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

by Seeger, Ruth Crawford; Polansky, Larry; Tick, Judith

• ISBN13: 9781580460958
• ISBN10: 158046095X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• 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	p. ix
List of Music Examples	p. xi
Foreword	p. xv
Foreword: A Few Personal Words about Ruth Crawford Seeger's The Music of American Folk Song	p. xvi
Foreword	p. xix
Historical Introduction: The Salvation of Writing Things Down	p. xxi
Editor's Introduction	p. xxxi
Abbreviations	p. liii
The Music of American Folk Song
A Note on Transcription	p. 7
The singer and the song	p. 7
Phonographic recording of the song	p. 8
Transcription of the song from phonographic recording	p. 8
Transcription from phonograph recording versus dictation direct from folk singer, player or intermediary	p. 8
Transcription through graph notation	p. 9
The reader and the song	p. 11
Music notation as a bridge	p. 13
Three basic types of transcription illustrated	p. 14
Song-norm	p. 22
Majority usage	p. 23
Underlimits of amount of detail shown in notation, especially with regard to the simpler singing-styles	p. 25
The model tune as representative of the song as a whole	p. 26
The initial tune as model tune	p. 27
The composite tune	p. 28
The transcriber and a changing oral tradition	p. 28
Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing	p. 31
Adherence to a dynamic level throughout the song as a whole	p. 31
Adherence to a dramatic level throughout the song as a whole	p. 32
Adherence to the tempo set at the beginning of the song	p. 33
Infrequency of long ritardandos from the beginning to the end of the song as a whole	p. 33
Infrequency of short stereotyped ritardandos at ends of phrases and stanzas	p. 33
Strict time and free singing styles	p. 34
Pulse and count	p. 36
Anticipation and delay of beat	p. 38
Simple and compound meter	p. 41
Metrical irregularities--prolongation and contraction of measure	p. 54
Prolongation of measure--the extended tone and the extended or inserted rest	p. 57
Underlimit of metrical irregularity shown in these notations, especially with regard to extension of tone and extension or insertion of rest	p. 58
Manners of notating extended tone and extended or inserted rest	p. 59
Metrical irregularities--divisions of beat and measure	p. 61
Rest	p. 62
Phrase pattern	p. 63
Number of measures to a phrase	p. 63
Number of phrases to the [stanza]	p. 64
Interstanzaic variation	p. 64
Manners of accomodating extra syllables of succeeding stanzas	p. 66
Tone attack and release	p. 66
Attack	p. 66
Release	p. 67
Intonation	p. 67
Scale and mode	p. 69
Accompaniment	p. 72
Editor's Endnotes	p. 77
Songs Referred to in The Music of American Folk Song	p. 108
List of Unpublished Transcriptions in the Lomax Family Archives	p. 114
Amazing Grace/Pisgah Transcriptions, from George Pullen Jackson, White and Negro Spirituals	p. 118
Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music
Editor's Introduction	p. 129
Pre-School Children and American Folk Music (late 1940s?)	p. 131
Keep the Song Going! (1951)	p. 137
Review of John N. Work, American Negro Songs for Mixed Voices (1948)	p. 144
Index of Songs	p. 147
Index	p. 153
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