The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #127487   Message #3731705
Posted By: Steve Gardham
20-Aug-15 - 04:53 AM
Thread Name: lyr/Origins: Pretty polly (Knife in the Window)
Subject: RE: lyr/Origins: Pretty polly (Knife in the Window)
Lover and Lohr can't have collaborated on anything, Jon.
Lover died before Lohr was born.
The sheet music I sent you is a typical parlour piece of the period. Well-known composers often reset earlier material with their own arrangements of the tunes and often restructured the song. I have lots of examples of this using old English songs and folk songs. However, the interest to us is to what extent these pieces of sheet music then went on to influence oral tradition. For example, how many versions of 'Barbara Allen' from oral tradition were influenced by the many printed versions both on broadsides and on sheet music?