Tonal Trend, Tune Families
The very beginning of a folk-tune has characteristic marks. The first accented note is usually the tonic of its scale. In almost all cases this first-accent note is preceded by an up-beat note which also is usually a tonic. The upbeat note coming second in frequency is the lower 5 of the scale, with the higher 3 even less often thus employed. The interval, if any, between the up-beat and the first accented note is thus either an ascending fourth, an ascending third (in those cases where these first two notes are 1 and 3) or descending third. And these intervals, though small, are often broken or bridged by an unaccented intervening note. Tunes beginning with an interval of a fifth (ascending 1 to 5 or descending 5 to 1) are quite rare. Common folk-tune beginnings are thus:
As to melodic trend within the body of the tune, I shall speak only briefly. It is a broad subject, too broad to be discussed adequately in this connection. A survey of my tune-thematic card catalog reveals, however, a few characteristics of this melodic trend. The first is that the tunes assume usually an initial upward trend. Another is that the steps or intervals employed are small, predominantly seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. Greater intervals are found however at the juncture of two phrases. From these observations we may assume that the American folk-singer does not like big intervals.[11] This assumption, based on recorded tunes, is strengthened when one listens to folk singing and notices their anticipatory slides or scoops in approaching a tone that is only a little higher or lower than the one just sung, a practice which may be interpreted as an anticipation of, and an attempt to master, that which is vocally difficult. But while the individual jumps from note to note are not as a rule great, the pitch compass of the entire tune is often surprisingly wide. The melodies usually end in a descending cadence to the tonic.
Along with the great variety in form which we meet among American folk-tunes, there are certain melodic formulas which seem to be favorites and reappear with unimportant variations as the tonal vestment of many different songs, so many indeed that they might well be looked on as wandering tunes (reminding one of the familiar wandering stanzas in folk texts) or, since they are not identical from song to song, tune families.
In the present collection I have come upon six tune families of different sizes and have named them in each instance after the song which seems to be the most representative member of the family. They are the ‘Lord Lovel’ family, cast in the ionian mode; ‘[I Will Arise]’, aeolian and ionian; ‘[Hallelujah]’, mixolydian; ‘[Kedron]’, aeolian; ‘[Babe of Bethlehem]’, dorian; and ‘[Roll Jordan]’, ionian. The tunes in this collection and elsewhere belonging to the ‘Lord Lovel’ family are listed under the song ‘[Dulcimer]’. Those belonging to the other families are listed under the songs for which the family is named.