Term
| What characteristics were common to the music of the communities of the "Old High Culture"? How and when did this style influence European music? |
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Definition
Old High Culture-chain of settled communities that existed 3 or 4 thousand yrs. ago from the Nile to the Pacific, while northern Europe was still wandering/illiterate tribes. Musical civilization spread northward.
According LOMAX: embellished solo where rhythmic freedom, melismas, and a high-pitched nasal deliver color of the Mediterranean world (such as is seen in Western European ballads)
According to Van Der Merwe:
drones
hemiola
mixture of 3/4 and 6/8 time
cross rhythm
Common to: Islamic, north African, north Indian, medieval European
Influenced Europe: Romans, Byzantines carried it into northern Europe, but with the rise of Islam it was especially prevalent in Spain and Italy.
**From 1100-1400 the Arab influence in Europe left few arts and sciences untouched. |
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Term
| According to Van der Merwe, what were the four fundamental features of European folk music? |
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Definition
-LACK OF HARMONY
-MODAL VARIETY
-FLEXIBLE INTONATION
-REPETITION AND VARIATION |
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Term
| What does Bruno Nettl's analysis of the style and general character of European folk music add to Van der Merwe's account? |
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Definition
NETTL believes the general characteristics of European folk music include:
-STROPHIC FORM
-ALMOST PERFECT ADHERENCE TO THE DIATONIC SCALE
-METRICAL
Nettl more minutia than VDM |
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Term
| How does A.L. Lloyd define "folk music"? |
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Definition
(he first defines it using everyone else's definition then concludes...) there is no essential difference between folk music and art music. Folk music is "one of the most intimate, reassuring and embellishing possesions of the poor.
In England, folk music is the musical and poetic expression of the fantasy of the lower classes! |
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Term
| In Lloyd's view, what are the most significant characteristics of English folk-song tunes? |
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Definition
-lie within comfortable reach of the human voice
-oral
-
-compact symmetrical structure
-have maqam principle [constraint with freedom: fixed model with fluid treatment]
-leader-chorus forms |
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Term
| What are some examples of surviving folk songs that were once associated with pagan rituals? |
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Definition
-"Derby Ram" (beast of gigantic proportions...lyricly like phallophoric dances)
-"The herrin's head" (central rite used to involve human sacrifice, now the 'king of birds' substitutes for the real king)
-"Cutty wren" (now a nursery piece, was once attached to a pagan midwinter festival)
-carols like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" & "The holly and the Ivy" |
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Term
| Describe the main seasonal festivals with which carols, wassails, and other early folk songs were associated. |
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Definition
| The agricultural animal dances, hero plays, music visits and other pre-Christian rites were meant to assuage nature during every critical season of the agricultural year. The winter solstice and advent of seed-sowing turned into what are now our holiday winter celebrations. There were also May Day celebrations that we still have carols for, once the springtime processions and revels of working people in ancient times. In olden days, the thought was that licentiousness was demanded of the growers if seed was to be produced. During the spring season people would go out into the woods all night and engage in sexual activity to germinate the seeds in the ground supposedly, and then bring home boughs and branches to decorate their homes...thus the song "I will bring you a branch of May." |
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Term
| Lloyd argues that English folk song changed significantly in the late Middle Ages. How did it change, and why? |
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Definition
The feudal system was broken up, serfdom was abolished, and gypsy musicians who had been feudally bound to monasteries or courts were emancipated. They became wanderers, now playing at village dances, singing at festive parties, weddings, etc. they were now in contact with the rural and affected by this song, bringing shapeliness, agility, and light lyrical fantasy into a meandering type of song.
Basically, these professional musicians were set loose and became amateurs of a sort, the music was sentimentalized by the exposure to rural workers, and folk music as we know it was born. (Also, the church was trying to abolish pagan practices, and therefore instrumentalists weren't welcome in churches...so the went to the secular, common person's music. |
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Term
| How can we best classify narrative ballads into different types? |
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Definition
Two major types:
-heroism (many...:"Digenis")
-outlaw ballads ("Johnny Cock"...this is where the idea of Robin Hood comes from...he's the most mentioned character
Other topics:
-struggle to find and keep a wife
-directions for the dead to find "heaven"
-cosmogonic epics |
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Term
| Discuss the ways in which the invention of the printing press affected the style form, and subject matter of the narrative ballad. |
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Definition
| The newer domestic ballads began to appear with the invention of printing. As songs could be printed in books and on broadsides (words only) they were more widely disseminated, but the style and form became more standardized so that people who didn't read music could just sing them to a popular tune listed on the sheet. Early broadsides were called BLACK LETTER BALLADS (black letter type) but when the type was replaced by Roman type they became WHITE LETTER BALLADS. These were eventually replaced by newsletters and eventually printed music. The subject of the ballad became more urban as the printed music often used a "citified" form of the song. The pentatonic songs transmitted rurally were replaced by minor and major since that's what was printed. The minstrel profession dwindled died out as the printed music became popular in group singing! |
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Term
| Lloyd argues that collections of English folk songs published before WWII presented a distorted picture of traditional song. Why? |
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Definition
| He was clearly unimpressed with the prior lethargy about collecting, his predecessors' indifference to work songs, their unwillingness to use the now decades-old technology of the phonograph, and hostility to non-Sharpian perspectives on the nature of folk music, and a penchant for dressing up folk songs in elaborate arrangements and. performing them in bel canto style as drawing-room entertainment. This was his take on folk music collections before WWII. |
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Term
| How does Lloyd deal with eroticism, bawdyness, and alleged pornography in folk-song lyrics? |
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Definition
| He believes that eroticism is a part of rural life early on and is not pornographic in folk songs when links to nature are found. He believes pornography to exist in there is a shortage of affection with graphic sexual or scatological detail, but that ancient notions of sacred were tied to the notions of increase, and this was when healthy erotic was part of the agrarian community of repopulation and growth. |
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Term
| Lloyd argues that significant changes occurred in the general style and in the melody types of English folk songs during the 18th century. What were these changes, and why, in Lloyd's view, did they occur? |
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Definition
| The early melodies are more vigorous, squarer, franker in cast, their harmonic structure dominated by the common chord. The newer versions tend rather to be dominated by the 4th, their rhythm is elastic, they incline to hover and take unexpected directions. This change occurred according to Lloyd because of the rise of the middle class from around 1500-1800. He believes that this created more mysterious and searching, less sure and outward-looking ideas than the songs of the older world. A change in worldview of people, brought about a change in the living tradition of their music. |
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Term
| What, according to Van der Merwe, are the three main types of African traditional music? |
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Definition
-Islamic influenced AFRO-ARAB music of the Sahara & Mediterranean coast
-polyphonic and percussive music based on pentatonic scales prevaleent in WEST & EAST AFRICA
-and the legato, heptatonic style that predominated in certain regions, including Senegambia, Angola, and CENTRAL AFRICA.
in America, because slaves were broken away from their tribal members to prevent rebellion, there is really a MOSAIC of these distinct traditions, but they are BROAD stylistic types. |
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Term
| What, according to Van der Merwe, are the three main types of African traditional music? |
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Definition
-Islamic influenced AFRO-ARAB music of the Sahara & Mediterranean coast
-polyphonic and percussive music based on pentatonic scales prevaleent in WEST & EAST AFRICA
-and the legato, heptatonic style that predominated in certain regions, including Senegambia, Angola, and CENTRAL AFRICA.
in America, because slaves were broken away from their tribal members to prevent rebellion, there is really a MOSAIC of these distinct traditions, but they are BROAD stylistic types. |
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Term
| Which features of African music does Van der Merwe regard as the fundamentals of African musical practice? |
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Definition
-PURPOSE AND FUNCTION: music serves a clear cut purpose in Africa (examples: songs for voicing grievances, raising morale, praise songs, ridicule songs)
-Dancing and a connection with the off-beat: For whatever reason, even tiny children in Africa clap on the off-beat, and dance and music go hand in hand.
-SPEECH, SONG, & INSTRUMENTAL SOUNDS have blurred lines. Most African speech has pitch accents (like Chinese) at three tonal levels needed to indicate meaning, this leads to a speech pattern that sounds melodic in a recitative style and frequent transitions between speaking and singing voice. Instrumental sounds are mimicry. There is a love for onomatopoeia and instrumentalists who can make their instrument "sing" are given highest praise.
-END-ORIENTATION & end-rhythms are cross rhythms likely to oincide with the beat, like a resolution of rhythmic dissonance. Ends of phrases are melodically more important and often descend!
-a sense of DIALOGUE and conversational feeling pervades African music, forms such as call & response, interlocking melodies, and gaps that allow a complementary rhythm to fill are important.
-NOTE POSITION VS. NOTE LENGTH: in European music the length of the note matters, but in African it is the position of the note that matters, and all notes should ideally start in a percussive (soft or loud) way. |
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Term
| Why does Van der Merwe consider the cultural legacy of the Scots, the Scotch-Irish, and the Catholic Irish as particularly significant in the development of North American folk music? |
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Definition
The Scots and Scotch-Irish, which ended up in the Ozark Mountains, brought with them a musical legacy with clear links to the Scottish Lowlands. This was the most archaic music in Europe at the time, and it appealed to these people who lived on the fringes of urban civilization on both continents. The music has survived fairly intact, and the Scotch-Irish style had the important characteristic of closely resembling African music in many respects.
-The CATHOLIC Irish settlers came later in the mid 19th century. Unlike the Scotch-Irish, they were a purely Irish strain and preferred cities to rural life. They shared the bottom of the social heap in cities with African-Americans, and all vices were ascribed to both groups alike. This group melded their music to black urban music ("minstrel" groups were a combo of the 2) and they brought back the pentatonic scale.
These groups together make up the "Irish" song that was a recognized American music category by the mid-19th century. |
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Term
| What were the principal forms in which black American folk music blended African and Anglo-Celtic musical traditions? |
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Definition
-WORK SONGS (both groups were working class and lower) [also for this reason FIELD BLUES & SEA SHANTIES]
-BALLADS (both sets of groups had storytelling and recitative elements in their music, when in America they societies were largely illiterate, this was a way that heritage was preserved.)
-DANCE SONGS: This was the major form, there were marches and dances such as the JIG (also called a rag, both Irish and African forms melded in time), and SQUARE DANCES (or play-party games, like the Virginia Reel) [note that BANDS became a place where African and Anglo-Celtic musicians played together.] |
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Term
| How does Ewen's account of the history of American folk music differ from Van der Merwe's? |
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Definition
| Ewen is less interesteed than Van der Merwe in theoretical questions such as the differences between folk and parlour music. Ewen easily uses the term "folk music" which Van der Merwe is not as comfortable with. Van der Merwe is more concerned that Ewen with tracking African survivals in the music of black Americans, whereas Ewen is interested in black music's influence on white musicians and on the musical forms they adopted like the minstrel show. He has a bias in terms of white American music because his focus is on POPULAR music history and the sales of sheet music, whereas VDM is focused on the ethnomusicological mapping of African music dissemination in America. |
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Term
| What were the dominant forms of American parlour music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? |
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Definition
SENTIMENTAL BALLADS (i.e. Stephen Foster)
NATIONAL BALLADS-"America" & "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean"
Songs about politicians and the gold rush
Temperance (and anti-Temperance) songs
Vaudeville-
-BALLAD OPERAS (like: "The Beggar's Opera" & "The Disappointment", including "Yankee Doodle")
-BALLADS such as "riddling songs" & "Barbara Allen"
FUGUING TUNES-Like "When Jesus Wept." The first voice offers a phrase which is then repeated successively by three other voices.
DANCE TUNES-which could have religious or secular themes.
SECULAR SONGS IN 4 PART HARMONY
WAR SONGS- like "Sons of Liberty" & "Chester"
Dance Tunes |
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Term
| How did racial conflict and civil war affect the development of American parlour music? |
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Definition
Singing groups, like the Hutcheson family, were stirred by abolitionists and sang songs for abolition. Minstrel shows were also doing this, but the Hutcheson family was much more effective at singing sentimental ballads and getting this message across to the average American. They also sang songs to promote Abe Lincoln for president (50 songs!). They later introduced war songs during the Civil War to help with the war effort.
Minstrel shows were combining black and white music, in some cases black and white performers, and portrayed abolitionist ideas.
Southerners were singing many pro-Confederate songs including "Dixie" and PARODIES on known tunes in support of their cause...like "Bonnie Blue Flag"
The minstrel shows introduced songs in the North that were morphed into Southern marching songs, like "The Yellow Rose of Texas." |
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Term
| How did racial conflict and civil war affect the development of the American folk song? |
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Definition
War songs were actually quite good on both sides, but the North had better ones. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was an old church campmeeting melody whose words were changed during the war.
Songs such as the "Battle Cry of Freedom" were sung by both sides...but they used different words!
Songs about sadness of soldiers leaving for war, dead loved ones from war casualties, missing home, etc. were popular.
Blacks were in the American army for the first time, and as such there were all black bands in the military. This led to an incorporation of African-American spirituals, sounds and motives into the music played for military reasons.
Some songs by Steven Foster were lovely, but others were racist. Mainstream at the time, they are only now controversial. At the same time, he used melodies picked up from blacks working on the ships in the river and the work songs of agrarians where he lived and incorporated these melodically and rhythmically into his music. |
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Term
| Describe the main musical sources of the parlour-music style. |
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Definition
| The late 18th century ITALIAN LIGHT music was blended with the VIENNESE WALTZ music around 1820. (Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin all toyed with elements of parlour music.) In the 19th century quite a few songs became "parlorized." |
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Term
| Discuss some examples of typical parlour-music tunes. |
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Definition
"Battle Hymn of the Republic," "I'm Henery the 8th, I am" & "Rock-a-bye Baby": 3rd used as a floor or ceiling note; the melody is mostly enclosed between 2 mediants an octave apart. This "mediant octave" mode suggests pentatonic and is like Papageno's glockenspiel tune from "Die Zauberflote," Chopin's "Mazurka in D-flat," and Tchaikovsky's 6th, 1st mvt.
An important subspecies of this "mediant-octave" mode the 7th acts as a sort of dominant to 3rd, with less emphasis on the 6th. These songs include:
"CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE," "THE WHITE PATERNOSTER," "PAINS IN MY FINGERS," & "COWBOY'S CHALLENGE" (these usually sound like they're in Phrygian mode...minor with a flat 2).
The chromatically decorated blue third can found in "Corinna" & Joplin's "A Breeze from Alabama" as heard in Mozart's "String Trio in E-flat, 1st mvt"
The most famous theme "parlourized" purposefully by any composer is the main theme from the finale of Mahler's 3rd Symphony. (meaning to upset the classical relationship between melody and harmony in a certain way....which is more heard than defined by your texts.) |
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Term
| What chords and chord progressions are typical of parlour music? |
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Definition
Tertiary dominants, like in Liszt's Liebestraum: the dominant of the dominant of the dominant.
Seventh chords were VERY popular...
Modulation to distant keys by using modal elements in the melody was common. Sometimes things were both in major and minor nearly at the same time.
Replaced SUPERTONIC SEVEN before a dominant, instead of using subdominants!
***Chord progressions included: -DECORATIVE: bury a basically simple chord scheme under harmonic ornament. Any chord dwelt on enclosed another one, usually in subdominant relation to it...this leads to all kinds of passing tones and chromatisism
-CADENTIAL:(see chart bottom of pg. 259 in VDM)...normal classical cadences, but altered, and not much subdominantness.
-STRUCTURAL:simple patterns...like the Gregory Walker' I IV-I pattern that evolved into the blues and influenced African-American music and ragtime eventually.
*Sweet Georgia Brown has the same chord progression as Chopin's Waltz in D-flat major...minus the first chord.
Parlour-music melodies, according to
VDM, abandoned classical harmony, and often gave prominence to the 3rd and the 6th rather than the tonal center implied by the accompanying chords. No part writing needed...as long as it sounded "euphonious." They switched from major to minor a lot...and casually modulated. there was a chormatic approach to chord progresions. It's usually in 3/4 or 6/8 and incorporates catchy, repetitive rhythmic phrases and sycopations. (From latin American or East European popular music.) |
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Term
| Identify some examples of parlour-music compositions that make use of speech rhythms, rhythmic repetition, and refrains. |
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Definition
Slow time = BALLAD (Common or triple meter)
Quick time = MARCHES/DANCES (polka-like, jigs, and Irish in origin)
6/8 triplets are the major rhythm repeated in songs like "The Washington Post" march, and the jig "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" or a dance-hall song like "I'm Henery the 8th I am" (yep it's old 19th century parlour music...who knew...besides H's Hermits I mean.)
Square layout and repetitive (speechlike) detail in songs like "Bill Bailey" and "Sweet Georgia Brown." AND They have refrains, or choruses that cannot stand alone without the verses. (They always sound like you're spitting when you sing them up to tempo.) |
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Term
| Definition of "Parlour" music... |
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Definition
| hasn't got much to do with parlours...Peter Van der Merwe coined it to refer to the basic 19th century popular music style that was so ubiquitous and commonplace that no one thought of giving it a name...it's neither folk nor classical! |
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Term
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Definition
| A singing family in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These singing families were popular, but he Hutchesons were the big stars. They were "causy" and used their fame to promote abolition, temperance, women's rights, Abe Lincoln's candidacy for President, and lots more. They were parlour music folks, whose members changed in and out, but they were all related. (Like Pat Boone I guess...) |
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Term
| *Discuss the reasons there was a popular-music boom in Victorian England. |
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Definition
-POPULATION GROWTH from 1840-1914
-GROWTH IN LEISURE TIME & DISPOSABLE INCOME by substantial sections of the lower classes...parliment passed laws limiting working hours and most working people were free by 7 pm on weekdays and 2 pm on Saturdays, when contests in music and concerts were often held.
-the PROMOTION of MUSICal activities (concerts, choral societies, brass bands) by CHURCHES & Philanthropists.
-Russell believes that music was ascribed a role in a broader campaign to civilize and neutralize politically the working classes, an EDUCATIONAL movement funded by the middle class in a deliberate attempt to gain control over the working class mind.
In 1840 a piano was a luxury item, by 1910, there was one piano for every 10 to 20 people in England.
Also because of the new, good railway system, people could travel to compete in music competitions, hear them, and more importantly, the star performers could travel more easily on the TRAINS!
Parlour music suited the social needs of this OVERTLY RELIGIOUS society! |
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Term
| Identify the most important forms taken by the popular music boom in Victorian England. |
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Definition
Most dominant: CHORAL MUSIC
Close 2nd: BRASS BANDS
-street performers
-classical & light classical concerts
-musical comedy
-the music-hall !!!! |
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Term
| Why was choral singing so popular among the Victorian working classes? |
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Definition
Since this was an OVERTLY RELIGIOUS society, the choral movement, rooted in cantata and oratorio gave "respectable" society a rational entertainment steeped in sadcred sentiment.
Handel's "MESSIAH" became an object of choral devotion.
Attendance or performance in choral concerts were a social duty, a chance for public display of righteous behavior or a pleasant substitute for more strenuous devotional activity.
Dozens of new choral societies emerged, encouraged by the new competitive festival movement. |
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Term
| What are some examples of different kinds of music-hall songs? |
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Definition
Catchiness was most important ingredient!
Simple version of parlour music aimed at the lower classes. |
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Term
| Is it correct to interpret music-hall song lyrics as expressing working-class attitudes and values? |
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Definition
-Russell believes that music was ascribed a role in a broader campaign to civilize and neutralize politically the working classes, an EDUCATIONAL movement funded by the middle class in a deliberate attempt to gain control over the working class mind.
The privilidged were trying to remake working-class culture in line with Victorian morality. Music was seen as a good way of pacifying the dangerous classes, and so middle- & upper-class philanthropists redoubled efforts to promote choral singing, classical music concerts, and instrumental classes during the final quarter of the century. (during this time trade unions and socialists were gaining support, and adopted the same musical weaponsto try to overthrow, or at least humanize capitalism.
Working-class music-making became a political battleground, but despite different lyrics, the kinds of music were the same on both sides of the "political fence."
Socially speaking the music-hall appealed to both the lower-middle classes and the working classes; there was an educated element within the latter who spurned it as musically banal and politically incorrect. Above3 all, it was a profitable entertainment industry, and it was not a popular creation, but it had to stay in touch with it's audiences and respond to a variegated market to stay in business. |
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Term
| What developments in the Victorian music industry facilitated the huge increase in amateur music-making in the Victorian era? |
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Definition
MUSIC SUPPLIES: lessons, scores, instruments were more accessible and affordable than before!
-semi-professional, part-time music teachers affordable
-price cutting in the printed music industry initiated by the firm of Novello
-the growth of a music periodical press
-the increasing availability of budget-priced pianos and other musical instruments
-growth of community based amateur music societies, choirs, & bands made music performing more accessible and affordable. |
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Term
| Why were brass bands so popular in northern industrial communities? |
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Definition
Brass bands were a northern and small-town phenomenon in Victorian England.
The counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire produced the best brass bands, and the most.
There was a good, affordable repertoire available for brass bands fairly quickly, put out by the printing industry.
Following the passage of parliamentary laws, people in these small industrial communities had the same free time as their neighbors, and since the churches were using bands less with their choirs, the bands were looking for another way to play.
Then a social value became placed on musical literacy and accuracy, and the brass bands were the major vehicle of these changes.
Brass bands could sound good with only about 10 horns and a drummer. So small bands in small towns could make a big sound.
Rural areas played folk music, INDUSTRIAL areas played in BRASS bands.
The reason the smaller areas produced good brass bands was:
-had main social factors essential to the "spirit" of community music
fiercely patriotic and determined to beat their neighbors and whatever -activity was the current source of contention
-no other entertainment in small industrial towns... |
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Term
| Describe the kinds of music that local brass bands played, and explain why. |
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Definition
The repertoire of brass bands was a mixture of parlour music and classical music, although only the best bands played lots of classical. Bach, Mozart, and Wagner were popular. Lighter quasi-classical pieces by Suppe, Gounod, Mayerbeer, Rimmer and Sullivan, were played along with:
marches
waltzes
hymns
The reason was because it was technically within their grasp and crowd pleasing. |
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Term
| What kinds of people joined choral societies, and to what extent were these institutions popular, democratic, and community based? |
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Definition
People from ALL backgrounds joined choral societies. There were temperance societies, chapels, Pleasant Sunday Afternoon organisations, banks, mills, political parties...almost every group spawned a choir. (lol: like bowling leagues in 1950s and 60s America)
There were elite choirs, working class choirs, and every mix in between. MOSTLY, it was skilled working class and mercantile upper middle class members...but that's very general and there were highbrow choirs and industry choirs too.
THERE WAS A STRIKING SOCIAL INTERMINGLING OF PEOPLE IN CHOIRS WHO WOULD NOT MEET EACH OTHER IN ANY OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE.
They were very democratic in a way. They would elect a committee, who would appoint a choir leader/conductor. If he was not up to snuff, or other members were chatty or absent, the committee would chastise them or ask them to leave. If the conductor was doing things the society didn't like, they would first let the committee handle it, but if that didn't work they would vote to keep or fire the choir leader. In rehearsals, however, there was no democracy, they were strictly and efficiently run with the leader in charge alone. The community aspect was VERY important-families who sang beget more singers. They were so popular some had to reject 50% of those tested on singing and scales because they had too many singers. |
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Term
| Describe the kinds of music that community choirs sang, and explain the broad changes that occurred in the nature of their repertoire during the Victorian era. |
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Definition
Choirs were large oratorio choirs, smaller concert-oriented choirs, amateur operatic societies, and competitive choirs.
They sang:
Handel's "MESSIAH" was the major thing.
Mendelssohn: "ELIJAH" & "ST PAUL," Handel: "ISRAEL IN EGYPT"
Haydn: "CREATION" and "THE SEASONS" were popular.
"Common music" without much high culture was sung by the amateur choirs....and a ton of crappy contemporary four-part drivel too.
Also:
BACH: "Mass in b minor" and "ST MATTHEW PASSION"
BERLIOZ: "Requiem"
ROSSINI: "Stabat Mater"
GOUNOD: "Redemption"
DVORAK: "Stabat Mater"
PARRY: "Job"
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR: "Hiawatha"
ELGAR: "The Dream of Gerontius"
later:
SCHUMANN: "Paradise and the Peri"
BANTOCK: "Omar Khayyam"
pieces from "Lohengrin, Tannhauser, & Der Freischutz"
Repertoire grew after 1850 because:
-changing religious climate accepted new types of choirs and styles of choir music
-competitive movement of the late choir era generated new repertoire
-composers and music publishers showed considerable skill in meeting the increasing demands of the choral market. |
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Term
| What evidence is there for Russell's claim that music-hall songs purveyed a profoundly conservative picture of life? |
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Definition
Music-hall, a profitable branch of the Victorian entertainment industry exemplifies what the ruling classes wanted the lower classes to believe and to sing about.
In music-hall songs the social order was usually perceived as immutable, there was a strong element of parochialism, a deep-rooted fatalism, and issues such as poverty and unemployment were treated in either a sentimental or a comic fashion.
"Work Boys and Be Contented" and "Paddle Your Own Canoe" glorified rather than criticized the upper classes.
"Keep your feet still Gordie Hinney" and "We're taking it in Turns" made the abject poverty where people had to share beds comedy rather than tragedy.
He cites a music hall admirer, "The aim of the music hall is, in fact, to cheer the lower classes up by showing them a life uglier and more sordid than their own."
Women's rights were subverted by music-hall songs like "Do You Believe in Women's Rights" |
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Term
| Which music-hall performers and songwriters adopted a more critical or radical stance in their songs? |
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Definition
Walter Ramsay recited "Satan's Address to his Imps" says the biggest torture is 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.
Samuel McKechnie's "Daily News" was critical of the stark contemporary class relationships.
Joe Wilson sang "No Work" and "The Strike" written in dialect and endorsing working-class industrial militancy and a challenge to capitalist values.
G.H. MacDermott's popular "Jeremiah Jones" and "Turn Off the Gas at the Meter" featured sexual double entendre.
Marie Lloyd's "A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good" and "When I Take my Morning Promenade" celebrated women's control of their sexuality.
Many, many songs ridicule policemen! |
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Term
| Identify the music-hall performers and songwriters who contributed most to the atmosphere of jingoism and imperialism that had developed by the turn of the century. |
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Definition
G.H. MacDermott wrote the "Jingo Song" about the Russian-Turkish war and was the first to put "jingoism" into the language.
Fred Albert sang "We Mean to Keep Our Empire in the East"
Harry Rickards sang "The Lion Wags his Tail
Charles Williams sang "The Congress Dinner" and "Who's Going to Carve the Turkey"
Leo Dryden sang "Motherland" and "What Britishers are Made Of"
Charles Godfrey's "We're the Brothers of the Same Race" included the line "It's the English-speaking race against the world." |
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Term
| Discuss examples of industrial songs that lack any element of political commentary or social protest. |
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Definition
Lyrical pieces with a craft background and love songs full of occupational references turn tools and trade gestures into erotic metaphors.
Examples such as "Bury the new loom" speak of the itinerant weavers who traveled from village to village while men were out working in the fields...thus seduction and betrayal... |
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Term
| Which industry seems to have given rise to the most overtly class-conscious type of workers' song? |
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Definition
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Term
| In what ways are spirituals and blues very similar? |
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Definition
Secular spirituals were the most important element by far in creating the blues (according to JAMES CONE).
VDM's analysis: both spirituals and blues share key musical features:
LADDERS OF 3RDS
BLUE 5THS & 6THS
both draw from ANGLO-CELTIC folk song AND AFRICAN Music (Possibly because of their common roots in OLD HIGH CULTURE from the NEAR EAST)
Blues (especially the earliest primitive blues) evolved out of Afro-American folk song, combining elements from different types of song, including field hollers, love lyrics, ballads, and spirituals. They both preserved surviving elements of traditional African music but it aslo drew heavily upon the religious and secular music of white colonists, including Baptist and Methodist hymns and Anglo-Celtic ballads and folk lyrics. |
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Term
| What elements of African traditional music have survived in the blues? |
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Definition
characteristic of this sound is the tapering off at the end of phrases and the 12 bar blues. (12 bars grouped into 3 phrases) These sounds were prevalent in Africa and stayed in America for songs of a similar function. ceremonial songs turned into spiritual songs of praise or chanted sermons.
The raw materials of the blues already existed in Africa, but mixed with an enormous wealth of other material. gradually and unconsiously this other material was winnowed away, and what was left was the blues. |
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Term
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Definition
(also called "dropping the 3rd" or "hanging the 3rd")
from sounds in West Africa...long phrases built on the alternation of 2 notes a minor or neutral 3rd apart arise naturally from many African speech habits. The pendular 3rds often occur in the beginning and end of musical phrases.
Modes were simplified from the African prototypes until they were stripped to teh bare tonic triad, a process followed in detail in teh case of British-derived songs like "John Henry." ( and African ones too) |
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Term
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Definition
| A member of the folk-music revival in England of which Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams were a part in the 1890s and 1900s. But, Sharp went to the US and studied Southern Appalachian mountain music before the first World War. |
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Term
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Definition
A.L. Lloyd
Writes about Folk Song in England.
the Foundations of Folk Song
Songs of Ceremony and occasion
The BIG ballads
Lyrical Songs and Later Ballads
& Industrial "workers" SONGS
His general idea is how people used their songs, and what they functioned as in real life use. |
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Term
| What melodic characteristics of Anglo-Celtic folk lyrics were retained in Afro-American folk song and primitive blues? |
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Definition
The BLUE 3rd
THE BLUE 7th
(The rise up to the minor 7th of the scale through the 5th is charateristic of German and English folk songs and of the blues.)
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Folk music in America (which had been pushed into the background by parlour music) contained the characteristics of:
PENTATONIC MELODIES with BLUE NOTES
HARMONIC PATTERNS &
SPEECH-LIKE RHYTHMS
which are also stylistic devices associated with the BLUES! |
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Term
| What harmonic characteristics of Anglo-Celtic folk music have close parallels in the blues? |
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Definition
The Celtic double-tonic tones are not able to be harmonized with chords, and Scottish tunes of this time are harmonized only by unvarying drones, like a blues bassline)
There is more a shift of level than a change of chord in both Anglo-Celtic and blues music.
A common theme is a BLUE minor 7th clashes with a major leading note in another melodic part.
THE BLUES ARE HARMONIZED BY the 12 BAR BLUES CHORDS:
I I I I
IV IV I I
V IV I I
sounds like "several different conflicting themes at the same time"
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Folk music in America (which had been pushed into the background by parlour music) contained the characteristics of:
PENTATONIC MELODIES with BLUE NOTES
HARMONIC PATTERNS &
SPEECH-LIKE RHYTHMS
which are also stylistic devices associated with the BLUES! |
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Term
| What is the American Gregory Walker chord pattern? |
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Definition
The original Gregory Walker from England is the chord string:
C F C G : C F C-G C
The name was given by Morley as the name was given in derision of chord progression because it was the most common in the Renaissance...as if we called something a john doe
it's also known as "passamezzo moderno" (adopted from Thomas Morley) alias the Quadran, Quadrant, or Quadro Pavan.
It is the reason why many black musicians early on preferred to put a tonic chord between the subdominant and dominant chords.
THE AMERICAN GREGORY WALKER CHORD PATTERN splits the subdominant chords into the progression IV-I...the I-IV-I chord pattern is in Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" & the Battle Hymn of the Republic" & the "Beggar's Opera" & Chopin's "Mazurka"
The AMERICAN Gregory Walker pattern has morphed into an 8 bar pattern in several of the Georgia Sea Islands and slave songs.
Songs that use Gregory Walker chord pattern include:
Alexander's Ragtime Band by Berlin
Darling Nellie Grey
Swanee River
Home on the Range
AMAZING GRACE!!! (American G.W.)
Kiss the Girl (Little Mermaid)
She'll be Comin round the Mountain
Free Bird
Lion Sleeps Tonight (African version)
Tennessee Waltz |
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Term
| How does Van der Merwe explain the prevalence of the 12-bar structure in early blues? |
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Definition
"At-oddness"
This is behind the preference for syncopated rhythm, and also exists in the harmonic scheme being at odds with the ternary phrasing...the first swing to the subdominant ends in the middle of the second section.
This exists in teh conflict between rhythmic phrasing and harmony in teh mbira-accompanied singing of Zimbabwe.
In African music, and in 12 bar blues form, the point it to appreciate different conflicting schemes at the same time" |
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Term
| What were the different musical elements that were fused together in early ragtime? |
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Definition
black folk music
white parlour music
and light classical music combined to create ragtime:
African RHYTHMIC PATTERNS
Afro-American FOLK MELODIES blended with white American PARLOUR music.
It has a QUADRILLE-like structure
played AS WRITTEN on the piano
with SYNCOPATION
originally called "Jig" piano...ragtime stems from African/Celto American jigs...to that was added marches.
FOLK HARMONY was in the earliest rags
all rhythms in the "rhumba rhythm" family appear, and BREAKs when the voice stops at teh end of a phrase and is answered by a snatch of accompaniment
call-and-response pattern AND bass run were adopted from Africa. |
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Term
| What role did Scott Joplin play in the development of the ragtime style? |
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Definition
| Ragtime style was a folk style that ultimately coalesced in the complex works of Scott Joplin & his peers in the Midwest in the 1890s. |
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Term
| Is it possible to define a "classic" or "cohesive" ragtime style? |
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Definition
| Schafer & Ridel think that "classic" ragtime is the work of Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb but that this was the ultimate organization of the style, but not it's only manifestation. Early ragtime was also synonymed with jig, jazz, and it incorporates mardches, quadrille, polkas and waltzes. This conglomeration can hint at elements which help us know when something is in a ragtime style, but cannot quantitatively define it. |
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Term
| *How does ragtime fit into Van der Merwe's basic classification of musical styles into the three categories of "classical, parlour, and folk"? |
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Definition
| It fits into all three categories in some way. It took the elements of folk in terms of black dances and is tied to the written notation and forms such as suites in the way that classical music is, but morphed or "bluesified" the style the way that parlour music does. |
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Term
| How did ragtime influence Anglo-American popular music in both the short term and the long term? |
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Definition
Short-term: it was a craze, it was the first black music to be accepted into the mainstream, and it helped Scott Joplin be the first composer to sell over a million copies of one song "Maple Leaf Rag."
Long-term: it influenced jazz, which influences skiffle, eventually the British invasion, et. al. |
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