Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)

Subject: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 04:08 PM

I'm pretty new to the Mudcat, as many of you know.

You oldtimers are well acquainted with the work of
Frank Petersohn (1941 - 2009)
whose ambitions included
the creation of
"the largest online folksong database," at his site
ingeb dot org.

What does "ingeb" mean anyhow?


The ambition in quotes preceding, by the way, is a direct quote
from the obituary that was published in The Globe and Mail,
and reproduced at Petersohn's legacy-dot-com page.

Actually I'm surprised that Mr. Petersohn
didn't rate an Obit thread,
but that was ten years ago anyway.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: Reinhard
Date: 10 Sep 19 - 06:14 PM

Ingeborg is a German female name.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 12:40 PM

Which leads to the next question,
thanks very much:

was there an
"Ingeborg"
in Frank Petersohn's life?

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: keberoxu
Date: 11 Sep 19 - 02:32 PM

Well, I just made a quick-and-dirty attempt to answer my own question
from the previous post,
naturally with a GOOGLE search.

Still don't have an answer,
but I did find something really amusing.

This comes from a German website, and was written
before Petersohn's death;
the Google search permits me to use Google Translate so as to understand
what the German-language comment actually says.

Here's the original German.
Hubert Feyerabend's opinion of Frank Petersohn's webpages


rough English translation:
Well, about the website "www dot ingeb dot org" I would rather not submit the address without my own comments.
It is the work of Frank Petersohn, an American of German origin.
He collects the lyrics of German folk songs, of which
he displays some several thousands.
It's really a treasure trove already.

Leider -- unfortunately -- his definition of "Volkslied"
is anything that is older than he is
(about sixty years of age)
that eventually was sung and passed on by the people
(im Volk gesungen wurde).

Included in [Petersohn's] collection, unfortunately, is
a great load of weird stuff
(eine Menge schräges Zeug)
dating between 1933 and 1945.

[Aha, National Sozialismus ...]

From experience, little would result from
sending letters of protest to Mr. Petersohn;
so one should carefully avoid this crap (diesen Mist).
That is the only way to avoid surprises (Überraschungen).
Otherwise, click here on 'ingeb dot org' !

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: leeneia
Date: 13 Sep 19 - 12:14 PM

I've collected a number of fine pieces from Frank's site. I'm grateful to him and sorry to hear he is dead. Not being conversant with Nazi filk, I never noticed its presence.

I wonder how many of the several thousands of songs Frank collected offend that writer. I wonder if Frank even knew the history of the songs.

I think this is a case of an entitled, disgruntled critic saying, "You did me a great favor, but you didn't do it perfectly!"

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 14 Sep 19 - 05:57 AM

Many songs from many countries and times convey questionable ideology, and many more songs have been (ab)used in such contexts, with or without the authors' consent. Always be careful what you sing or approve of in public, but censorship of Internet sources would not be the right answer even if it were possible.

ingeb.org is relatively reliable source, with no visible ideological agenda of its own (as opposed to deutscheslied.com), though not on the high scholarly level sometimes asked for by Mudcatters. Well, the Mudcat's own "DT" is not the pure Philosophers' Stone either, but much better than nothing. Our thanks are due to all such collectors.

Websites run by university scholars exist in many languages, but inevitably with much smaller databases.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Will
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 12:53 PM

Hi, I'd like to use a midi track from Franks site ingeb.org in a commercial computer game I'm making.
The midi file says it's copyrighted to an F Toescher, but I've failed to find any contact information for them on Google.
Does anyone know of this person or if the midi files have a Creative Commons license?

Thanks
Will

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 08 Jun 20 - 02:17 PM

If someone claims the copyright, it is by definition not CC. A faithful representation of a folk song may not be copyrightable, but any arrangement definitely is.

The best idea may be to make your own or ask a friend.

Out of curiosity: which MIDI file do you think is worth real money?

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Will
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 12:34 AM

It's the second Hanschen Klein file, quite a lot of work has gone into it I think.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 04:56 AM

Maybe Hubert Feyerabend's writings could also be posted to one or other of the various threads about what lyrics &c. are today deemed problematic, unacceptable in certain circumstances, even deserving of suppression. Such a convevient expression, "weird stuff", for a German to employ.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 05:34 AM

The author Franz Toescher from Austria used to be a very prolific producer of such material. All his websites are now dead, so may be Mr. Toescher himself. Anyway, if you use his file for a commercial game, someone may come up with claims.

The file was produced al fresco on a keyboard, nowhere near professional quality. Many Mudcatters will be able to produce better results without "quite a lot of work".

May I ask where you live?

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Will
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 01:04 PM

Oh cool, thanks for the heads up.
I live in New Zealand.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 02:01 PM

Will, does that mean you feel encouraged to give it a try by yourself? That is what I wrote earlier, but the lack of quality in an existeing file (ba an amateur) is not the best of all arguments. It is of course your own choice, and depends on your own ambition with the game.

In case you run out of courage, you can "challenge" the professional musicians at Mudcat. If you offer a donation of 50 US$ to Mudcat (- I wonder how easy that is from NZ -) and clearly specify what you want, I may give it a try myself.

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Jun 20 - 02:57 PM

If I recall the 1990s correctly, there were two very good websites that looked quite similar, and both seemed to have German roots. One was this one, http://ingeb.org/. The other was similarly cluttered in the appearance of its menus, and I think I recall it was based in Kenosha, Wisconsin - or maybe it was ingeb.org that was in Kenosha. The current snailmail address for ingeb.org is in Sechelt, British Columbia, a 2-hour trip (50 km) north of Vancouver. The Website shows photos of Sechelt, and it looks gorgeous.

ingeb.org has been mentioned at Mudcat many times through the years. There's an interesting 1999 thread called Mudcat in German Language? that makes early mention of ingeb.org

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Frank Petersohn (what does ingeb mean?)
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Jun 20 - 01:47 AM

If the name was intended to allude to the best-known Ingeborg in German culture - Ingeborg Bachmann - Hubert Feyerabend's imputation of sympathy or tolerance towards Nazism has to be way off beam.