The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #161744   Message #3846349
Posted By: GUEST,jim bainbridge
23-Mar-17 - 02:55 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Sweet Nightingale... tune from an opera?
Subject: RE: Sweet Nightingale... tune from an opera?
YOU for one Mr Campin- we've had this discussion before and I see little point in pursuing it- basically you don't believe it's a real folk song/tune unless it was written down hundreds of years ago.

Such tunnel vision does no service to the music- forget your ethnomusicology and Bolivian potatoes- I'm too busy playing the music for that and suggest you consider where the music really came from, as I said the PEOPLE or the FOLK if you prefer? Or maybe you think the 'dots' were handed down by the Great Folksinger in the Sky?

Composers have a real skill, and I respect that, and in modern times, it's possible to know who wrote songs like the Jute Mill Song (and I met her) or 'Ride On' but to try & pin down the composition date of an ancient song is just barmy. Your total misunderstanding of what traditional music is about is evidenced by your accusation that I don't know where a particular tune came from. OF COURSE I DON'T that's the point! Nor do you, you just think you do!

Your 'elite art music' has NOTHING to do with traditional music- of course the material goes both ways, but your elite art music is exactly that, a refined version of the real thing for those who consider they are part of an 'elite' but really their problem is don't understand anything that isn't written down.