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.)