I went song hunting also among the authored hymn-and-tune-books of the big denominations, but I found little, and that little was already familiar to me from its appearance in the country-singing books.[9]
Further information as to the identity of the books mentioned above may be found in the Bibliography at the end of this volume. The abbreviations which will be used in the body of this song collection when referring to the source song books are explained in the List of Abbreviations of Titles.
Features of American Folk-Tunes
Even after recognizing the three types of religious folk-song as they are described above, it was not always easy in particular instances, to decide on acceptance into this collection or on rejection as non-folk material.
There are literally thousands of songs in the books searched. In the Original Sacred Harp alone there are 609, and the Hesperian Harp holds 677. And while other books are slimmer and duplications from book to book are numerous, it must still be quite evident that it was no easy task to identify just the songs I was after. At times I had to apply a number of criteria. Often the folky nature of the text pointed to an equally folky tune. There was another hint sometimes in the name given as that of the composer of the song. When I met with the names Moore, Walker, Chapin, Breedlove, White, Carrell, Davisson, Hauser, McCurry and a number of others, in the upper right corner of the song page, then I was practically certain that the song on that page was usable. For the men in question were, in reality, not composers. They were recorders and arrangers of unwritten music.[10]
When an example of the old unwritten music made its way into the authorized church hymnals—as happened to a restricted degree from fifty to seventy-five years ago—it was called a “Western Melody” or a “Southern Melody.” Such designations became another reliable token of folk source.
More important than any external indications in determining whether I was dealing in a particular instance with a folk-tune, was the character of the tune itself. The ability to recognize a folk-tune comes to the student of such music gradually, somewhat as does the recognition of a strange language or dialect. It came to me that way; but after assembling my tunes I felt that their general folk character might to some degree be reduced to a set of definite traits. I therefore reexamined not only my own melodies but also those far more numerous tunes in the secular collections of Sharp and others, for such characteristics as tonal trend, rhythmic trend, tonality (modal character), and musical form. Since there is no available definition of a folk-tune and since probably no succinct one can be made, I am hoping that my deductions in the following paragraphs as to some earmarks of American folk-tunes may be helpful to others who are interested in our traditional melodism, as they have been helpful to me.
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:
