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.
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.
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 officialrecords; 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 wasnotgood, the nobles werenotbeneficent. 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 essentialin 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 theessenceis 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 recentItalian 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 theviséof 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-songpar 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 thegrowthof folk-song has all but ceased, though the songs of former times are sungwith 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 mostcharacteristic 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 tothem. 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 circulationand 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, fromDer Freischütz, is now a permanent folk-song with the best of them. Schubert’sLindenbaumandHeidenrösleinhave the same quality. Mendelssohn is a folk-composer by virtue of his songEs ist bestimmtinGottes 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.
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 traditionswhich 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 isoften 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 thesongs 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 sangtheir 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; evenAdeste 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 ridiculousin 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, toooften 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.
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 openingphrase 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 instanceSy je perdoys mon amyandVray 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 delightfulchanson,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 thevillanellesandmusetteswhich are of folk origin. In no other country are the folk-music and the art-music less distinct. A few French songs, likeLe 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 Sorrentinais 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 willingto forgive them this, for the sake of the loveliness which is beneath it all. The strains ofOh, sole miohave already gone round the world, andOh, Mariais 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 asO, 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 theopera 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 thetempo allegro giocosois 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 descriptionand 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 theHabañera, theSeguidilla, theBolero, theFandango, 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 muchto 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.
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.’
‘Aennchen von Tharau, mein Reichthum, mein Gut,Du bist mein Leben, mein Fleisch und mein Blut.’
‘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 callEchtheit. 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.
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 musicianspar 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-songat 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. Therubatoinstinct 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. Therubatomay 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 longritardandosin 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 asmelodies, 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 commenceWenn 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—especiallyZigeunermusik,Der Seele Spiegel, andDrunten im Tale, andErwartung, the last being a melody which served Brahms for one of his ‘Hungarian Dances.’ Another matchless tune is one translated by Reimann asIn 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.
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 beentranslated 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 earliestProtestants 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, likeWsak nam tak(‘The Sweetheart’) andDobromyslua 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 familiarmajor, 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 theKrakowiak(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).