Folk & Traditional Music of the Western Continents

The folk & traditional music of Europe, Africa & the Americas explored.

Home Main Menu Singing & Playing Order & Order Info Support Search Voucher Codes



Share page  Visit Us On FB



Previous Contents Next
THE GERMANIC PEOPLES 75
Ronald Press, 1950). The most comprehensive collection of British ballad tunes, because it reprints the tunes in many other important col­lections, is Bertrand H. Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958-), to be com­pleted in four volumes. Bronson's article, "About the Commonest British Ballads" J-1FMC, IX (1957), 22-27, is important reading. Donal J. O'Sullivan, Songs of the Irish (New York: Crown Publishers, 1960) is a standard collection.
A short survey, with examples, of Dutch folk music is Jaap Kunst, "On Dutch Folk Dances and Dance Tunes," Studies in Ethnomusicol-°&y-> I (1961), 29-37. For Norwegian folk music, a monumental set of volumes covering the entire repertory is being published under Olav Gurvin, Norwegian Folk Music (Olso: Oslo University Press, 1958-).
An interesting collection of Danish folk music collected from one informant is Nils Schi0rring, Sehna Nielsens Viser (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1956). Many collections of German folk music are availa­ble. A classic is Ludwig Erk and Franz Magnus Boehme, Deutscher Liederhort (Leipzig, 1893-1894, reprinted by Olms, Hildesheim, 1962). A more recent publication, still incomplete, but with comprehensive notes, is Deutsche Volkslieder wit ihren Melodien, edited by John Meier and others (Freiburg: Deutsches Volksliedarchiv, 1935-). Many publications by German scholars on German folk song are worth read­ing; those by Walter Wiora and Erich Stockmann are particularly to be noted. In the field of musical instruments, Stig Walin, Die schtuedische Hummel (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1952) is an excel­lent, profusely illustrated study of the Swedish dulcimer.
The number of records of British folk song, both field collections and artistic interpretations, is enormous. To be mentioned especially is a set of Child ballads produced by British traditional singers A. L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColI for class and other educational use, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Washington Records 715-723. Also worth hearing are Sussex Folk Songs and Ballads, edited by Kenneth Gold­stein, Folkways FG 3515; Songs and Pipes of the Hebrides, Folkways P 430; The Art of the Bagpipe (with elaborate annotations), Folk-Lyric Records FL 112; and, as a selection of Gaelic songs, Songs of Aran, Folkways P 1002.
Songs and Dances of Holland, Folkways 3576, and Songs and Dances of Norway, Folkways FE 4008, are both educational and enter­taining selections. For German folk song, a set produced by the famous Freiburg archive is to be recommended: Deutsche Volkslieder, Deutsche Grammophongesellschaft 004-157 to 004-160 (2 disks), with a pamphlet giving texts, notes, and complete transcriptions.