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CHAPTER IV |
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MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SONGS |
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An Analysis of Half a Thousand Negro Songs-Division as to Modes—Overwhelming Prevalence of Major—Psychology of the Phenomenon—Music as a Stimulus to Work— Songs of the Fieldhands and Rowers. |
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To lay a foundation for a discussion of the idioms of the folksongs created by the American negroes I have examined 527 negro songs found in six collections, five of which have appeared in print. Of these five collections, four are readily accessible to the student. The titles of the printed collections are :
"Slave Songs of the United States," edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison; published by A. Simpson & Co., New York, 1867. This work, by far the most valuable and compendious source, as it is the earliest, is out of print and difficult to obtain.
"The Story of the Jubilee Singers, with Their Songs," by J. B. T. Marsh. Published by Houghton, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1880. This is a revised edition of two earlier publications, the music arranged by Theodore F. Seward and George L. White, of which the first was printed by Bigelow & Main, New York, in 1872.
"Religious Folk Songs of the Negroes as Sung on the Plantations," arranged by the musical directors of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute from the original edition of Thomas P. Fenner. Published by the Institute Press, Hampton, Va., 1909. The original edition, entitled "Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton Students," was published in 1874; an enlarged edition by Thomas P. Fenner and Frederic G. Rathbun, by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, in 1891. |
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