written. For more than six centuries they have been used by Polish composers, yet there are people who say that folk song has no influence on musical art.

The Polonaise, in ¾ time, a stately dance of the aristocracy and nobles rather than of the people, began as a folk dance, and is supposed to have come from the Christmas Carol. The rhythm of the Polonaise

, is easily recognized and followed. In the early times, these polonaises had no composer’s tag, but were often named for some Polish hero, and thus show the date in which they were born.

One Polish writer dates the “courtly” polonaise from 1573. The year following the election of Henry III of Anjou, a great reception took place at Cracow, in which all the ladies of high rank marched in procession past the throne to the sound of a stately dance. This was the beginning of the stately polonaise, in which old and young took part, marching all through the great drawing rooms and gardens.

The Mazurka, another very popular Polish dance, is also in ¾ time, but faster than the polonaise, and slower than the waltz. It is performed by a few couples at a time, two to eight but rarely more. The accent of the measure falls on the third beat, which distinguishes it from a waltz.

Other well known Polish dances are the Krakowiak in ²⁄₄ time, the Kujawiak in ¾ time, the Obertass in ¾ time, the dance of the mountaineers, called the Kolomyjka in ²⁄₄ time, and the Kosah in ²⁄₄ time. All these dances are fast, and all of them come directly from folk songs.

Spanish Dance-Songs

It is very hard to tell which of the Spanish folk pieces are dances and which at first were songs, because the favorite songs of Spain are nearly all sung as accompaniments to dancing. Spain had almost as rich troubadour music as France, because the influence of the troubadours and of the jongleurs was very strong, Provence being Spain’s neighbor. In Catalonia the Provençal language has been used since the 9th century, and the folk music differs from that of other parts of Spain.

The songs of Spain divide themselves into four groups. The Basque, the music of Biscay and Navarre, unlike any music of which we have told you, is irregular in rhythm, melody, and scale, and the jota is one of its characteristic dances. Galicia and Castile have gay, bright, strong marked dance rhythms as may be seen from their characteristic boleros and seguidillas. Andalusian music and that of Southern Spain is perhaps the most beautiful of all, for here we find the influence of the Oriental music to a marked degree, in the use of the scale, in florid ornament, and in the richness of the rhythm; the dances fandangos, rondeñas and malagueñas are thought to be finer than the songs. The guitar is the king of instruments in Andalusia and how Spanish it is! The fourth group of songs is from Catalonia of French influence and less Spanish than the others.

The Ballad and the Ballet

In the English language we have the word ballad, which means a long poem in which a story is told. We also use the French word ballet, for a dance on the stage. These two words come from the same root, and show that at one time ballads and dance tunes were practically the same thing.

The English dance song, the “round” or the same dance in France called the ronde, was a popular dance for many centuries, some of which are most amusing and curious. One dance tune from the 12th century has Latin words; there is also a well known tune, Sellenger’s Round, from the collection called the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Another famous ballad (dance) was Trenchmore, a good sample of English folk dance at the end of the 16th century:

Trenchmore

An English writer (how childlike was his fun!) in 1621 says of Trenchmore, “Who can withstand it? be we young or old, though our teeth shake in our heads like virginal jacks (see page [310]), or stand parallel asunder like the arches of a bridge, there is no remedy; we must dance Trenchmore over tables, chairs, and stools!”

The Morris Dance

The English Morris Dance is a sort of pageant accompanied by dancing. It may have come from the Morisco, a Moorish dance popular in Spain and France, or perhaps from the Matassins, also called Buffoons, who did a dance in armor, which may have come from the Arabs. This dance of the Buffoons, popular in France during the 16th and 17th centuries, was performed by four men with swords, and bells attached to their costumes, used also in the Morris Dance. It may have come into England at the end of the 14th century, but in the 15th it was flourishing. First it was given as a part of the May festival and the characters who took part in it were a Lady of the May, a Fool, a Piper, and two or more dancers. The dance then became a part of the Robin Hood pageant, and the dancers were called after the characters of the Robin Hood ballad: Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, and Maid Marian. Later, a hobby-horse, a dragon, four marshals, and other characters were added. The Puritans stopped the Morris Dance as they thought it too frivolous, and it was never so popular again.

The Cushion Dance

In the Story of Minstrelsy is quoted a description of the Cushion Dance from The Dancing Master (1686):

“This dance is begun by a single person (either a man or woman), who, taking a cushion in hand, dances about the room, and at the end of the tune stops and sings, ‘This dance it will no further go.’ The musician answers, ‘I pray you, good sir, why say you so?’ Man: ‘Because Joan Sanderson will not come too.’ Musician: ‘She must come too, and she shall come too, and she must come whether she will or no.’ Then he lays down the cushion before the woman, on which she kneels, and he kisses her, singing, ‘Welcome, Joan Sanderson, welcome, welcome.’ Then she rises, takes up the cushion, and both dance, singing, ‘Prinkum-prankum is a fine dance!’” Why not try it?

Thomas Morley (1597) wrote of a kind of dance-part-song called vilanelle or ballete. “These and all other kinds of light musick, saving the madrigal, are by a general name called aires. There be also another kind of ballets commonly called Fa-la’s....”

When printing was invented these ballads (or ballets) appeared in such quantities, that they became a nuisance. Any subject or event was made into a ballad. They were usually printed on single sheets so that an instrument like the viol could play the air, and were carried around in baskets and sold for a trifle. Ballad-singing in the streets took the place of the older minstrels, but the newer fashion never reached the dignity of the bards. These ballads were used as dances.

Both Henry VIII and Queen Mary issued edicts forbidding the printing of books, ballads, and rhymes, probably because many were political ballads uncomplimentary to them. In Elizabeth’s reign the edict was removed, and many of these dance-songs are found in the plays of Shakespeare and are sung today in concerts as examples of English folk music.

Many of the better ones have been preserved for us in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which is often wrongly called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, and in Playford’s English Dancing Master in which there are ninety-five songs used for dancing; they are also to be heard in the Beggar’s Opera which contains sixty-nine airs, among which may be mentioned Sally in our Alley, Bonny Dundee, Green Sleeves, Lilliburlero, Over the Hills and Far Away, etc. John Gay gathered these folk songs and dances into The Beggar’s Opera in 1727, and it was recently (1920) revived with great success in London and New York.

Tiersot (an authority on French folk music) has shown that Adam de la Hale probably wrote the play of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion and then strung together a number of popular tunes, many of far older date, to suit his words. So this pastoral-comedy may be the oldest collection of French folk tunes in existence.

In France, when a dance-air became popular, the rhymers made up words to fit the music; this was called parodying it. Our use of the word “parody” means to make fun of something, but at that time, the word meant to adapt words to a melody. One of the early French writers translated the Psalms for use in the Church, and these very Psalms which were dedicated to François I, the King, were “parodied,” so that the people sang them to their favorite dance tunes,—courantes, sarabandes and bourrées. This happened at a time when church music was being popularized, and one hears queer tales of the use of popular songs in the masses and motets of the 14th and 15th centuries. It sounds sacrilegious to us, doesn’t it?

In spite of all the mixing-up of tunes and words, the French folk dances besides being very charming and winning were the parents of a most important kind of musical composition. Just to keep you from being too curious, the name of this important musical composition is the Suite—but wait!

(8) Funeral Songs and Songs for Mourning

All people from the savage state to the most civilized have had their funeral songs and songs for mourning which have been characteristic of the day and age to which they belonged and revealed many tribal and racial beliefs, superstitions and customs.

(9) Narratives, Ballads and Legends

We shall not tarry long on this subject for it has been covered in the chapter on Troubadours and Minnesingers.

All primitive races used this means of teaching and preserving their tribal history, legends, etc., of telling the news of the day and of praising their over-lords. Many hundreds of volumes of ballads of all countries are to be found and are most useful as well as entertaining in the story of mankind.

Among the most famous narratives known to us are: the Sagas and Eddas and Runes of the Northlands; the Kalevala of Finland; the Percy Reliques of Britain; the Odyssey and Iliad of ancient Greece; the Song of Roland of France, Beowulf of the Anglo-Saxons, and others, many of which have been translated and simplified for young readers.

CHAPTER X
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.

Some nations have gay, bright folk music, and others have sad, mournful music. In northern countries where living is hard on account of the long, dark, cold winters, and the people are forced to spend much time indoors and away from neighbors, where money and food are scarce, they are likely to be sad and lonely. In the centuries gone by they made up songs that pictured their lives and their surroundings. On the other hand, in countries where the sun shines most of the time, where people live out of doors, are happy, and have many friends and much fun, the music is gayer and usually lighter. This is why the music of Finland, Sweden, Norway and northern Russia is so much in the minor key, and seems grey, and why the music of Italy Spain, France and other southern countries is in the major key and seems rosier in color and happier in mood. Other reasons, too, for sad folk music is oppression, harsh rulers and harsh laws. So the Finns and Russians, the American negroes and the Hebrew tribes sang sad songs.

“The Music Making Boys,” by Frans Hals, from the Kassel Gallery, Germany.
Boys with a Lute.

After a painting by Teniers, in the gallery at Munich.
A Peasant Wedding.

Russian Folk Music

Again you see history in the songs, particularly in the Russian folk music, which shows us in musical portraits, the tragedy of their lives under cruel czars and serfdom. They sang in ancient scales which make the music all the more mournful to our ears.

The rhythms in these songs are different from those of romance languages or those derived from Latin, for the Russians have a language of Slavic birth. The Russians have some Oriental blood from the Tartars who invaded Russia and who were descended from Tartar, a Mogul or Mongol from Asia. When you hear Russian songs that sound Oriental, you will agree with Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer, that the Russian, deep down below the skin is an Oriental even though he has been living in Europe for many centuries.

In Russia, from the Baltic Sea on the north to the Caucasus Mountains on the south, from the sunny slopes of the Ural Mountains on the west, to the bleak desert wastes of Kirghiz on the east, these mixed races have a common tie in their love for folk story and folk music.

Marvelous tales have been handed down by word of mouth about the river gods and the wood-sprites, about the animals who talked like men, and the ugly old witch, Baba-Yaga, whose name alone was enough to quiet the naughtiest child! Through these folk tales you can follow the Russians from the time they were primitive men and pagans through all their battles and the invasions of barbarous tribes, to the time when they became Christians and had to struggle against the Tartars, the Turks and the Poles. All these happenings were put into songs and are the epic, or tale-telling folk music of the Russians.

But one of the most interesting things, we think, in all the growing of music into maturity, is that Russia never had anything but folk music until the 19th century! Music always belonged to the people, and there were no musical scholars making it the possession of the educated classes only.

Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russians took the folk song from its humble surroundings and used it in their compositions, for they realized its beauty and its richness.

The Russians have instruments brought down from very early times, which are found today in no other country. Perhaps you may have heard a Russian balalaika orchestra. The balalaika is a stringed instrument, with a triangular body and long neck, having three or sometimes four strings, which are plucked and sound something like a guitar. It dates back to the end of the 13th century. They also have an instrument like a mandolin, with three strings, that dates from the 13th century also. It came from Asia at the time of the Mongolian invasion.

Another instrument, a descendant of the Greek psalterion and known to have been in Russia since the 9th century, is the gusslee. It is something like a zither, and is composed of a hollow box, strung with any number from seven to thirteen up to twenty-four strings. It is held on the lap, and the strings are plucked with the fingers.

There is also a sort of lute or bandoura with many strings, dating from the 16th century, played principally by the blind who belong to groups of minstrels. There is also a wooden clarinet, on which one scale can be played. Its special purpose was for use at funerals, and its name, which comes from a word meaning tomb, is jaleika.

Finnish Songs

The Finns, a northern people, although often dominated either by Sweden or Russia, have their own songs and peculiar rhythms. The Kalevala is their great epic poem, like the Iliad of Greece, Beowulf of the Anglo-Saxons, and the Eddas of Iceland. From this narrative poem or epic, have come many a folk-tune. Besides, they sing of their beautiful country, often called the country of lakes.

The typical rhythm of Finland is the ⁵⁄₄ time which sounds most attractive. They have the kantele, a plucked string instrument, and they glory in their folk music which they use as an everyday joy and do not “turn it on” only for “hey-days and holidays.”

Poland’s Music

The Polish people have loved music as the Russians love it, and although Poland has been reconquered, divided and redivided among the surrounding kingdoms of Europe, it has always kept its own music. So we have another set of Slav songs but with certain rhythmical differences, not found in the music of other nations. (Chapter IX.)

There is an Oriental strain in this music, too, and it must be very ancient indeed, for Oriental tribes have not lived in this country for ages.

In addition to an instrument like the Russian gusslee, and a violin like the Arabian rebab, the Polish have a clarinet made of wood, called by its old name of chalumeau, the lute, and an instrument called the kobza, belonging to the bagpipe family. This is of great age, but is still in use among the mountaineers of Carpathia, and is made of goat skin with three pipe attachments. The kobza can replace an entire orchestra!

Gypsies

Gypsies! The name fires our imagination and brings up pictures of dark-skinned, black-eyed people with glossy black hair, dressed in gay colored shawls, with bright kerchiefs wound around their heads. We think of them as being on “one grand picnic,” living out of doors, cooking their meals over bonfires in the open, sleeping in their covered wagons or tents, or under the stars, always gay, care-free and dirty! Then, think of the Gypsy music,—the dances, the songs, and the wonderful violin playing! So wild, so weird, so out-of-doors is it, that we are thrilled by the very thought of it.

Where did these folk come from? Who are they? What are they? They have spread over most of Europe, and are found in Hungary, Bohemia, Roumania, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Turkey, and even America. They are a race and they have a language of their own. Theirs is a mixture of the ancient Prakrit or Indian, with the different languages with which they have come in contact in the course of many centuries. Men who make a study of the history of languages say, that in their idioms, they show traces of roving for many centuries in Asiatic countries, before reaching Europe in or before the 15th century. They are often called “Bohemians” because Bohemia (Czecho-Slovakia) seems to have been their main European camping-ground. It is generally agreed that they came from India and that they are Asiatic, but they got their name Gypsy, a contraction of the word Egyptian, because people at first thought that they came from Egypt.

The Gypsies have an extraordinary gift for music. They do not study it as an art, as we do, and cannot even read musical notes, but they imitate and memorize, and reach a high degree of skill in playing, particularly the violin. They have such great power of imitation, that they rapidly learn to play the instruments, and accustom themselves to the folk music they find wherever they wander. However, they always keep something of their own sadness and wildness. In Spain, they accompany themselves on the guitar, and mark the rhythm with castanets, as do the Spaniards themselves, borrowing the Spanish folk songs which they sing in their own way. In Russia, England, Turkey and everywhere they do the same with the folk music of those countries.

The special traits, then, of the music of the Gypsies, are found rather in the way they play, interpret and express the music of others, than as composers of their own music. Yet they use strongly marked rhythms, florid ornamentation, and scales that are Oriental, which show us from where they came. Here is one of their most used scales:

There are many kinds of scales among the Gypsies,—a mixture of the Oriental scale with the pentatonic, and with the European major and minor.

The Hungarian Gypsy has made more music than any other branch of the Gypsy people. In fact, when we hear music that makes us exclaim, “Oh, that is real Gypsy music!” it is almost always Hungarian. At least one quarter of the inhabitants of Hungary, a name which comes from the barbarian tribe of Huns, are Magyars, descendants of Tartars and Mongolians of Asia, who settled in the land of the Huns in the 9th century. In the national music of Hungary, we find it hard to tell just what is Magyar, and what is Gypsy, because the two have intermingled for so long.

The important thing is that this Magyar-Gypsy folk music has been the inspiration of hundreds of trained composers, like Haydn (see the Gypsy Rondo from his piano trio, also arranged for piano alone), Franz Liszt who wrote many famous Hungarian Rhapsodies, Hector Berlioz who made the Hungarian Rakoczy March famous, Johannes Brahms who used many folk songs in his compositions and wrote a set of Hungarian Dances. Even Bach, perhaps the greatest of all composers, seems to have been influenced by the Gypsy music as played on the Hungarian cembalo.

No Hungarian Gypsy orchestra is complete without a cembalo, which looks something like an old-fashioned square piano with the top off. This is strung with metal strings covering a range of four octaves, and is played with two small limber hammers. The cembalo players perform with great rapidity and agility; they are able to play scales, arpeggios, trills, and the tricks of Gypsy music with great skill and ease. It is not known just when this instrument came into use, but it is a descendant of the dulcimer and psaltery, instruments we hear of in the Bible, and in Arabia and Persia, probably brought into Europe during the Crusades.

The czardas (pronounced chardas) is an old Hungarian dance in which are all the national characteristics of this folk music, well marked in syncopated rhythms (rhythms out of focus, page [144], Chapter X), strong accents, many ornaments. The Gypsies dance the czardas every time they get a chance, for they love it. It has two contrasting parts, one is called lassan which is very slow and sad, and the other called friska which is very fast and fiery.

Panna Czinka, a Gypsy Queen, who lived in the 18th century was the daughter of the chief of a band of Gypsies and she inherited his title when she was very young. She married a ’cellist of her tribe and went all through Hungary, Poland and Roumania playing on a wonderful Amati violin, in a very wonderful way. She brought the Rakoczy March to the people, although it is not known whether or not she composed it. She always wore men’s clothes of most picturesque type and when she died she requested to have her beloved violin buried with her! Long after her death she was still an inspiration to young Gypsy fiddlers, who all longed to play as beautifully as Panna Czinka.

Bohemian Folk Song

Bohemia is rich in folk dances, most of which are named for places where they originated or the occasions for which they were used, or from songs by which they are accompanied.

The Bohemians have a bagpipe called the Dudelsack and the player is called a Dudelsackpfeiffer!

Spanish and Portuguese Folk Music

To the outsider, there is a national color, rhythm, and charm in Spanish music that is unmistakable. We recognize it immediately as Spanish, but the Spaniard will be able to tell you the province from which it came, for there is as much difference between a Castilian song and a Basque, as we find between the speech of a Virginian and a Vermontian! (Chapter IX.)

Portugal, although Spain’s next door neighbor, has quite a different music; it is peaceful, tranquil and thoughtful, but doesn’t thrill you as does the Spanish music. The Portuguese are calmer and less excitable than the Spaniards, so here again you see the character and qualities of people coming out in the music or what we like to call the musical portrait of a nation. There are no exaggerated rhythms but instead a steady melancholy flow of melody.

French Folk Music

The portrait of France that we get from her folk music is much like the one we find in songs of her troubadours and trouvères. In southern France, the folk songs are gay and filled with poetic sentiment and religious feeling; from Burgundy come some of her loveliest Noëls (Christmas songs) and also the drinking songs. From Normandy, come songs of ordinary everyday doings; their mill songs, when sung out in the open on a summer night by the peasants are very beautiful and often show strong religious feeling. Brittany whose inhabitants were originally Celts have a music not unlike the Welsh, Scotch and Irish. Long ago, the famous French writer and musician of the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, said of it, “The airs are not snappy, they have, I know not what of an antique and sweet mood which touches the heart. They are simple, naïve and often sad—at any rate they are pleasing.”

German Folk Music

The Volkslieder or folk songs of the Germans are the backbone of the great classical and romantic periods of the 18th and 19th centuries which made Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, Wagner and Brahms the music masters of the world.

As early as the 14th century collections of these songs had been made, the subjects of which were mostly historical. By the 16th century music had grown so much that every sentiment of the human heart and every occupation of life had its own song: students, soldiers, pedlars, apprentices all had their songs. These are folk songs of Class A, because their composers forgot to leave their names and no musical archæologist has been able to dig them up. (Page [108]. Chapter IX.)

These songs became melodies independent of the accompaniment. They also put the major scale on a firm basis which took the place of the church modes. Their spirit and power were felt in every branch of music, and they supplied melodies for the chorales or hymns, for the lute players and organists in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

Every town had its own band called the Stadt Pfeifferei (town pipers). The peasant boys played the fiddle, and the shepherds the schalmey, (a kind of oboe). Every festivity was accompanied by song and dance.

Irish Folk Songs

No people in the world have more fancy and imagination, a keener sense of humor, are more fun-loving and more superstitious than the Irish. All these qualities come out in their vast treasure of folk music, which is considered the most beautiful and the most varied of all the music that has come from peasant folk. The subjects cover practically every phase of life from the castle to the cot, and songs of every heading we have included in the last chapter. There are reels, jigs, marches, spinning-tunes, nurse-tunes, planxties (Irish or Welsh melodies for the harp in the nature of a lament), plough-songs and whistles. The Irish folk songs are rich historically as well as beautiful musically.

The form of the Irish folk music is perfect, and is a model of what simple song form has been for several centuries. In fact, all large forms have been built on just such principles of balance and contrast as are found in an Irish folk song called The Flight of the Earls.

Scotch and Welsh Tunes

The Scotch and Welsh also have a very rich store of folk song and ballads. Along with the Irish they are children of the early Celts and have brought down to us the music of early times. In all this music we find the pentatonic scale, and a rhythm of this character

a dotted note followed by a note of shorter value, which gives a real lilt to Irish, Welsh and Scotch music. We told you about the Welsh bards and their queer violin without a neck, called a crwth, and their little harp that was handed around their banquet tables from guest to guest.

The Gaelic music, or that of the Scotch Highlands, dates back to prehistoric times. You have seen a Scotch Highlander in his plaid and kilties playing on his bagpipe, and it has a special kind of scale (two pentatonic scales put together) like this:

GAB DE G
ABC♯ EF♯ A

and a drone bass (one tone that does not change and is played all through the piece) which makes it hard to get the same effect on the piano. Scotch bagpipes are heard in districts where the milk-maids and serving folk get together in the “ingle,” and still “lilt” in the good old-fashioned way.

The thing that makes us know Scotch music from any other is a queer little trick of the rhythm called the snap in which a note of short value is followed by a dotted note of longer value, instead of the other way around which is more commonly found. Thus:

but the two ways are always combined, thus:

and so on. If you want to make up a real Scotch tune yourself, just play this rhythm up and down the black keys of the piano from F# to the next F#!

Many of the lovely poems of Robert Burns have been set to old Scotch airs. He saved many of the old songs, for he gathered the remains of unpublished old ballads and songs, and snatches of popular melodies, and with genius gave life to the fragments he found. In his own words, “I have collected, begged, borrowed and stolen all the songs I could meet with.”

Canadian Folk Songs

Canada has the folk songs of the habitant which are French in character. They are very beautiful and full of romance and many of them can be traced back to France. Many, however, were born in Canada and reveal the hearts of people who lived in the great lonely spaces of a new country.

English Folk Songs

Most of the English folk songs are very practical accounts of the doings of the people. The English seemed more interested in human beings than in Nature, like the Scotch and Irish, or in romantic love songs like the Latin races in Spain, France and Italy. The English had to be practical for they were always leaders and at the head of things, while the Scots and Irish were further away from the center and rush of life and so went to Nature for their subjects.

There are about five thousand English folk songs which sing of the English milk-maid and her work, the carpenter, the hunter and his hounds, and hunting calls. They have the Morris Dance tunes, the May-day songs, the sailor’s chanties, they even sing of criminals famous in history and always very definitely tell the full name and whereabouts of a character in a song. They also have songs of poachers (those who hunt on land forbidden them), of murderers and hangmen as well as shepherds and sailors. But England’s finest songs are the Christmas carols which sing of the birth of Jesus. So, if they sang little of Nature they did sing of man and God and have given us much that is beautiful and worth while.

OLD ENGLISH CAROL
From the Time of Henry IV, or Earlier

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere fode,

How xalt thou sufferin be nayled on the rode.

So blyssid be the tyme!

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere smerte,

How xalt thou sufferin the sharp spere to Thi herte?

So blyssid be the tyme!

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, I synge all for Thi sake,

Many on is the scharpe schour to This body is schape.

So blyssid be the tyme!

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, fayre happis the befalle,

How xalt thou sufferin to drynke ezyl and galle?

So blyssid be the tyme!

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, I synge al beforn,

How xalt thou sufferin the scharp garlong of thorn?

So blyssid be the tyme!

Lullay! lullay! lytel child, gwy wepy Thou so sore,

Thou art bothin God and man, gwat woldyst Thou be more?

So blyssid be the tyme!

(From the Sloane MSS. Quoted from The Study of Folk Songs, by Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco).

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 perfectly the mood and spirit of the people that they are true folk songs. Harold Vincent Milligan in his book on Stephen Foster says: “Every folk-song is first born in the heart and brain of some one person, whose spirit is so finely attuned to the voice of that inward struggle which is the history of the soul of man, that when he seeks for his own self-expression he at the same time gives a voice to that vast ‘mute multitude who die and give no sign.’”

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. We are all Americans but we are not of one race, and we are still in the process of being molded into one type.

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.

As our earliest settlers in Virginia and New England were English, they brought with them many of their folk songs and some of these have remained unchanged in the districts where people of other nations have not penetrated. The Lonesome Tunes of the Kentucky mountains, also of Tennessee, the Carolinas and Vermont are examples of this kind of English folk song in America.

In Louisiana which was settled by the French, we find a type of folk song that is very charming. It is a combination of old French folk song with negro spiritual, and is brought to us by the Creoles.

In California there is a strong Spanish flavor in some of the old ballads that date from the time of the Spanish Missions. There are also mining songs of the “days of ’49,” including Oh Susannah, by Stephen Foster, and we defy you to get rid of the tune if once it “gets you!”

Then there are cow-boy songs of the Plains, The Texas Rangers, The Ship that Never Returned, The Cow-boy’s Lament and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie; the Lumberjack songs of Maine; the well known air of the Arkansas Traveller, which was a funny little sketch for theatre of a conversation between the Arkansas traveller and a squatter which is interrupted by snatches of a tune; and in addition a whole book full of songs sung in the backwoods settlements, hunting cabins and lumber camps in northern Pennsylvania.

So if you seek, you can find a large number of folk songs without going to the Indian or the Negro.

The Civil War brought out a number of new national songs among them Glory Hallelujah and Dixie. Dixie was written in 1859 as a song and “walk-around” by the famous minstrel Dan Emmett, and became a war song by accident. It had dash and a care-free spirit, and the rollicking way it pictured plantation life attracted the soldiers of the South when they were in the cold winter camps in the North. Its rhythm is so irresistible that it makes your hands and feet go in spite of yourself. Besides these two the soldiers of the Civil War marched to Rally Round the Flag, Boys, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching, Home, Sweet Home, Lily Dale, The Girl I Left Behind Me, Hail Columbia and The Star Spangled Banner.

We have told you so much about the Indian and his song that it is unnecessary now to dwell at length on his music. Of course some American composers have used Indian folk legend and music, but after all it remains the musical portrait of the Red Man and has not become the heart language of the white man.

We have, however, a real folk-expression that has had a great deal of influence on our popular music and will probably help to create a serious music to which we can attach the label “Made in America,” and that is the music of the American Negro.

In Chapter II we showed you what the Negro had brought from his native Africa, and also that he had been influenced by his contact with the white race. His music is not the result of conscious art and of study but is a natural outburst in which he expresses his joys and sorrows, his tragedies and racial oppression. Also we find rhythms, melody and form that have grown as a wild flower grows, and are different from any we have met heretofore.

Mr. Krehbiel in his book Afro-American Folksongs says of the Negro slave songs: “They contain idioms which were transplanted hither from Africa, but as song they are the product of American institutions; of the social, political and geographical environment within which their creators were placed in America, of the influences to which they were subjected in America, of the joys, sorrows and experiences which fell to their lot in America.”

The Negro has cultivated, like all races, songs and dances. As we said of the Russian, his song is sad and full of tragedy, but the dance is gay, wild and primitive. From the dance of the Negro we borrowed the rhythm formerly called ragtime, which is now jazz. The principle of the Negro rhythm is syncopation, that is, the accent is shifted to the unaccented part of a measure or of a beat, like this,—

,

,

. All sorts of combinations are possible in this rhythm, and it is this variety that is fascinating in a good jazz tune.

The banjo is the instrument of the southern plantation Negro, and when a crowd gathers for a “sing” or a dance, the hands and feet take the place of drums and keep time to the syncopated tune and is called, “patting Juba.”

A curious dance was the “shout” which flourished in slave days. It took place on Sunday or on prayer meeting nights and was accompanied by hymn singing and shouting that sounded from a distance like a melancholy wail. After the meeting the benches were pushed back, old and young, men and women, stood in the middle of the floor and when the “sperichel” (or spiritual) was started they shuffled around in a ring. Sometimes the dancers sang the “sperichel” or they sang only the chorus, and for a distance of half a mile from the praise house the endless thud, thud of the feet was heard.

In the beautiful Spiritual, the song of the Negro, we see also the syncopated rhythm. The religious song is practically the only song he has, and he sings it at work, at play, at prayer, when he is sick and his friends sing it after he is dead. To our ears the words are crude and homely, but always reveal a fervent religious nature as well as a childlike faith.

No doubt you have heard Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, Deep River, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Go Down Moses, Weeping Mary and many others.

Such a wealth of feeling and beauty could not fail to leave its mark in the land where it was born.

Just how it will bear fruit we cannot say, but it is making its appeal more and more, not only to the American, but to the foreign composers as well, and they believe that this music,—the syncopated rhythm that the American is at last developing in his own way—in spite of its humble origin, is the one new thing that America has given to the growth of music, and they envy us that wealth of rhythm that seems to be born in the American.