I suppose it might be the fact that one has to devote half an hour listening carefully that has prevented more comment on this. I have now taken that half hour and do have views.

Almost all of the classical presentations on there were pretty horrid for various reasons with the sole exception of the northern chap - not sure, was the name Tom Allen? - and even that was not all that OK. I think there are a number of reasons I feel that - but let me say I didn't go a bundle on the Margaret Barry bit either. I think of her more as a source than a performer.

Anyway, I have come to the view that in folk song we are probably not as divorced from the natural scales as one might expect, and that many folk singers, even those brought up in the modern world where equal temperament rules, will be bending the notes a bit closer to the old scales - and particularly in harmony singing. The result is that the piano is always a bit of a fight in relation to folk song. Guitars people bend strings a bit. Banjos are never in tune anyway. Recorders and whistles bend. Free reed instruments are set so "wet" that exact pitch is not determinable. Apart from the slight sharpness that results from over-aggressive thumping on a piano it's an exactly fixed pitch instrument.

Now the next thing, to me, is phrasing. The classical treatment does not push and pull and notes tend to be given their exact notated value - so "Happy" when sung that way comes out as "Hap" "Pee" - quite unlike the way that the word is spoken. Folk song tends to be timed by word rhythms not measured durations. Likewise tempi are rigid in the classical treatment. This shades into my view of the Britten opening chords to "Foggy Dew" - much praised but IMHO totally ghastly, thunderfooted, and probably intentionally sarcastic. Then on to the word phrasing. Imagine you are telling a room "I once was a bachelor and lived all alone and I worked at the weaver's trade". Which words would you emphasise in telling that story? Not singing, but speaking. Now compare the military precision of equal accent on all syllables in the sung version we heard. Get my drift?

Then I come to diction. We were treated to a discussion of Peter Piers artificially dropping terminal "g" sounds, contrasted with ridicule of his long "a" in "commander". But I have little doubt that Piers spoke he would have used the long "a" in commander, and far worse than any disconnect between parlance and tradition would have been ersatz accent mimicry. But on the other hand we hear (and are appalled by) not the natural diction of a person of different class, but the pretension and artificiality of the Ferrier singing we heard. It was echoe in other operatic signers played - the crescendo and diminuendo even in individual syllables. Nobody speaks like that nor tells a story like that. Even Luxor, whose singing of "Guns and Drums" aka "Johnny I hardly knew you" closed the programme, despite bravely abandoning operatic pitch rigidity in parts of his singing, came to over-exaggerated artificial drama towards the end. I do not hear that strained artificiality in "the folk voice" - maybe because I naturally both speak and sing through my nose - but I think it's a shame that EC descended to that criticism.

Healey IMHO came close to getting it right when speaking of participation and spontaneity - the antithesis of art song, and indeed to some extent at odds with the "folk performer" trying to still a pub with "look at MEEEE!" overpresentation.

Nonetheless, a brave programme whose worst flaw was including the inane horse definition.

As a follow-up maybe we could have some specially recorded folk songs sung by the presenter and EC - or the presenter and his wife whose name was I think not given.


The songs sung do I think give added credibility to my warnings to singers to be very careful about the way they may be shaped by singing teachers or vocal coaches.