FOLK-SONGS
The nature and value of folk-songs--Folk-songs of the British
Isles--Folk-song in the Latin lands--German and Scandinavian
folk-song--Hungarian folk-song--Folk-songs of the Slavic
countries; folk-song in America.
I
The brothers Grimm, profound students of popular lore, used to say
that they had never found a single lie in folk-poetry. This sounds
strange as we think of the giants and fairies who appear in it, along
with historical events given a completely new twist for the sake of
artistic attractiveness. Obviously the meaning of the brothers Grimm
was somewhat profound. And so, too, is the truth in folk-poetry.
For the imagination of folk-poetry is not the promulgation of lies, but
the interpretation of facts. The folk-poets meant something as they
sang their songs, though they may not have been entirely conscious
about it. Why, for instance, is there never a good stepmother in
folk-song? There have been good stepmothers, undoubtedly, but the
folk-poets knew that it is not in the nature of things that stepmothers
will be as good to children as natural mothers. Or why does Jack the
Giant Killer not make a pact with the giant when he holds the tyrant
finally at his mercy, and live in luxury on a part of the spoils
ever afterward? It would be a realistic ending. It would be true to
modern politics and correct according to the latest canons of art.
But Jack is a popular hero, and a popular hero does not betray the
people he fights for. If you want to know some fact in the history of
a people don’t go to the official records; they may be tainted by
the vanity of the king or by the personal bias of the recorder. But
go to the people’s folk-lore. If the fact is there, it is a truth as
solid as the mountains. The song may tell you that their good king
had thirty-seven horses shot under him in one day, that he fought and
killed, single-handed, ten men at arms who surrounded him. It may
tell you this, and you will perhaps suspect that the arithmetic is
faulty, but you will know that the essential statement--that of the
heroism and the popularity of the king--is true. The king’s minstrel
might have made a song making a coward and tyrant a hero and a popular
leader; but he could not have made people sing it. ‘The ballad-maker
only wields his power for as long as he is the true interpreter of the
popular will. Laws may be imposed on the unwilling, but not songs.’[7]
Written histories may tell you that under such and such a king the
people were happy--that the revolution which came afterward was a
factitious or fomented one. Go to your folk-song. Bujor the Red-Headed,
a Moldavian brigand and a popular hero, was ‘pitiless toward officers
of government and toward nobles; he was, on the contrary, most gracious
toward peasants and the unfortunate.’ This is historical evidence more
reliable than sealed parchment. The government of that land was _not_
good, the nobles were _not_ beneficent. No written history of a people
can be considered reliable as long as it conflicts with that people’s
folk-lore.
Truthfulness to facts--this is what the brothers Grimm claimed
for folk-lore. Goethe ascribes to it truthfulness to art. ‘The
unsophisticated man,’ he writes, ‘is more the master of direct,
effective expression in few words than he who has received a regular
literary education.’ The observation has been made hundreds of times
by competent judges. The simple mind has a wonderful power of seeing
the essential in a thing and expressing it briefly and exactly. To
have command over expression in the simplest terms--is this not the
beginning of art?
This power which is revealed by folk-poetry is also revealed by
folk-music. The people’s melodies have the same ‘direct, effective
expression’ in a few notes that Goethe noticed in their poetry. As
truly as the greatest composers, folk-songs can say universal things
in a few notes. Beethoven may have equalled, but he never surpassed,
the ‘direct, effective expression’ of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ The majesty of
this song can hardly be equalled in the whole of musical literature.
Many people have noticed the peculiar effect of the refrain which makes
it seem as though a mighty and harmonious orchestra of trumpets and
trombones were joining in the chorus. And this with a melody denuded of
every merely decorative tone, written in a scale of just five notes!
Everywhere in folk-music we find this power of expressing the highest
things in the fewest notes. Only the very greatest of conscious
composers have been able to compete with the folk-song on its own
terms, within its rigid limitations. Art-songs have elaborated and
refined. But it seems as though the _essence_ is always in the
folk-tunes. Like the popular stories that furnished plots to the old
dramatists, these melodies have supplied the simple musical resources
which conscious composers have developed. Every sort of emotion is
expressed in the folk-songs, every degree of passion, every quality of
mood--provided only it is human, common to all men.
Do not think that folk-songs are an affair of the past, a subject
for the archeologist. One is inclined to think that it is so among
Anglo-Saxon people, especially in America. But folk-songs are not only
sung this moment in many a land, but are yet living and growing in
more than one country. The quantity of very recent Italian folk-songs
is enormous. Every year, at the fair of Piedegrotta, near Naples, the
popular singers of the city stand on a cart and sing the songs they
have composed in the past months. For hours these concerts continue,
the crowd moving from one singer to another. The songs are caught up
and sung by the listeners. At the end of the festival no vote is taken,
but everyone knows which song has been the winner in the competition.
It is being sung from one end of the city to the other. And the
successful songs of the year’s festival pass into folk-music of the
people.
It is true of these songs (as was not true of earlier folk-music) that
the composers are known and remembered. Indeed, the songs are promptly
printed and circulated. But the composers are nevertheless true sons
of the people. They have little knowledge of letters and musical laws;
they compose from the heart and from the instinct for fitness. The
music of such composers can justly be classed as folk-music, since it
is utterly in the popular spirit and receives the _visé_ of the masses.
It is more unfortunate that in Naples a phonograph firm has undertaken
to make commercial capital out of the Fair of Piedegrotta, and every
year takes records of the successful songs, which it circulates all
over Europe. Under such conditions the composers must necessarily soon
lose the celebrated ‘folk simplicity,’ if they have not lost it already.
It is fair to say that in Italy folk-music is still very much alive.
All that is new in life is celebrated by these folk-poets. The famous
‘Funicula,’ a modern Italian folk-song _par excellence_, was made to
celebrate the funicular or inclined railroad in the days when this
was a novelty. There is a well-known Neapolitan song in honor of
the telephone, and current events, such as the Turkish war, receive
generous attention.
In many other countries the _growth_ of folk-song has all but ceased,
though the songs of former times are sung with almost as much zest
as ever. But these songs (including most of those familiar to us) are
usually not of great age. At least they have generally been remade in
more up-to-date form and do not plainly show evidences of their age.
Generally speaking, we may be sure that any folk-song in the common
major scale is to be dated within the last two hundred years. It may
have been founded on an older song, but its modern changes have been
such as to give it a totally new flavor. This is not to say that all
old songs which remain living in the hearts of the people become
changed according to musical fashions. Those which have a strong enough
traditional hold may keep their ancient form after Debussy has been
forgotten. Thus many an English folk-song, startling and inspiriting in
its originality, is in a modal scale--with a minor that is not commonly
in use to-day, or else a shifting between one tonic and another which
carries us clearly back into the days when tonality was not yet felt
in scales. Yet these songs were not committed to paper in Henry VIII’s
or Queen Elizabeth’s time, when they attained their present form. They
have mostly been discovered by earnest searching only within the last
ten years. They lived, in unsophisticated, out-of-the-way places, in
their ancient form.
In general, of course, the question of the age or authenticity of a
folk-song is one for the musical archeologist, rather than for the mere
lover of music. The folk-songs that are in the hands of the general
public are in all stages of authenticity and purity. There was a time
when no publisher who knew his business would think of publishing a
folk-song in its true form. It was barbarous, not fit for the graces of
the drawing-room. So some composer of the fashion (or, failing such,
some hack) was hired to ‘arrange’ them and to supply an accompaniment
in approved style. And, naturally, under such a régime it was not the
most characteristic of a country’s folk-songs that were chosen, but
those most similar to polite music--that is, the least characteristic.
Often the songs had been transcribed by little-trained listeners or
else not transcribed at all, but only imperfectly remembered. There was
little of the national essence left in such music. And the composers of
the day discovered the fact and turned it to their account. Why go to
Sicily to pick up folk-songs when Sicilian folk-songs can be written
without stirring out of your study in London? And this is precisely
what Sir Henry Bishop, for instance, did. And it is to such a hoax that
we owe the tune of ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ which was at first published in
a book of alleged Sicilian songs ‘edited’ by Bishop, few, if any, of
which were genuine.
These days, however, are past. The modern attitude toward folk-songs is
one of respect, almost of reverence. The greatest of pains have been
taken to preserve the songs as they were actually sung, ‘mistakes’
and all. No tune of two notes is too slight to be worth the trouble
of accurate transcription. Especially since the invention of the
phonograph the scientific study of folk-songs has prospered. Thousands
upon thousands of songs have been taken down by the phonograph among
the Indians of North America, the negroes of Africa, and the Russians
of the Caucasus. The results, it is true, are likely to be regarded as
scientific--ethnological or psychological--data rather than as artistic
entities. But the tunes are accessible to musicians and often appear
in the art music of the time--as we well know from Russian symphonies
or even from Charles Wakefield Cadman’s interesting arrangements of
Indian lyrics. And the value of the accurate transcriptions as data for
scientific æsthetic theory cannot be overestimated.
However, most of the folk-songs available to the music lover have not
the stigma of ‘science’ attached to them. Nearly all that have been
published in the last ten years show some care of editing, some concern
that the tunes, if they be not exactly as they were in their habitat,
shall be true to the spirit of the original. Some editions give the
original unaccompanied form of the tunes, perhaps with interesting
variants. Few, in fact, try to pull the wool over the reader’s eyes.
Scientific or not, modern editions of folk-songs show a candor which
the subject has long needed.
Many folk-songs, like the modern German, approximate ‘art’ music in
their musical basis and can be understood as they stand. That is, they
have the prevailing scales and are sung with accompaniments in the
accented harmony. But most folk-songs are not sung with accompaniment.
And when the editors begin to supply accompaniments trouble ensues.
For the songs have their own style and will not coalesce with a type
of accompaniment made for another style. And editors, trained in the
schools, cannot produce a new musical style at a moment’s notice.
So the original melodies may be changed and adapted more nearly to
a diatonic scale which will fit a ready-made accompaniment. Or the
accompaniment may do its best to suit the modal or unusual style of the
melodies. Or both sides may be forced to make concessions. It would
be most satisfactory, if our ears could get used to it, to sing these
more unusual folk-songs without accompaniment and not try the barbarous
experiment of making the right foot fit the left shoe. But even when
they are altered, these melodies retain much of their beauty, and one
would much rather have them ‘edited’ than not have them at all.
We must also mention that great class of songs which are not strictly
folk-songs at all, but deserve to rank as folk-songs by every title
except the technical one. They are those songs written by conscious
composers, published and sold, but intended for wide circulation
and great popularity--those, in short, which by their simplicity
and genuineness evoke a human response similar to that evoked by
true folk-songs. Such are the immortal songs of Stephen Foster in
America--‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘Old Black Joe,’ and the rest. Such is
‘Annie Laurie,’ one of the most beautiful of melodies. And such are the
German songs of Silcher--_Die Lorelei_, _Scheiden_, and many others.
Nearly all these composers have been without aptitude in the larger
musical forms--often persons of little education and culture. Very few
great composers have succeeded in thus writing folk-songs. Weber, of
all of them, is the nearest to the folk-spirit, and the slow movement
of Agathe’s aria, _Leise, leise_, from _Der Freischütz_, is now a
permanent folk-song with the best of them. Schubert’s _Lindenbaum_ and
_Heidenröslein_ have the same quality. Mendelssohn is a folk-composer
by virtue of his song _Es ist bestimmt_ in _Gottes Rath_. But in
general it has seemed next to impossible for a conscious and highly
trained composer to catch the spirit of the folk in simplest terms.
The most available folk-music for the average student is that which
is freely arranged and edited by a man whose name is a guarantee of
honest and musicianly work--such a man as Weckerlin, collector and
editor of French songs from the earliest to the most recent; or Cecil
Sharp, collector of forgotten songs in Somersetshire, England. Such an
editor may keep the songs intact or may vary them, may adopt some one
else’s accompaniment or write one of his own, but he will always do it
intelligently, altering only what it is reasonably necessary to alter,
and keeping always true to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the
original.
It should be borne in mind that the songs to be described in the
following pages are, many of them, sung quite spontaneously and
naturally to-day by the peasants and unsophisticated people of the
various countries. The writer, while crossing the ocean, once listened
for hours to the Dutch steerage passengers amusing themselves with
songs and dances. And he recognized among the songs the famous ‘William
of Nassau,’ probably centuries old. Thus simple people in European
countries are constantly singing enduring masterpieces of music along
with much, of course, that is ephemeral.
In the very brief survey which we shall make of folk-songs as the
student finds them to his hand to-day we shall be able to do no more
than suggest the national characteristics of each group. Anything like
a list of the fine songs of each nation, or an adequate appreciation
of its popular music, would be impossible in less than a volume.
Likewise, all the interesting questions of racial characteristics as
affecting art, of technical development and international interchange,
of æsthetic theory and melodic analysis, must be left quite to one
side until there shall be written the adequate book on folk-music
which as yet does not exist in the English language. The present
chapter attempts only to suggest the contrasting characteristics of the
different folk-song traditions and the amazing extent of the treasure
which has until so recently remained for the most part unknown, or
known only to be snubbed.
II
England, Scotland, and Ireland, now grouped together as the tiniest
part only, geographically speaking, of the British Empire, were in
early times as distinct and as antagonistic, nationally, as Germany
and France are to-day. The lack of means of communication and social
organization made it possible for very different social and artistic
traditions to flourish independently within a few miles of each
other. Thus there grew up in these countries highly distinct musical
traditions which have preserved their individuality even through
these days of printing presses and phonographs. Each of these musical
traditions--the English, the Scotch, and the Irish--had its roots in
the earliest times of which we have any record. And it is evident that
the musical life of these countries was vigorous in the extreme. The
beauty and individuality of the Scotch and Irish songs are familiar,
but it has been accepted as axiomatic until recently that England was
an unmusical nation--that she had neither the geniuses to create nor
the people to appreciate the finest and sincerest musical beauty.
Especially it was supposed that she had no truly creative folk-song.
Certainly it is true that England for centuries stifled her folk-song,
keeping it among the peasant classes, dumb and suppressed, where
Germany coaxed hers upward to illumine and inspire the whole nation
to great deeds. Recent investigators, notably Mr. Cecil Sharp, have
unearthed in Somersetshire and elsewhere a great wealth of popular
songs, most of them never before set on paper, but many of them showing
great antiquity and distinctive beauty. This folk-art existed for
centuries among the almost unlettered classes without the nation as a
whole being aware of the fact. Now that the songs have been noted down
and published it can never again be said that England, in the roots of
her, is unmusical or uncreative in popular song. These songs, which are
all the more charming for never having felt the influence of learned
music, are almost as peculiar and inimitable as those of Scotland or
Russia. Those of ancient origin--roughly speaking, from Elizabeth’s
time or previous--are modal in style. But the modes are not the usual
ones of the melodic minor or its most familiar variation, the Doric.
They are the queerest things imaginable to modern ears, strange scales
with raised sixths and lowered sevenths, melting from minor into major
and back again. The feeling for the tonic is often very vague, the
chief note of the scale being sometimes the second or the fourth or the
fifth. These unquestionable evidences of antiquity lend a strange charm
to the melodies. And the charm is one that is distinct from that of
every other national folk-music.
The earliest of the English songs, barring a few questionable
specimens, probably date from the time of Henry VIII (1491-1547),
who was himself an accomplished musician and composer of several
excellent songs. Among these are the Boar’s Head Carol, antedating
1521, still sung at Christmas gatherings; and the traditional tune
for Shakespeare’s lyric, ‘Oh, Mistress Mine.’ Some of the simple airs
to which the old Robin Hood ballads were sung also date from this
period. The traditional air for the Chevy Chase ballads dates from
the time of Charles I. But from this time on what passed in England
for folk-songs were usually nothing but popular songs of the moment,
published like any others and sung widely among the middle classes.
These songs will be treated in another chapter. For our purpose here
we must now skip more than three centuries and come down to the time
when the interest in folk-song and folk-dancing began to revive
in England. For the recent crop of folk-songs we are indebted to
the labors of investigators like Mr. Sharp, patient, painstaking,
sympathetic, and admirably equipped in point of musical technique.
These men combine the qualities of the artist and the scientist.
They have passed quite beyond the attitude of the eighteenth century
collectors of folk-poetry--such distinguished men as Bishop Percy and
Sir Walter Scott--who did their work out of personal enthusiasm but
felt obliged to apologize for the poems they found. (Herder, who worked
in Germany about the same time, was the one man who took the modern
attitude, which is equally scholarly, scientific, and artistic.) The
modern investigators feel their obligations to preserve the songs
exactly as they come from the lips of the people. When they publish
collections of these songs for popular use they supply accompaniments
which are sometimes sophisticated and, in Mr. Sharp’s case, scholarly
and delightful. But they seek always to preserve the letter and the
spirit of the melodies in their arrangements. Such singers as the
Misses Fuller, and Yvette Gilbert and her pupil Miss Loraine Wyman
have spread the knowledge of the folk-songs of England and France and
have demonstrated the great beauty of them to thousands who had never
suspected it.
The English songs, fine as they are from a technical standpoint, have
no very great emotional range. A few, like the famous ‘Willow’ song,
strike a deep note of sorrow, but by far the greater portion are
lively songs of the open-air or of festal gatherings. They reveal a
vigorous sense of touch, a whole-hearted joy in the primitive feelings
of the human body, in the invigorating English out-of-doors. They are
clear-cut and literal--recalling the type of life and feeling which we
associate with ‘the roast beef of old England.’ Their naïveté is that
of an exuberant joy in the commonplace joys of life. We may mention
such songs as ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies, O!’ and ‘The Holly and the
Ivy’ for their inspiriting physical vigor. Such songs as ‘God Rest
Ye Merry Gentlemen’ (old tune), the Wassail song from Sussex, or the
Sheep-shearing Song from Somerset, are worthy of much study as fine
examples of the old English use of modal scales.
The Scotch songs, of all true folk-songs the world over, have for many
decades been the most familiar. No nation, except perhaps Russia, has
been more vigorously creative in its folk-music than Scotland. Many
excellent judges regard the Scotch folk-music as the finest in the
world. It is probably quite as ancient as any. It entered into the
lives of the Scotch people from the earliest times, when the Highland
bards sang their praises to little tribal chieftains or narrated in
rude verse the battles between one clan and another. There is a very
old harper’s tune in existence, probably much modified in the course
of the centuries but still eloquent of antiquity, which suggests the
majesty of the days gone by. (It may be found under its modern title,
‘Harp of the Highlands.’) A large proportion of these tunes have lost
their original words and taken on new ones. Robert Burns stimulated the
process by writing words of his own (among them some of the greatest
of his poems) for well-known melodies. The loss of the old texts,
which were often crude or indecent, is, on the whole, of little moment
from the artistic standpoint, especially since Burns, one of the
finest folk-spirits of all ages, wrote words which fit the mouths of
the people like their own. Perhaps, too, his words, as in the case of
‘Scots Wha Hae,’ helped to keep the old tunes alive and popular. Burns
is one of the rare instances of a conscious artist who has been able to
meddle with folk-art without making himself ridiculous.
A large number of the Scotch songs are written in the pentatonic
or five-note scale--our ordinary major with the fourth and seventh
omitted. Whether this was due to some early form of the Scotch bagpipe
or to the genius of the people is still an open question.[8] But it is
certain that the Scotch have given an individual flavor to their songs
by means of this scale without betraying the least embarrassment over
the absence of the two notes. Who imagines, for instance, until it is
pointed out, that the magnificent ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is wholly in the
pentatonic? The pentatonic feeling runs through nearly all the Scotch
songs and in a large proportion of them exists almost in full purity.
The occasional use of the fourth and seventh in the tunes of ‘Scots Wha
Hae’ or ‘The Campbells Are Coming’ is unessential and probably a recent
modification.
The range of feeling in the Scotch songs is almost equal to that of
music itself. ‘Scots Wha Hae’ ranks with the three or four finest
patriotic songs the world over. No grander hymn than ‘Auld Lang Syne’
has ever been sung; even _Adeste Fideles_, that treasure of the modern
hymnal, seems to take on a certain triviality beside its irresistible
rhythm. And what dance tune can be found that contains such an
inexhaustible supply of life as ‘The Campbells Are Coming’ or ‘A
Highland Lad My Love Was Born?’ Where can one match the pensive sadness
of ‘Loch Lomond’ or the sentimental tenderness of ‘Will Ye Gang Over
the Lee?’ Some of the Jacobite songs--‘Charlie Is My Darling’ or ‘The
Piper of Dundee’--are inimitable for high spirits. One who turns over
the pages of a book of Scotch folk-songs will find melodies of deep
emotion unsurpassed in all song literature. Scotch song has also been
materially enriched by conscious composers, though never, perhaps, by
eminent ones. We need only mention the impressive ‘Caller Herrin’,’ or
‘Annie Laurie,’ one of the greatest folk-songs of all times. A thorough
knowledge of Scotch folk-songs will acquaint the singer with almost
every fundamental type of lyric utterance.
The Irish folk-song, likewise, is very fine, but it has, on the whole,
neither the flexible range nor the supreme sense of artistic fitness
possessed by the Scotch. The dominant moods are two: one the lively
dance spirit, represented by the Irish jigs and reels; and the other
the richly sentimental and even tragic tone of the love songs. As it
happens, Irish folk-song has undergone the same process as the Scotch
in having a native poet supply in great abundance new words to the
old tunes. The ‘Irish Melodies’ of Sir Thomas Moore are pretentious
poems designed to supplant the homely words of the folk-poets. But if
Burns escaped being ridiculous in his attempt to supply his native
country with a new folk-art, Moore emphatically did not. Nothing could
be more incongruous than his pompous poems with their dreary romantic
paraphernalia of harps and fair ladies. As poems his lyrics have only
the virtues of the drawing-room, a mellifluous flow of words and a
certain sensuous grace. As folk-art they are a painful absurdity. They
evoke abstractions and conventional poetic phrases where the popular
genius goes unerringly to concrete fact. They have the dreary sameness
of the second-rate talent where the folk-poetry has all the variety
of the commonplace things of this world and of the ordinary people in
it. Yet Moore’s words are in many instances firmly wedded to the music
in the popular mind, and it is not likely that a divorce will ever
be achieved. This is doubtless because, false as the poet was to the
spirit of the music, he caught and persuasively stated the romantic
sentimentality of the Celtic nature.
Some of the older Irish songs have an archaic flavor not less marked
than the English. The Doric mode especially is used sometimes with
savage vigor. Indeed, the Irish as the race of warriors are represented
almost exclusively in the older songs--songs like ‘Remember the Glories
of Brian the Brave’ or ‘The Sword Shining Brightly’ (Moore’s words),
which in their crude martial frenzy can hardly be matched the world
over. The innumerable jigs and reels, some of which are of the finest
quality, are often close to the Scotch in physical energy, but in
nearly every case they preserve a certain note of sadness. Perhaps the
best of all the Irish songs are the sentimental ones. The fine tunes to
which Moore set his words ‘The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls’ and
‘When in Death’ strike a wonderfully deep chord of emotion. It is hard
to realize the great number of sentimental Irish tunes which are of the
highest beauty. They suffer, however, too often from excess. The long
drawn cadences are hard to render honestly; in their excess of feeling
they are apt to sound insincere. They lack the clear-cut statement
which makes the Scotch songs so unfailingly true to the highest demands
of art. Yet the folk-song of Ireland is a product of which any nation
might be proud. And, on the whole, the folk-music of the British Isles
is their worthiest contribution to musical literature. In former ages
these islands were not inferior to any country in Europe in musical
vigor. As the centuries have passed and left England far behind in
musical creation these songs have remained as a proof of the sound
healthfulness and the exuberant creativeness of her popular genius.
III
The French folk-song more than any other has contained from early
times the spirit of its conscious art. Or perhaps France’s conscious
art has, more than in most countries, been true to the genius of its
people as revealed in its folk-art. Its melodies are rarely rich and
luscious--rarely even emotional in the more strenuous sense of the
term. Often they seem, at first hearing, to be cold and thin. But such
a view is, of course, false. The French melodies have both emotion
and sensuous beauty. But it is in the famous French ‘taste’ not to
shout one’s message to the heavens. You do not appreciate the meaning
of these melodies until you have come to know and love them, just as
you do not appreciate the meaning of a child until you have come to
know and love him. You must be on the alert, sensitive to catch the
meaning of a whisper or a gesture. And, in addition to the meaning,
you must learn to love the formal beauty of a French melody. No nation
has carried perfection of form, even in the smallest things, to such
a pitch as the French. The opening phrase of a French folk-tune may
seem almost meaningless and pointless. But somewhere in it there is
a suggestion of something distinctive in it. Watch for this, then
follow it out in the other phrases--a gentle contrast, a delicate
indiscretion, a comforting restatement. In some moods we shall find
this whispered statement more stimulating, more thrilling than any
burst of Italian passion.
As early as the fifteenth century we have French songs which show
these qualities of restraint and delicate design. Of such we may
instance _Sy je perdoys mon amy_ and _Vray Dieu d’amours_. As we come
to later centuries we find a host of songs (collected in great numbers
by Weckerlin) which are scarcely to be distinguished from the simple
songs of the great French composers. The delightful _chanson_, _O, ma
tendre Musette_, is accredited to Monsigny, but it is an open question
whether the melody was not taken by him bodily from a folk-tune. Many
are the _villanelles_ and _musettes_ which are of folk origin. In no
other country are the folk-music and the art-music less distinct. A
few French songs, like _Le pauvre laboureur_, show the freedom and
irregularity of phrase which betoken a development independent of
art-music. This particular song is almost unrhythmical, probably a
development from one or two stereotyped phrases, like the street-cries
of Paris and of some of the Italian cities. But irregular songs are
unusual. The French popular genius seems to have the same sense for
design that has made the great men of France distinguished, and this
sense is shown almost universally in its songs. (See Appendix for
French-Canadian Folk-song.)
There could hardly be a more violent contrast than between the
folk-music of the two Latin countries, France and Italy. The Italians
are famous for their violent emotions, and these are revealed in their
folk-songs, puffing like a steam engine. The utmost of passionate
expression, by any means at hand--this seems to be the ideal of a
goodly portion of the songs. Where the French songs are reserved the
Italian are frenzied; where the French are delicate the Italian are
like a sledge-hammer; where the French use a needle the Italian use an
ax. This statement must be made with some exceptions, notably the songs
of Venice and certain other northern localities. The Venetian songs are
reserved and chiselled. Many of them might have been written by Mozart.
They never go to excess of emotion. They are often as formally perfect
as the French. The song known as ‘The Fisher’ (which has practically
become a folk-song in Germany) may be taken as a fair example of this
graceful and discreet type of lyric. As we go farther south the heat
and sensuousness of the land show more and more in the music: Naples
has a type of folk-song all her own. It sometimes shows the grace of
the Venetian song, but never its reserve. The lighter songs all have
an ardor of their own, for the Southern Italian is never abstract.
But their lightness carries with it a certain fickleness, as though
the lover expected to serenade at least a dozen fair ladies before
the night was done. _La Vera Sorrentina_ is one of the best of this
type. The Neapolitan are perhaps the best known of all the Italian
songs, and there are thousands of them that have been published. A
large proportion of these are not strictly folk-songs, having been
written by conscious composers (who, however, were of the people and
composed for the people). For it seems that the folk-genius of the
Italians was almost dormant in music for several centuries. But these
semi-folk-songs are among the best. The more modern ones nearly always
betray a certain vulgarity, a certain commonplaceness somewhere in
their outline--a fault which is not often to be charged against the
genuine folk-song. But one is willing to forgive them this, for
the sake of the loveliness which is beneath it all. The strains of
_Oh, sole mio_ have already gone round the world, and _Oh, Maria_ is
scarcely inferior. And when the Italian Song (especially the Sicilian)
breaks out in full passion it is not to be matched for crude emotional
power the world over. Any one of these songs, as, for instance, the
fine one known from its refrain as _O, Mama mia_, shows the inspiration
of the bloody Italian operas of the ’nineties.
Much of the Italian folk-music is enlivened with the most powerful
rhythm imaginable. The dance is cultivated in Italy as it is in
scarcely any other country in the world. Many of the Spanish rhythms
are to be found in the Italian songs, a relic of the times when the
Spaniards held Sicily and the southern parts of the peninsula. We
should not forget, either, the inimitable joke-songs of the Italians,
the clear source of the _opera buffa_, which has been cultivated
successfully by no other people. The love of the Italians for a joke
has been noted from the earliest mediæval times. We need only listen to
the Italian fruit-merchant trying to convince the ward politician that
Columbus discovered Ireland to know that the _tempo allegro giocoso_ is
as alive to-day in the southern Latins as it ever was. The innumerable
joke songs of Italy present a peculiar problem to the singer. They
must be sung with the most expert enunciation, with a fine technique
that conceals all art, and with a spirit bursting with fun. Perhaps it
would be truer to say that they are impossible to any but the Italian
born and bred. Their purely musical value, it must be admitted, is
usually slight; but they have none the less a high place in folk-song
literature. It is only fair to say that the musicianship of the Italian
songs is often careless and faulty. Especially is this likely to be
true in the accompaniments, which are always of the simplest possible
description and frequently become monotonous with their limited supply
of chords in regular succession. Yet this fault is only one more mark
of the Italian genius, to which the melody--that is, the voice part,
the human part--is all-important.
The Spanish songs are much less known than they deserve. Of Spain, as
of England, it can be said that its folk-songs are its chief musical
contribution. The pure folk-song of Spain, given to the world chiefly
through the researches of the composer Albéniz, is highly sectional and
local, primitive, almost untouched by the traditions of the great world
of music. Just across this low range of mountains there may be another
quite different type of song, with different scales and different
rhythms and a different type of emotional utterance corresponding
to the sectional variation of temperament. In addition to this pure
folk-song there is an extensive Spanish folk-music which is somewhat
more sophisticated and much better known. It is this class that chiefly
contains the wonderful dance-tunes which we associate with Spain--for
here rhythm is cultivated as nowhere else in the world. The chief
rhythms--those of the _Habañera_, the _Seguidilla_, the _Bolero_, the
_Fandango_, and the rest--have in the Spanish songs a poignancy which
it is impossible to analyze. The melodies seem built on and for the
rhythms. Both may seem simple and literal, yet there is a peculiar
fitness in this simplicity which is ever the mark of the folk-genius,
and which in this case gives the rhythms an unbelievable quantity of
physical drive. The chief geographical and political sections of Spain
have preserved their individuality in their folk-songs. The Castilian
song is light and sparkling. The Catalonian is sombre and intense. The
Andalusian is sensuous and passionate. In the singing of all these
songs there is scarcely a trace of the intellectual factor. They are
to be sung in a sort of divine frenzy. It is not too much to say that
they must be sung with the whole physical body. For their powerful
rhythm must be felt in every nerve and muscle, else it cannot be
expressed in the voice. Of all songs these of Spain demand the most of
the merely physical--of bone and nerves and muscles.
IV
The German folk-songs, because they are the best known of all, will
here be treated briefly. They have, as we shall so often have occasion
to point out, that faculty of concentrating intense and elevated
emotion in a simple phrase of a few notes. The great progressions
that ring in Bach, the great cadences which thunder forth in the
Lutheran chorale--these we feel in all German popular song. The number
of these songs is as the sands of the sea. The emotional range is
almost that of the human heart itself. The melodic organization is
much more complex than in the case of the Italian songs. Sometimes it
becomes even austere. But, on the whole, no nation has songs which go
so straight to the heart. They are not remarkable for rhythm nor in
general for the lighter qualities prized by the French and the north
Italians. Their character is, rather, homely and intimate. Some of
them reflect the vigorous and rather rough spirits of German youth.
More reflect the exaggerated sentimentality of German middle age. Yet
this sentimentality, while it is introspective, is never morbid. It is
founded deep in the heart of a magnificently healthy people and is no
more than the honest expression of a passing mood. From the time of
the Minnesingers and their charmingly graceful ditties the idealism of
the German people has been revealed in their singing. Frequently this
takes on a religious tinge, so that the Lutheran church could adopt
true folk-tunes for its hymns without incongruity. Often the spirit of
quite secular songs is essentially religious, as in that magnificent
song of Silcher’s--
‘Aennchen von Tharau, mein Reichthum, mein Gut,
Du bist mein Leben, mein Fleisch und mein Blut.’
Certainly these songs of Germany can, of all folk-songs, least bear
any insincerity or affectation. They seem to be a touchstone for
determining genuineness of soul--that quality which the Germans
call _Echtheit_. They, above all other songs, demand soundness of
musicianship and honesty of method.
Unwillingly leaving these songs with these few remarks, we turn to the
Scandinavian countries, which are closely allied to Germany in their
folk-music, yet show a definite though subtle individuality. The Danish
songs retain the sincerity of the German, but add, perhaps, a little
more lightness of touch, a little more feeling for delicacy of design.
Their relation with the songs of the northern Scandinavian countries is
tenuous but it can be noticed after a little study. The songs of Sweden
are much more individual, though they can hardly be said to surpass
the German in any particular. Most popular among them are the famous
‘Neck Polka,’ the spirited ‘Marching Song,’ and the old ballad, ‘Little
Karen,’ the last a melody wonderful in its combination of literal
musical statement with subtle artistic grace. Norway, most distant of
the three countries, has quite naturally shown itself most individual
in its folk-music. It is the individuality which many critics have
found in the music of Grieg. It bears an air of mystery; one hardly
knows whether of the past or of the future. It suggests at times the
downrightness of the old Vikings, and at others the ‘atmospheric’
quality of the modern composers. However one may feel about this, it
is certain that the spirit is healthy and stimulating. For variety and
interest the folk-music of Norway can rank among the best.
V
The folk-music of the Hungarians has been made universally popular
through the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, who was one of the first
to perceive its high artistic possibilities. It has been generally
supposed that this folk-music was invented by the Gypsies, who have
always been regarded as the Hungarian musicians _par excellence_.
Liszt regarded it so. Competent investigators agree that the melodies
themselves are the product of the Hungarian people and that the
ornaments and stylistic qualities alone have been added by the Gypsies,
who, according to this view, are incapable of true invention. It is
at least certain that the Gypsies are the representative musicians
of Hungary to-day and have wholly stamped Hungarian folk-music with
their individuality. It has been said that Hungary has no vocal
folk-music--no folk-_song_ at all. This, of course, is true only in
a limited sense. But it is certainly true that all the music has a
predominantly instrumental character and that the greater portion of
it is possible only on instruments. The Gypsies themselves, though
usually without formal musical education, are frequently marvellous
masters of the violin in their own way. Their love for long and
meaningless decoration is famous. No tune enters their keeping that
does not emerge covered from beginning to end with trills, shakes,
slides, turns, scales, and cadenzas. The _rubato_ instinct among them
is very strong. At the same time the rhythmical and dance instinct is
almost unsurpassed. And, as anyone familiar with the Rhapsodies well
knows, these three qualities--namely the instrumental, the decorative
and the rhythmic--have stamped themselves indelibly on all Hungarian
folk-music. The Gypsies tend to mutilate a tune past recognition by
their wanton decoration. But when they are able to keep their instinct
in control they leave the melody glittering with decorative richness
but firm and vigorous in outline.
The chief external characteristic of the Hungarian melodies,--their
accented grace-note (a feature scarcely to be found in any other
folk-music the world over, except to a smaller degree in the
Scotch)--is said to come from the character of the Hungarian language,
which is inclined to heavily accented first syllables. A more probable
explanation would be that it comes from the nature of the violin, on
which most of these melodies were doubtless composed. For in the case
of a short grace-note, the violinist’s bow has hardly time to take a
new stroke between the grace-note and the chief note; hence both are
taken on one stroke, and as the beginning of the stroke is the natural
place for the accent the grace-note, however short, tends to take on
all the accent of a true first note of the rhythmic measure. Yet such
abstract discussion is empty in the face of the melodies themselves.
Many of these are songs and excellent ones--whether composed for
the words originally or fitted out with words later makes little
difference. And many of them are distinctly singable, though they
demand a robust vocal mechanism such as few parlor-trained singers
possess. But whether sung or not they are all glorified dances. The
_rubato_ may be elaborate, but the feeling of rhythm is always present.
Many of the songs preserve the form of the national dance, the Czardas,
beginning with a slow Lassan and ending with the violent Friska, as
in the Hungarian Rhapsodies. There may be pauses and cadenzas between
the two, there may be pauses and long _ritardandos_ in the body of the
dance itself (as frequently in the well-known Brahms arrangements of
Hungarian dances), but the firm rhythmic sense is always there.
The beauty of the Hungarian melodies, merely as melodies, is
unsurpassed. The great melody which Liszt used in the Fourteenth
Hungarian Rhapsody, and which has since come to be used as the national
song, to the fine words which in the German version commence _Wenn dem
Ungarvolke Gott viel Leiden gab_--this has become a true folk-song by
adoption, though it is not one in origin. No country ever had a more
glorious hymn for its national praise. Several dance-tunes given by
Reimann[9] are of the highest quality--especially _Zigeunermusik_, _Der
Seele Spiegel_, and _Drunten im Tale_, and _Erwartung_, the last being
a melody which served Brahms for one of his ‘Hungarian Dances.’ Another
matchless tune is one translated by Reimann as _In Grosswardein_. Here
we see used to full value (in a melody of great simplicity) several
of the most distinctive qualities of the Hungarian music, namely the
accented grace note, the peculiar minor scale having a flatted sixth
and a raised seventh, and always emphasizing the skip between, and the
conventional phrase structure, which always repeats the first phrase,
note for note, in the dominant. Indeed, no songs are better worth
study for their clear and solid architecture. Francis Alexander Korbay
(born, Pesth, 1848; died, 1914) was one of the chief enthusiasts for
the Hungarian folk-song and has helped by his collections and editions
to spread the love of them. His arrangements are sometimes elaborate
and often not true to the spirit of the original, but they sufficiently
preserve the national spirit to foreign ears. And it has always been
true that folk-music must first go through a stage of adaptation and
arrangement before people are willing to listen to it in its purity. Of
the Korbay songs at least one fine example, ‘Had a Horse,’ has become
familiar in American concert halls.
VI
The Russian folk-songs, as rich in variety and intensity as those
of any country on earth, present more preliminary difficulties to
the foreign music-lover than any others. As in most other countries,
the real appreciation of folk-music in Russia is a matter of the
last half century. The Russian songs which were best known before
then bore the same relation to the genuine article that the popular
English songs of the eighteenth century bore to the Somerset songs of
which we have spoken--that is, they were rather civilized, perhaps
consciously composed, and contained far more of the conventional than
of the national. Such a song is ‘The Red Sarafan,’ a fine melody, but
far removed from the genuine peasant folk-song. Glinka, founder of
the modern Russian school of composition, recognized the distinctive
qualities of the Russian popular music, and introduced some of its
effects very tentatively into his operas and songs. Rubinstein hazarded
the statement that the Russian folk-song was more varied and profound
than that of any other land. But Rubinstein, being all German in his
training, did not follow the obvious moral. It remained for the great
group of ‘neo-Russian’ composers, under the inspiring leadership of
Balakireff, to make the Russian folk-song the source and standard
of Russian composition. Several of this group made researches among
folk-songs or collections of them and studied them in what we have
called the modern spirit, which is equally scientific, scholarly, and
artistic. More recently the Russian government has spent considerable
sums on scientific investigation among the peasants, and the results
of these researches, especially in the great work of Mme. Lineva, have
served as a standard in folk-research the world over. The earlier
collections of Balakireff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and others, though as yet
untranslated, are sources of deep delight for the student who will take
a little trouble among dusty libraries.
The great body of Russian folk-songs is far nearer to the primitive
than is the popular music of Italy, Scotland, and Germany. Many of
the loveliest tunes are mere snatches of melody. The more highly
organized tunes are frequently irregular and crude. The scales are
usually distinctive, and the tonic is inclined to be very movable, if
not entirely absent. The minor, of course, predominates, as in all
primitive music. It is used with the utmost distinction, showing how
utterly Russian life (except in the highest classes) has for centuries
been isolated from the influence of Western Europe. The common
impression, because of the predominance of this minor, is that Russian
songs are all ‘sad’ or ‘moody.’ This is not just, for the minor, which
is an expressive means with us, is nothing more than a convention in
Russian folk-music. It is the material out of which the music is made.
It can be manipulated to express almost any emotion which the singer
can feel. Hence the notion that the range of Russian folk-songs is
narrow is quite false. They have a remarkably wide range, from the
deepest gloom, through the tenderest sentimentality, to the fiercest
exhilaration of physical life. The irregularity of the melodies, too,
is not necessarily a sign of crudeness, but often an instrument of the
highest expressive potency.
The brief studies which will be made later in this volume into
Russian art-song can have but little meaning, except in relation to
the folk-songs which are the source of it. The irregularity of metre
in Moussorgsky’s songs, the barbarity of some of Borodine’s and
Rachmaninoff’s, are the direct outcome of these composers’ studies
in folk-song. It is difficult to mention these songs by name, since
few of the texts have been translated into English. Yet it would be
a pity if the student were altogether debarred from a knowledge of
this wonderful literature on that account. The standard collections of
Russian folk-music are available, though somewhat difficult to obtain.
And though the words are printed in fearsome Russian, the music is
in an international language. And it is of course true that many of
the Russian songs are to be found in general folk-song collections
and may be discovered with a little searching. Those who read French
will find in Mme. Lineva’s work, published in two languages by the
Russian government, an admirable discourse on Slavic song, thoroughly
scientific, yet clear and without great technicality. In this work
the interested musical student will find one of the most fascinating
subjects imaginable--the growth of independent polyphony and
counterpoint spontaneously among the singers of the melodies, a thing
unthinkable to those of us who have learned counterpoint from dry text
books.
Bohemia and Poland, though Slavic in blood, are widely separated from
Russia in their art. The latter has for many centuries been Roman
Catholic in religion, and had attained a high degree of Western culture
and refinement when Muscovy was still semi-barbarian. In fact the
political rivalry between the eastern and western Slavs, intensified
by the difference in religion, led the Poles to look to the west for
their friends and their cultural models. Bohemia, too, as early as the
thirteenth century, was peculiarly western in its ideals. It possessed
the earliest real university, and nurtured the non-secular attitude
toward learning which later came to such glorious fruit in France and
Germany. Further, the Bohemians were the earliest Protestants and
free-thinkers, and showed the most enlightened political aspirations
in an age of darkness. So, in spite of blood and language, these two
nations show in their art a dominant kinship with Germany.
One of the earliest Bohemian folk-songs, _Sirotek_ (‘The Waif’), might
almost be taken for a German chorale of the sixteenth century. Other
popular songs, like _Wsak nam tak_ (‘The Sweetheart’) and _Dobromyslua
husicka_ (‘The Happy Gosling’), are almost Tyrolese in their
mellifluous facility. Still another fine song, _Na tech Kolodejskejch_
(‘Vain Regrets’), might in parts be a German children’s song. Again
the song, _Pod tim nasim okeneckem_ (‘Under Our Cottage Window’), with
its ‘snaps’ and sharp accents, suggest the melodies of Hungary. Thus
Bohemia, in her folk-music, shows the influence of her neighbors on all
sides, but scarcely a trace of the indigenous Slavic stock. Many of
the songs show a high degree of formal perfection, and the sentiment,
especially in the tenderer moods, is often deep and moving. Such a
lyric as the lullaby, _Hajej muj andilku_, may rank with the best of
any land in sheer beauty. If we look among the Bohemian songs for the
nationalism that reveals itself in strange scales and irregular rhythm
we shall find scarcely a trace of it. The metre and melodic line are
always mature and polished. But with our inner ear we may detect, in
the best songs, an endearing quality, a sweet lovableness, which speaks
with a distinct and national voice.
The qualities of Polish national music have been made known most widely
in the mazurkas of Chopin. These must not be taken as representing the
real qualities of the Polish folk-song, but they offer an excellent
point of departure. In some ways the songs of Poland show a racial
relation with the Russian. The swift-moving energy, the recurring
and pervading melancholy, find their parallels in the music of the
eastern Slavs. But the scale is nearly always the familiar major, or
a slightly modified minor. The western nations outgrew the uncertain
tonality of the old modes much earlier than the east, and Poland,
with her eyes always toward the west, doubtless adopted the technique
of music as she found it. Thus such a song as the _Krakowiak_ (an
irresistible dance movement), though it recalls in some vague way the
spirit of Little Russian music, lends itself perfectly to conventional
German harmonization. Another song, _Gdy wczystem polu_ (‘In Summer’),
might have been thrown off in one of Chopin’s idle moments. What these
songs have, above all other qualities, is grace. No nation, in its
folk-music, has used rhythm with greater delicacy. They recall to us a
Poland of the story-books, a land of dilettantism and social graces.
More than any other folk-songs, except the French, they demand in their
interpretation a subtle ear and a firm artistic control.
The United States of America has its own folk-music of a sort, a
part of it quite indigenous. This part is the music of the North
American Indians, which is more primitive than any other large body of
folk-music in our possession. There are, also, the songs of the western
cowboys, the ‘Spirituals’ and slave-songs of the southern negroes,
and the songs of Stephen Foster, all of which are worthy to rank as
folk-songs. All these examples of American music have been exhaustively
treated in Volume IV (Chapter XI).
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Countess Martinengo-Cæsareseo.
[8] _Cf._ Vol. I, chap. VI.
[9] Heinrich Reimann: _Ausländische Volkslieder_.