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effect produced by folk-dances; Beevhoven introduces the hop-waltz into his "Sixth Symphony," Brahms enriches an entire series of Hungarian dances with noble harmonies, Liszt freely employs the czardas, a species of Hungarian jig, in some of his most effective passages.
When the name of Russia is mentioned, the investigator of folk�song may well pause, astonished at the vast extent of the repertory spread out before him. Russia is a world hi itself, and the same may be said of its folk-music. Yet the wonderful mine has scarcely been opened even by Russian composers. Glinka, who died in 1857, may be called the pioneer of Russian national music, and in his operas he freely introduced the folk-music of his country. The last half of the ninteenth century, however, saw the constant striving of a new school of composers to build up a repertory of advanced music upon the foundation of the folk-music of Russia. "Para Domoi" ("Let Us Get Hoine,"i.�.,letusbe our natural selves) has been the watchword of the neo-Russian school of composers in freeing them�selves from German musical influences, and they decline to accept Rubinstein as representative, and even denounce Tschaikowsky as too cosmopolitan, because both are tinged with the Teutonic musical culture.
The surface of Russian folk-music has scarcely been scratched as yet; the songs of the Cossacks have not been collected, the repertory of Little Russia has not been printed and classified, and the published list will probably receive accessions from many quarters for years to come. If the statement that the complex musical forms are built upon the simpler, the classical upon the popular, means anything, the future of musical Russia, with such a fund to draw upon, must be very bright, and it is not too much to predict that the Muscovite may yet wrest the sceptre of musical supremacy from the German.
In conclusion, one may ask where America stands in the field of folk-song and its development. Like Russia our country is a world in itself, but many of its sections are necessarily destitute of true folk-music because commercial prosperity by effacing original types of character and of life, by introducing a conventional mode of exist�ence, tends to obliterate the folk-song. The banking house, the flour mill, the cloth factory, can not inspire music. Yet in our country one can find some phases of existence that have brought forth popular music. The plantation life of the South, for example, is romantic enough to give rise to expressive music, and has done so. There is a large repertory of the negro music which has not yet been collected, and is well worthy of preservation. |
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