Folk & Traditional Music of the Western Continents
The folk & traditional music of Europe, Africa & the Americas explored.
| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
FRANCE, ITALY, AND THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 111 |
||
|
|
||
|
songs are frequently in 6/8 meter and make use of the church modes; the latter is true of the ballad in Example 6-3, which is Dorian.
But more complex meters, such as 5/8, are also common, as are songs without ascertainable metric structure. The most famous illustration of quintuple meter in Basque folk music is the zortziko, a |
||
|
|
||
 |
||
|
|
||
|
example 6-3. French singing game, "Yan petit," from Violet Alford, "Dance and Song in Two Pyrenean Valleys," Musical Quarterly XVII (1931), 253.
type of melody used mainly for dance tunes. The forms of Basque songs consist of from four to six phrases, interrelated in various ways. Lullabies frequently consist of varied repetitions of a single musical line (A1 A2 A3 . . .), while love songs and dance songs have forms such as ABCC, ABCB, AABCD, AABB, and AABCDC Instrumental folk music among the Basques features a three-holed flute (chirula) and the ttun-ttun, an instrument similar to the dulcimer, but held in the arm, with six strings. The same player uses |
||