Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song

Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song PDF Author: Mary-Ann Constantine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197262887
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This book takes a radical approach to the study of traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; even now long narratives hold a privileged place in most folk song canons. Yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently 'broken' and drastically shortened versions are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. Dealing with a wide range of traditions and languages, this study turns the focus on these 'dog-ends' of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual 'last leaves' of a once-complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Like the songs themselves, this book crosses and recrosses the perceived divide between the literary and the oral. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.

Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song

Fragments and Meaning in Traditional Song PDF Author: Mary-Ann Constantine
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197262887
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book takes a radical approach to the study of traditional songs. Folk song scholarship was originally obsessed with notions of completeness and narrative coherence; even now long narratives hold a privileged place in most folk song canons. Yet field notebooks and recordings (and, increasingly, publications) overwhelmingly suggest that apparently 'broken' and drastically shortened versions are not perceived as incomplete by those who sing them. Dealing with a wide range of traditions and languages, this study turns the focus on these 'dog-ends' of oral tradition, and looks closely at how very short texts convey meaning in performance by working the audience's knowledge of a highly allusive idiom. What emerges is the tenacity of meaning in the connotative and metaphorical language of traditional song, and the extraordinary adaptability of songs in different cultural contexts. Such pieces have a strong metonymic force: they should not be seen as residual 'last leaves' of a once-complete tradition, but as dynamic elements in the process of oral transmission. Not all song fragments remain in their natural environment, and this book also explores relocations and dislocations as songs are adapted to new contexts: a ballad of love and death is used to count pins in lace-making, song-snippets trail subversive meanings in the novels of Charles Dickens. Because they are variable and elusive to dating, songs have had little attention from the literary establishment: the authors show both how certain critical approaches can be fruitfully applied to song texts, and how concepts from studies in oral traditions prefigure aspects of contemporary critical theory. Like the songs themselves, this book crosses and recrosses the perceived divide between the literary and the oral. Coverage includes English, Welsh, Breton, American, and Finnish songs.

"Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600?900 "

Author: Vic Gammon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351569589
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music (including church music), ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology.

Song Loves the Masses

Song Loves the Masses PDF Author: Johann Gottfried Herder
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520234944
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
9. Music Transcendent and Sublime: Herder's "Von Music" (1800) -- Translation of "Von Musik" / "On Music"--Epilogue: Herder's Journey -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture

Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture PDF Author: Wim van Anrooij
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004314989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Singing together is a tried and true method of establishing and maintaining a group’s identity. Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture for the first time explores comparatively the dynamic process of group formation through the production and appropriation of songs in various European countries and regions. Drawing on oral, handwritten and printed sources, with examples ranging from 1450 to 1850, the authors investigate intertextual patterns, borrowing of melodies, and performance practices as these manifested themselves in a broad spectrum of genres including ballads, popular songs, hymns and political songs. The volume intends to be a point of departure for further comparative studies in European song culture. Contributors are: Ingrid Åkesson, Mary-Ann Constantine, Patricia Fumerton, Louis Peter Grijp, Éva Guillorel, Franz-Josef Holznagel, Tine de Koninck, Christopher Marsh, Hubert Meeus, Nelleke Moser, Dieuwke van der Poel, Sophie Reinders, David Robb, Clara Strijbosch, and Anne Marieke van der Wal.

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music PDF Author: Jane F. Fulcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199711984
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
As the field of Cultural History grows in prominence in the academic world, an understanding of the history of culture has become vital to scholars across disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music cultivates a return to the fundamental premises of cultural history in the cutting-edge work of musicologists concerned with cultural history and historians who deal with music. In this volume, noted academics from both of these disciplines illustrate the continuing endeavor of cultural history to grasp the realms of human experience, understanding, and communication as they are manifest or expressed symbolically through various layers of culture and in many forms of art. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music fosters and reflects a sustained dialogue about their shared goals and techniques, rejuvenating their work with new insights into the field itself.

Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America

Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America PDF Author: David Atkinson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317049217
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research into ’street literature’ - that is, the cheap printed broadsides and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by professional writers and reached the populace in printed form. Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of traditional songs by examining street literature’s interaction with, and influence on, oral traditions.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies PDF Author: Lisa Zunshine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199978069
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions.

Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822

Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822 PDF Author: Oskar Cox Jensen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137555386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This study offers a radical reassessment of a crucial period of political and cultural history. By looking at some 400 songs, many of which are made available to hear, and at their writers, singers, and audiences, it questions both our relationship with song, and ordinary Britons' relationship with Napoleon, the war, and the idea of Britain itself.

Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900

Desire, Drink and Death in English Folk and Vernacular Song, 1600-1900 PDF Author: Vic Gammon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351569597
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music (including church music), ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology.

Medieval Oral Literature

Medieval Oral Literature PDF Author: Karl Reichl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110241129
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
Medieval literature is to a large degree shaped by orality, not only with regard to performance, but also to transmission and composition. Although problems of orality have been much discussed by medievalists, there is to date no comprehensive handbook on this topic. ‘Medieval Oral Literature’, a volume in the ‘De Gruyter Lexikon’ series, was written by an international team of twenty-five scholars and offers a thorough discussion of theoretical approaches as well as detailed presentations of individual traditions and genres. In addition to chapters on the oral-formulaic theory, on the interplay of orality and writing in the Early Middle Ages, on performance and performers, on oral poetics and on ritual aspects of orality, there are chapters on the Older Germanic, Romance, Middle High German, Middle English, Celtic, Greek-Byzantine, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Turkish traditions of oral literature. There is a special focus on epic and lyric, genres that are also discussed in separate chapters, with additional chapters on the ballad and on drama.