The Music of American Folk Song: And Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music

by Crawford Seeger, Ruth

• ISBN13: 9781580461368
• ISBN10: 1580461360
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-06-01
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc

Summary

This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the noted composer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally written as a foreword for the 1940 book Our Singing Country, it was considered too long and was replaced by a much shorter version. According to her stepson, Pete Seeger, when the original was not included "Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the last ten years of her life. It just killed her . . . She was trying to analyze the whole style and problem of performing this music." Along with her children Mike and Peggy Seeger, he has long desired to see this work in print as it was meant to be read. The manuscript has been edited from several varying sources by Larry Polansky, with the assistance of Seeger's biographer Judith Tick. It is divided into two sections: I. 'A Note on Transcription' and II. 'Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing.' Seeger examines all aspects of the relationship between singer, song, notation, the eventual performer, and the transcriber. In Section I, Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive (transcription as cultural preservation) and prescriptive (she intended that others would be able to perform these songs). In Section II, she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music, and suggests how performers might make the songs 'their own' through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of her own ideas on the topic. Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and a well-known composer and theorist on American music. Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University and author of the first major biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Music Examples	xi
Foreword	xv
Pete Seeger
Foreword: A Few Personal Words about Ruth Crawford Seeger's The Music of American Folk Song	xvi
Mike Seeger
Foreword	xix
Peggy Seeger
Historical Introduction: The Salvation of Writing Things Down	xxi
Judith Tick
Editor's Introduction	xxxi
Larry Polansky
Abbreviations	liii
The Music of American Folk Song
Ruth Crawford Seeger
I. A Note on Transcription	7	(24)
The singer and the song	7	(1)
Phonographic recording of the song	8	(1)
Transcription of the song from phonographic recording	8	(3)
Transcription from phonograph recording versus dictation direct from folk singer, player or intermediary	8	(1)
Transcription through graph notation	9	(2)
The reader and the song	11	(2)
Music notation as a bridge	13	(1)
Three basic types of transcription illustrated	14	(8)
Song-norm	22	(1)
Majority usage	23	(2)
Underlimits of amount of detail shown in notation, especially with regard to the simpler singing-styles	25	(1)
The model tune as representative of the song as a whole	26	(1)
The initial tune as model tune	27	(1)
The composite tune	28	(1)
The transcriber and a changing oral tradition	28	(3)
II. Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing	31	(116)
Adherence to a dynamic level throughout the song as a whole	31	(1)
Adherence to a dramatic level throughout the song as a whole	32	(1)
Adherence to the tempo set at the beginning of the song	33	(1)
Infrequency of long ritardandos from the beginning to the end of the song as a whole	33	(1)
Infrequency of short stereotyped ritardandos at ends of phrases and stanzas	33	(1)
Strict time and free singing styles	34	(2)
Pulse and count	36	(2)
Anticipation and delay of beat	38	(3)
Simple and compound meter	41	(13)
Metrical irregularities---prolongation and contraction of measure	54	(7)
Prolongation of measure---the extended tone and the extended or inserted rest	57	(1)
Underlimit of metrical irregularity shown in these notations, especially with regard to extension of tone and extension or insertion of rest	58	(1)
Manners of notating extended tone and extended or inserted rest	59	(2)
Metrical irregularities---divisions of beat and measure	61	(1)
Rest	62	(1)
Phrase pattern	63	(1)
Number of measures to a phrase	63	(1)
Number of phrases to the [stanza]	64	(1)
Interstanzaic variation	64	(2)
Manners of accomodating extra syllables of succeeding stanzas	66	(1)
Tone attack and release	66	(1)
Attack	66	(1)
Release	67	(1)
Intonation	67	(2)
Scale and mode	69	(3)
Accompaniment	72	(75)
Editor's Endnotes	77	(31)
Appendix 1: Songs Referred to in The Music of American Folk Song	108	(6)
Appendix 2: List of Unpublished Transcriptions in the Lomax Family Archives	114	(4)
Appendix 3: Amazing Grace/Pisgah Transcriptions, from George Pullen Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals	118	(11)
Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Editor's Introduction	129	(2)
Larry Polansky
Pre-School Children and American Folk Music (late 1940s?)	131	(6)
Keep the Song Going! (1951)	137	(7)
Review of John N. Work, American Negro Songs for Mixed Voices (1948)	144	(3)
Index of Songs	147	(6)
Index	153