Folk Music - Performance Characteristics of Folk Music - Britannica

24/09/2021 15:22 Folk music - Performance characteristics of folk music | Britannica
Load Previous Page

keyboard_arrow_up
General characteristics of folk music
Creation and adaptation
Where a folk song originated is rarely known to its community, and thus the anonymity of
the creative process was once considered a major criterion of folk music identification. It
has become clear, however, that folk songs and other pieces are the result of individual
creation, either by villagers or by professional or church musicians whose work is somehow
taken up in the folk culture. The repertory of a folk community probably always included
songs of very diverse origins.
The form of a folk song as heard at any one time, however, is likely to have been very much
affected by the entire community because of its life in oral tradition. Once introduced, a
song could be easily dropped from the repertory. More likely, however, as it was passed
from parents to children and to friends and associates and coworkers, it would be changed.
Numerous influences acted on a song, including creativity, forgetfulness, previously
learned songs, and stylistic expectations. As a result, it might become shorter or more like
new styles of popular or church music, for example. Any new song would be likely to
undergo this process of communal re-creation. An important characteristic of a song or
piece in traditional folk culture is, thus, its dependence on acceptance by a community—
that is, by a village, nation, or family—and its tendency to change as it is passed from one
individual to another and performed.
Transmission and variation
https://www.britannica.com/art/folk-music/Performance-characteristics-of-folk-music 1/23
0:00 / 3:06
Ten verses of the folk song “Barbara Allen,” performed by Capt. Pearl R. Nye, who lived and worked on
keyboard_arrow_right
the Ohio and Erie Canal until it closed in 1913; recorded by John Lomax in 1937.
Image: Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Washington, D.C.
Because a folk song lives largely through oral transmission, it ordinarily does not exist in a
standard form. In each region of a country, community, village, or family, and even in the
repertory of each singer over time, it may have significant differences. Each performance of
a song may be unique. In colloquial discussions of folk songs (or tales), the terms variant
and version are used to highlight the differences in ways of singing the same song (or
telling the same story). In the technical literature about folklore, the terms version,
variant, and form may be used to express degrees of relationship. Thus, for example,
several quite similar performances by one singer might constitute a version of a song.
Several versions, not so similar to each other, would constitute a variant. Several variants,
comprising a body of performances of the song that are clearly related but not
homogeneous, might be designated as a form. Groups of songs (words or music) that
appear, on the basis of analysis, to be related are called tune families or text types. Text
types, such as narratives that form the basis of ballads, may have numerous variants and
versions. The ballad usually known as “Lady Isabel and the False Knight,” studied by Iivar
Kemppinen, has about 1,800 renditions, collected in nations throughout Europe and the
Americas. Bertrand H. Bronson, assembling all available versions of the English ballad
“Barbara Allen,” found 198 versions of the story sung in the English-speaking world,
accompanied by tunes belonging to three tune families. (Accompanying this article are
audio recordings of five renditions of “Barbara Allen” from collections at the Library of
Congress.)
In the development of variants, for example, a song with four musical lines (e.g., ABCD)
may lose two of these lines and take on the form ABAB. In turn, two new lines may be
substituted for the initial two, giving it a form EFAB. Folk tunes also change when they
cross ethnic or cultural boundaries. A German variant, for example, may exhibit
characteristics of German folk music, while its variant in the Czech Republic, although
recognizably related, will assume the stylistic traits of Czech folk music.
Folk cultures seem to vary greatly in the internal relationships of their repertoires. English
folk music, for example, is believed to consist largely of about 40 tune families, each of
which descends from a single song. And the majority of English folk songs appear to be
members of only seven such tune families. Hungarian folk music, on the other hand,
contains some 200 units that could be described as the equivalent of tune families. In the
folk music of eastern Iran, some types of poetry—e.g., the widely loved quatrain type
chahār-baytī—are all sung to versions of a single tune.
Compositional patterns
The process by which members of folk communities compose new songs is not well
understood, although the study of how tunes are related may provide some insight. When it
is first composed, each song is the work of one composer; as others learn and sing it, it is
re-created constantly. The compositional process of folk music differs little from that of
popular and classical music. For example, the composer may create new songs by drawing
together lines, phrases, and musical motifs from extant songs, possibly combined with
entirely new ones and with standard opening or closing formulas. The characteristic
musical structures, scales, and rhythms of folk music are also found in the other types of
music of the same culture. Systematic improvisation as a method of composition is found
only occasionally, as in the epic songs of what was once Yugoslavia and of Ukraine. It is
often difficult to ascertain whether the same composer created both the words and the
music in a folk song; many songs are known to have separate sources for words and music.
In spite of its dependence on oral tradition, folk music has tended to be closely related to
music in written tradition, and this relationship has intensified in periods of urbanization
and revival. Many folk songs originated in written form. For many centuries, popular and
classical composers have adapted folk music and in turn influenced the oral tradition.
Music from art music culture, such as Franz Schubert’s songs “Heidenröslein” (“Little
Moorland Rose”) or “The Linden Tree” and arias from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, found
their way into folk tradition. A modern analogue of written tradition, recording,
substantially influenced the oral tradition, as folk singers could hear various arrangements
of folk music in private and commercial recordings. Thus, the transmission of folk music
has not been an isolated process but one intertwined with other kinds of musical
transmission.
Tunes often migrate between neighbouring countries. A few tune types are found
throughout the European culture area, and textual types (such as ballad stories) are more
widely distributed than tune types. Each country, however, tends to have a repertory of its
own, with stylistic features as well as tunes that are not shared with neighbours.
Folk music in society
Traditional village society had a vigorous musical life, in which many songs in most genres
were known to, and often sung by, a large proportion of the population. Nevertheless, a
degree of musical professionalism must have obtained; instrumentalists, though not
formally educated, were specialists, as were singers of epic narratives (in the Balkans and
Finland, for example) and singers of occupational songs such as sea shanties. Western
cultures generally share the same genres of folk music. One of the most important is the
ballad, generally a short narrative song with repeated lines. Epics are longer narratives in
heroic style, which sometimes require many hours to sing. Some songs are ceremonial,
meant to accompany events in the human life cycle or in the community’s year (such as
those related to the agricultural seasons). Other common genres are work songs, love and
other lyrical songs, songs to accompany games, lullabies, and children’s songs for
enculturation (e.g., alphabet songs, proverbs, and riddles). These genres are usually
differentiated through their texts, but some cultures also make musical distinctions.
Instrumental folk music is most frequently an accompaniment to dance.
By the 19th century in western Europe, and some decades later in North America and
eastern Europe, folk songs had become less widely known in villages, and it seems that they
were known to and sung largely by older individuals. At the same time, urban folklorists
(stimulated first by Thomas Percy in Britain and Johann Gottfried von Herder in Germany
and continuing with Cecil Sharp in England and the United States) began to collect and
publish folk songs for an audience of urban intelligentsia, emphasizing the age of the songs
and their national character. In the 19th century, songs were transcribed and notated from
live performance, but then were often altered, “corrected” to conform to expected norms,
and published. Composers of art music—including Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, and
Joseph Canteloube—fashioned elaborate piano accompaniments, and folk songs were
added to classical concert programs. Choral arrangements and their use by amateur choirs
became part of folk music culture.
Further, by the 18th century a tradition had become established in urban working-class
districts of composing songs, especially ballads, that narrated or commented on current
events such as crimes and accidents. These songs, which might qualify as a predecessor of
the “popular music” genre, were usually called “broadside ballads,” because they were
printed on large sheets along with advertisements and sold on the streets. They were
composed by urban poets and tunesmiths, usually anonymously, and they often passed into
oral tradition, thus joining the body of more traditional folk music. These songs were
current in villages as well as urban coffeehouses and bars. As nationalism developed,
topical folk songs often found their way into the repertories of militant student
organizations (e.g., in Germany) and soldiers, and they were sometimes (e.g., in the
Habsburg empire) parts of the shows put on by traveling officers to recruit villagers in the
provinces.
In the course of the 20th century, as the importance of folk music in rural cultures declined
in the Western world, folk songs were taken up by political and social movements of many
sorts. Thus, the Nazi and fascist movements of the 1920s to 1940s in Germany and Italy
introduced folk songs into the canons of their military ceremonies. In the Soviet Union and
elsewhere in eastern Europe after 1945, the folk music of ethnic groups was
institutionalized, taught in special conservatories, and performed by professionals
(sometimes in large orchestras of folk instruments), symbolizing the equality of folk and
classical traditions. The Russian balalaika-and-domra orchestras, which also toured
internationally, are typical. In North America, folk music, usually learned from songbooks
and taught in ethnic clubs, often in choral or band arrangements, became a major factor in
the expression and maintenance of group identity for urban ethnic groups, such as Polish
Americans and Austrian Americans and their Canadian counterparts.
zoom_in
Four songs (text only) printed on the reverse of a broadside prematurely announcing the death of Mexican
revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata in 1914.
Image: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Most significant perhaps has been the use of folk music by dissident movements, such as
those seeking social and economic reform, opposing wars, or protecting the environment.
In the United States, the phenomenon began in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The first
major composer of this protest music, Woody Guthrie, was said to have composed more
than 1,000 folk songs (including “This Land Is Your Land” and “Union Maid,” the latter set
to a traditional German tune); they are identified as folk songs because they voice the
concerns of the rural and working-class “folk,” are stylistically similar to older folk songs,
and were performed with acoustic guitar accompaniment. The best-known figure in post-
World War II U.S. folk music culture is Pete Seeger, who helped to revive many traditional
folk songs, performing them together with songs of liberal advocacy that he reworked or
composed, including the antisegregation “We Shall Overcome” and the antiwar “Where
Have All the Flowers Gone?” At the end of the 20th century, the concept of folk music was
dominated by recent creations of current relevance drawing on musical and poetic features
that associate them with older traditions. The relationship to popular music also
intensified, through the creation of mixed genres such as folk rock and through the use of
folk-music elements to help create distinct national variants of mainstream rock music.
Performance characteristics of folk music
Singing styles
Although each culture has its distinct style, folk music across Europe has important
common features. Vocal and instrumental performance qualities differ considerably from
those of Western art music. The sometimes strange, harsh, and tense voice and the
elaborate ornamentation in folk song is no more or less natural—or intentional—than the
vocal style of formally trained singers. The manner of singing and the tone colour of
instrumental music vary by ethnicity and class.
In his studies of east European folk music, the Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist
Béla Bartók identified two primary singing styles in European folk music, which he named
parlando-rubato and tempo giusto. Parlando-rubato, stressing the words, departs
frequently from strict metric and rhythmic patterns and is often highly ornamented, while
tempo giusto follows metric patterns and maintains an even tempo. Both singing styles can
be heard in many parts of Europe and in European-derived folk music. Using different
criteria, the American folk music scholar Alan Lomax identified three main singing styles,
which he called Eurasian, old European, and modern European. The Eurasian style, which
is found mainly in southern Europe and parts of Britain and Ireland, as well as in the
Middle East and South Asia, is tense, ornamented, and essentially associated with solo
singing. The old European style, characteristic of central, eastern, and parts of northern
Europe, is more relaxed; the sound is produced with full voice. The style is often associated
with group singing in which the voices blend well. The modern European style, which is
mainly of urban and western European provenance, is in effect something of a compromise
between the other two.
The forms of tunes
The typical folk song is strophic: the tune is repeated several times with successive stanzas
of a poem. Tunes may have from two to eight lines, but most often there are four. The
musical interrelationship among the lines is described as the form. Although many form
types are used universally, each culture favours certain ones. For example, in English folk
music, four lines with different content are common (ABCD), but forms whose endings
revert to materials presented at the beginning are also found (e.g., ABBA, AABA, ABCA,
ABAB). Similar forms are found in eastern Europe, where the use of a melodic line at
successively higher or lower levels is also important (indicated here by a superscript
number indicating interval of transposition upward and a subscript number indicating
interval of transposition downward). Thus, in Hungarian folk music, the form AA5A5A or
AAA A is common. In Czech folk music, AA5BA and AA3A2A are common forms.
4 4
Departures from these norms are most common in eastern Europe. For example, some
Romanian Christmas carols illustrate a three-line form, ABA, in which the lines have,
successively, 9, 11, and 9 beats, and a song with five lines that are all variations of the first
line, AA′A″AA″.
Among the exceptions to the strophic form are children’s songs and ditties as well as some
epic narratives. Children’s game songs, lullabies, counting-out rhymes, and nursery rhymes
use limited scales and rhythms and small melodic range, and they may consist of only one
musical line repeated many times. Their simplicity and their similarity throughout the
world suggest that they may constitute an archaic layer in the history of music.
0:00 / 2:20
The Croatian musician Peter Boro playing the gusla and singing “The Rider on Horseback” (“Konjanik”) from
the epic of Kosovo; recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell in San Mateo, Calif., 1939.
Image: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Collection
Epic folk singing, once widespread throughout Europe and in western and southern Asia,
had three main European traditions that persisted in the 20th century: Russian, Finnish,
and Balkan. The Russian and Ukrainian epic traditions include ornamented singing, often
improvised, in which refrains were sometimes sung polyphonically by the audience. The
Finnish Kalevala stimulated 19th-century interest in epic poetry and was influential in
works such as Henry Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. South Slavic epics from the
Balkans, accompanied on the one-string fiddle gusla (or gusle), are organized in 10-syllable
lines with music that may be endlessly repetitive, or significantly varied and full of
contrasts, depending in part on the narrative content of the moment. These epics, based on
historical events such as the Battle of Kosovo (1389) between Muslim and Christian forces
and often narrated from the Muslim perspective, are improvised in their details and their
music; they are typically sung by professionals in coffeehouses.
zoom_in
The Croatian musician Peter Boro playing a gusla, San Mateo, Calif., 1939.
Image: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, WPA Sidney Robertson Cowell Collection. (Digital ID: afccc p093)
The influence of popular music on folk music, which became very strong in the 19th and
20th centuries, has tended to limit and standardize forms. The variety of melodic forms is
greater, for example, in older English, Anglo-American, German, and Czech folk music
than in later music.
Rhythms and scales
In the older traditions of folk music, rhythm and metre largely depend on the metre of the
poetry. Thus, in western Europe, where poetry is organized in metric feet, there is a
tendency toward even isometric structure based on one type of metre—typically, 4/ , 3/ , or
4 4
6/ , although 5/ also appears. In eastern Europe, generally, the number of syllables per line
8 4
is the main organizing factor, regardless of the number of stressed syllables. Accordingly,
the number of notes but not the number of measures is important, and repeated but
complex metric units (e.g., 7/ , 11/ , 13/ ) are present, particularly in Hungarian, Bulgarian,
8 8 8
and Romanian songs.
Rhythmic structure is closely related to singing style. Singers in the older, ornamented
styles frequently depart from rigid metric presentation for melismata (i.e., a single syllable
sung to a series of notes) and other expressive effects. Generally speaking, instrumental
music is more rigorously metric than is vocal music. Nonmetric material, some of it
consisting of long, melismatic passages, is also found in vocal and instrumental music in
the parts of Europe influenced by Middle Eastern music, such as the Balkan and Iberian
peninsulas.
In general, the scales of European folk music fit into the same tonal system as European art
music. Pentatonic scales (i.e., consisting of five notes to the octave), usually consisting of
minor thirds and major seconds, are used throughout the continent, especially in songs and
song types that are not strongly influenced by the art music and popular music of the cities.
Diatonic modes (i.e., using stepwise scales of seven tones to the octave) are another
important group. The modes most frequently used are Ionian (or major), Dorian, and
Mixolydian, but Aeolian (or natural minor), Phrygian, and Lydian are found as well. See
mode: Plainchant for a more complete description of the modes. The major mode is the
most common in western and central Europe, an indication of the influence of nearby art
music; others are found in eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and England (as well as in
English-derived music around the world). Scales with a predominance of small intervals
close to semitones are found in areas, such as the Balkans, that have been significantly
influenced by Middle Eastern music.
Polyphony and accompaniment
In its 21st-century urban and institutional manifestation, folk music is normally performed
by singers accompanied by stringed instruments, by instrumental ensembles, or by
choruses. By contrast, in its traditional rural venues, most folk music is monophonic (that
is, having only one melodic line). Yet polyphonic folk music, with several simultaneous
melodic lines, is part of the old traditions in some parts of the world.
Polyphonic vocal folk music is more common in eastern and southern Europe than in
western Europe. Styles vary; the simplest include two-voiced structures that use drones
(i.e., sustained sonorities) and parallel singing of the same tune at different pitch levels;
more-sophisticated styles include choral songs in three or four voices. The round, another
polyphonic structure, is found throughout Europe. Many polyphonic singing techniques are
used on the Balkan peninsula and in the mountainous parts of Italy. Italian rural
polyphony derives from ancient folk practices, medieval church music, and modern urban
choral sounds. Heterophony—the simultaneous performance of variations of the same tune
by two singers or by a singer and his accompanying instruments—is important in
Bulgarian, Serbian, and Croatian song. Parallel singing is the most common type of folk
polyphony; parallel thirds—that is, singing the same tune at an interval of a third—are
found throughout Europe but are particularly characteristic of Spain, Italy, and the
German-speaking and western Slavic countries; parallel seconds, fourths, and fifths are
sung in the Slavic countries.
Instrumental polyphony in folk music, sometimes closely parallel to vocal practices and
sometimes totally independent, is geographically more widespread than its vocal
counterpart. Bagpipes, for example, which use the drone principle, are ubiquitous in
Europe. The Croatian oboelike sopila is played in ensembles that practice complex group
improvisation; on the double-recorder dvojnice one player can produce two simultaneous
melodies. Although Scandinavian vocal music is largely monophonic, complex styles of
instrumental polyphony were developed in the repertoires of instruments such as the

Swedish nyckelharpa (a type of keyed fiddle) and the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle (which
has four melodic strings and four or more sympathetic strings that are not bowed or
plucked).
zoom_in
Hardanger fiddle, a Norwegian folk instrument with four melodic strings and four or more sympathetic strings.
Image: © Wulffenstejn Hardanger Fiddle/hardingfele.com
Though all cultures have unaccompanied solo singing, the instrumental accompaniment of
melody is widespread as well. Styles of accompaniment in western Europe appear to have
changed over the last thousand years. At one time, it seems, simple, dronelike
accompaniments were performed by stringed instruments such as harps, zithers, and
psalteries. By the 19th century, simple harmonic sequences closely related to the practices
of 18th-century classical music came to be used, with a variety of largely plucked
instruments, such as mandolins, guitars, and banjos. The popular folk music of modern
cities embodies still more-complex harmonic idioms, but the enormous role of guitars in
popular music seems to have been a contribution of the folk traditions.
It must be borne in mind that certain cultures, such as the British, the Hungarian, and the
Mari people of Russia, who have very little polyphonic folk music, have developed highly
complex repertoires of monophonic folk song. The predominance of polyphony does not
indicate that the music is somehow more advanced.
Instruments
Folk music instruments vary in type, design, and origin. Historically and by origin, they can
be divided into roughly four classes.
The first group, which consists of the simplest instruments, includes those that European
folk cultures share with many tribal cultures around the world. Among them are the
following: rattles; flutes with and without finger holes; the bull-roarer; leaf, grass, and bone
whistles; and long wooden trumpets, such as the Swiss alpenhorn. These instruments tend
to be associated with children’s games, signaling practices, and remnants of pre-Christian
ritual. They evidently became widely distributed many centuries ago.
A second group consists of instruments that were taken to Europe or the Americas from
non-European cultures and often changed. From western Asian predecessors, the folk
oboes of the Balkan countries and possibly bagpipes were derived; from Africa came the
banjo and the xylophone; and of Central Asian derivation were folk fiddles such as the
southern Slavic one-stringed gusla.
The third group of instruments may be the product of village culture itself. An example of
those made from handy materials is the Dolle, a type of fiddle used in northwestern
Germany, made from a wooden shoe. A more sophisticated one may be the bowed lyre,
once widespread in northern Europe but later confined (as the kantele) mainly to Finland.
The fourth group, which is probably of greatest importance, comprises instruments taken
from urban musical culture and from the traditions of classical and popular music and then
sometimes changed substantially. Prominent among these are the violin, bass viol, clarinet,
and guitar. In a number of cases, instruments used in art music during the Middle Ages
and later, but eventually abandoned, continued to be used in folk music into the 21st
century. Some of these are the violins (e.g., the Hardanger fiddle) with sympathetic strings
found in Scandinavia (related to the viola d’amore) and the hurdy-gurdy, derived from the
medieval organistrum and still played in France.
Folk music in historical context
Since folk music lives in oral tradition, its history can best be understood through a study of
its relationship to other musics. Many folk songs collected in oral tradition have been
traced to literary sources, often of considerable antiquity. In medieval Europe, under the
expansion of Christianity, attempts were made to suppress folk music because of its
association with heathen rites and customs; yet some aspects of European folk music
became assimilated into medieval Christian liturgical music, and vice versa. Folk music has
also been consciously incorporated into European art music compositions throughout
history, especially during periods of renewal, beginning with the Renaissance.
During the late 15th and 16th centuries, the literate urban classes responded more
favourably to folk music than their predecessors had in the medieval period. The
humanistic attitudes of the Renaissance, which brought about the elevation of nature and
of antiquity, encouraged the acceptance of folk music as a genre of rustic antique song.
Some music in Renaissance manuscripts is presumed to be folk song by virtue of its
musical simplicity and the rural and archaic evocations of its texts. Renaissance composers
made extensive use of folk and popular music. Typical genres include polyphonic folk song
settings and folk song quodlibets, or combinations of familiar songs. Folk tunes were often
used as structural and motivic raw material for motets and masses; likewise, the music of
the Protestant Reformation borrowed from folk music.
The use of folk music receded in the Baroque period (about 1600–1750), but the
menu
search of folk music to art music became a topic of interest in theGet
relationship Started
late
Login keyboard_arrow_down
18th century,
when Western intellectuals began to glorify folk and peasant life. Folk music came to be
FOLK MUSIC
keyboard_arrow_downSections & Media
venerated as a spontaneous creation of peoples unencumbered by artistic self-
consciousness and aesthetic theories; it was considered to embody the common experience
of inhabitants of the locale. These traits make folk music a fructifying source for art music,
particularly when it is intended to evoke a particular nation or ethnic group. The nationalist
movements of 19th- and early 20th-century art music drew on folk tunes and their styles,
as well as folk dances and themes from folklore and village life, to develop distinctive
repertories. Leaders in these movements included Bedrich Smetana and Dvořák for Czech
music, Edvard Grieg for Norwegian, Mikhail Glinka and Modest Mussorgsky for Russian,
Bartók for Hungarian, Georges Enesco for Romanian, and Aaron Copland and Roy Harris
for American cultures.
Folk music is closely related to popular music in several ways. Societies that have
developed popular music also have a folk music tradition, or remnants thereof. The partial
duplication of repertories and style indicates such cross-fertilization that a given song may
sometimes be called both folk and popular. With reference to music, folk and popular are
two points on a musical continuum, rather than discrete bodies of music. Popular music,
like folk music, has become a significant marker of ethnicity and nation, and folk music has
become gradually more like popular music, produced by professionals and disseminated
through mass media for consumption by an urban, nonparticipating mass audience.
Church music and folk music have been related at various times. Some church music
derives from the application of religious texts to secular folk tunes. This practice may be
seen, for example, in the hymns of the Protestant Reformation and in the revival hymns of
19th-century American camp meetings, which were called folk hymns because of their
origins and associations with folklike groups.
A very significant way in which folk music is preserved is through its association with folk
dance. Throughout European history, dancing by rural folk and village dances in urban and
court society provided a major venue for folk music; although most of this music is
instrumental, vocal folk dance music, sometimes sung by the dancers themselves, is
common. In northern Europe even narrative ballads were used for dancing. There are
many types of folk dance, some widespread throughout Europe, others peculiar to nations
and regions, each with its typical musical style. Certain musical forms are characteristic of
the folk dance music of various parts of Europe. Most prominent is a form type with paired
lines, the second a variation of the first (e.g., AA′BB′ and so on). From the 1980s on, it
would seem that practices of folk dancing in urban and student society have been
responsible for the very preservation of folk music. Folk dance, with its accompanying
music, is a staple of entertainment in the international tourist industry; the maintenance of
folk dance has therefore become a matter of major concern to the ministries of culture in
eastern Europe and in many of the world’s semi-industrialized and developing nations.
The study of folk music
The search for origins and processes of development that motivated much 19th- and early
20th-century intellectual activity was reflected in folk music scholarship. Some scholars
believed folk music to be a repository of archaisms—a legacy from which the prehistory of
music, language, literature, and other cultural traits could be adduced. Although later
scholars concede that some traits of folk music may be centuries old, they are less inclined
to speculate on the age of archaic elements of folk music or to offer historical
reconstructions, other than tracing variants of individual songs or types of songs.
Musical notations of folk songs and descriptions of folk music culture are occasionally
encountered in historical records, but these show not so much the history of folk music as
the history of ideas held by the literate classes about folk music. National and social
movements in the early 19th century stimulated the search for and collecting of folk songs.
The variety of motivations is illustrated by Thomas Percy (who focused on the great age of
certain ballads), Ludvik Rittersberk (who collected Czech folk songs as part of an effort by
the Habsburg monarchy to unify the empire through recognizing the folklore of national
minorities), and Ludolf Parisius (who collected German folk songs in order to preserve
traditional village culture). In the second half of the 19th century, scholarship was
motivated by the desire to find materials that could be used by composers of art music and
by the ambition of producing comprehensive collections of the songs of a nation. This
interest has continued into the 21st century, as attempts to circumscribe entire folk music
repertoires in notation have been the intent of major projects, particularly in eastern
Europe.
0:00 / 2:14
“Rock Island Line,” performed by prisoners at Cummins State Farm, Arkansas; recorded by John and Ruby
Lomax, 1939.
Image: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Collection
Since the last decade of the 19th century, folk music has been collected and preserved by
mechanical recordings. The application of print and recording technology to folk music has
promoted wide interest, making possible the revival of folk music where traditional folklife
and folklore are moribund. Folk songs are frequently part of public school music curricula,
and groups that focus in one way or another on folk music, often in conjunction with folk
dance, have arisen; festivals of folk music and dance are an annual event in many
communities throughout the world.
zoom_in
Convicts at Cummins State Farm, Arkansas, 1934, possibly the singers of the “Rock Island Line” recording.
Image: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. ppmsc 00422)
The literature on folk music consists primarily of songs and their texts—collections of
individual countries or regions, even of individual singers. Some works have endeavoured
to integrate and compare the various styles of folk music in Western culture, and scholars
have begun to produce theoretical works and studies of music in historical and
contemporary cultural context. Many researchers have analyzed the use of folk music as
material in art music. Major scholars in the history of folk music research include Bartók
(who pioneered in making large collections of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak songs and
in transcribing them accurately in musical notation), Cecil Sharp (who recognized the
importance of collecting folk songs in diasporic cultures, e.g., Anglo-Americans), Walter
Wiora (who showed that some tunes are found throughout Europe), and Samuel P. Bayard
(who established the concept of tune family).
Scholars who specialize in folk music usually have training in ethnomusicology, a discipline
concerned with elucidating music in a cross-cultural perspective and analyzing the role of
music in society and culture. Studies of the words of folk songs are the province primarily
of folklorists and students of language and literature. Musical studies concern folk genres
and styles, as well as individual folk songs—how they originated, and whether, how, and
why they changed when diffused. Theories of folk music have been beclouded by the
difficulties in recognizing, isolating, and defining a phenomenon as elusive and complex as
folk music. The forefront of folk music research in the 21st century entails the
contemplation of 20th-century revivals of folk music; the application of concepts from
postmodern cultural studies, gender studies, and critical theory; the use of folk music in
political and national movements; the nature of folk music in the present; and its
inseparability from other kinds of music.
After World War II, the availability of commercial recordings enabled scholars to work with
greater sophistication, and archives of field recordings were developed at many institutions
throughout the world. In the United States, those of the Library of Congress and Indiana
University are the most important. National archives exist in most European countries—
the most extensive being in Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries—
providing ample research material for an enormous diversity of projects. Research has
usually dealt with “authentic” (i.e., older) material not heavily influenced by urban popular
music and the mass media. Several organizations for the study of folk music exist in
individual nations; international organizations include the European Seminar in
Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the Society for
Ethnomusicology.
Bruno Nettl
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
South Asian arts: Folk, classical, and popular music
The wide field of musical phenomena in South Asia ranges from the relatively straightforward
two- or three-tone melodies of some of the hill tribes in central India to the highly cultivated
art music heard in concert halls in the large…
Central Asian arts: Folk music
Generally characterized by a scarcity of musicians and musical instruments, folk music of

this region is predominantly a matter of solo playing and singing, small ensembles, in
absence of musical notation or codified musical theory. In their general types, the musical…
Japanese music: Biwa, vocal, and folk music
During the late 19th century the biwa-accompanied narratives enjoyed a revival. The blind-
priest biwa (moso biwa) tradition had originally been divided into two schools named after
the provinces in Kyushu from which they came, Chikuzen and Satsuma. The tradition declin…
HISTORY AT YOUR
FINGERTIPS
Sign up here to see what happened On This Day, every day in your inbox!
Email address
Sign Up
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice.
TIMBRE
keyboard_arrow_downSections & Media
Home keyboard_arrow_right Science keyboard_arrow_right Physics keyboard_arrow_right Matter & Energy
Timbre
sound
print Print
verified Cite
share Share
more_vert More
BY
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
View Edit History
zoom_in
See all media
Related Topics:
music •
Envelope
article FULL ARTICLE

Timbre, also called timber, quality of auditory sensations produced by the tone of a
sound wave.
The timbre of a sound depends on its wave form, which varies with the number of
overtones, or harmonics, that are present, their frequencies, and their relative intensities.
The illustration shows the wave form that results when pure tones of frequencies 100, 300,
and 500 hertz (cycles per second) and relative amplitudes of 10, 5, and 2.5 are synthesized
into a complex tone. At the right is the resultant of the three sine curves when their
ordinates are added point by point along the time scale. In equation form, the amplitude y
of the wave form at any time t would be represented by y = 10 sin (2π 100t) + 5 sin (2π
300t) + 2.5 sin (2π 500t). The timbre of this form would be recognizable and different from
others having a fundamental tone of 100 hertz but a different harmonic amplitude.
In music timbre is the characteristic tone colour of an instrument or voice, arising from
reinforcement by individual singers or instruments of different harmonics, or overtones
(q.v.), of a fundamental pitch. Extremely nasal timbre thus stresses different overtones
than mellow timbre. The timbre of the tuning fork and of the stopped diapason organ pipe
is clear and pure because the sound they produce is almost without overtones. Timbre is
determined by an instrument’s shape (e.g., the conical or cylindrical pipe of a wind
instrument), by the frequency range within which the instrument can produce overtones,
and by the envelope of the instrument’s sound. The timbre of spoken vowels or of a singing
voice is modified by constricting or opening various parts of the vocal tract, such as the lips,
tongue, or throat.
This article was most recently revised and updated by William L. Hosch, Associate Editor.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
keyboard instrument: Plucking mechanism
…slight variations in loudness and timbre, or tone colour, can be obtained by differences in the
firmness with which the harpsichordist depresses the keys, no sustained crescendos are
obtainable by the action of the fingers alone. For this reason, most harpsichords made since…
stringed instrument: The production of sound
The timbre of a struck or plucked stringed instrument is also affected by the manner of
setting the string into motion. A string plucked with a sharp point (the player’s fingernail or a
plastic plectrum) emphasizes the higher overtones, thus creating a “bright” tone quality. By…
instrumentation
…their capabilities of producing various timbres or colours. Orchestration is somewhat the narrower term, since
it is frequently used to describe the art of instrumentation as related to the symphony orchestra.
Instrumentation, therefore, is the art of combining instruments in any sort of musical composition, including…
HISTORY AT YOUR
FINGERTIPS
Sign up here to see what happened On This Day, every day in your inbox!
Email address
Sign Up
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice.

Folk Music - Performance Characteristics of Folk Music - Britannica

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Folk Music - Performance Characteristics of Folk Music - Britannica

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

24/09/2021 15:22 Folk music - Performance characteristics of folk music | Britannica

Load Previous Page

General characteristics of folk music

Creation and adaptation

Transmission and variation

Folk music in society

Performance characteristics of folk music

The forms of tunes

Rhythms and scales

Polyphony and accompaniment

instrumental polyphony were developed in the repertoires of instruments such as the

Folk music in historical context

The study of folk music

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

South Asian arts: Folk, classical, and popular music

Central Asian arts: Folk music

Generally characterized by a scarcity of musicians and musical instruments, folk music of

Japanese music: Biwa, vocal, and folk music

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice.

See all media

article FULL ARTICLE

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

keyboard instrument: Plucking mechanism

stringed instrument: The production of sound

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice.

You might also like