Can anyone help? - simple vs arranged folksongs

Subject: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,Cris
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 06:18 AM

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm doing a project for college in which I need to compare the common/simple version of a folksong with a more complicated/arranged version. Eventually I will be teaching the songs to elementary school and college students. If anyone knows of a song that would work really well for this, please let me know. Thanks!

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 06:28 AM

Cris,
for the laugh in between play them Tom Lehrer singing his song Clementine (lyrics in DT).
For the serious part you might consider to compare Martin Carthy singing Scarborough Fair with Simon & Garfunkel singing Scarborough Fair.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 08:20 AM

How about comparing the sung shanties of A L Lloyd and the orchestral versions of Vaughn Williams?

LTS

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 09:09 AM

Percy Dearmer did a number of orchestral arrangements of folk melodies. Though some might quibble on the folk status of the Shaker melody "Simple Gifts", comparing this melody to its various arrangements might make the same musical point you are trying to make.

T.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Grab
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 09:29 AM

Check out Bob Dylan. There's often serious difference between the first recorded version of a song, and what he and his band (or Band) play on stage in the various live recordings. Check out

www.bobdylan.com/albums

which has streaming version of all the songs on all his albums - good research if you've got a few days to kill and a nice fast link! :-)

Grab.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,Sorcha
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 09:53 AM

Wasn't it Aaron Copeland who did an orchestral medley of American folk tunes? The only one I can remember for sure that was in it was Turkey in the Straw", and then there is Anton Dvorck's New World Symphony, the theme melody is Going Home.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Vixen
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 10:19 AM

Copeland is right on the money "Applachian Spring" is the name of the composition.

This could be really fun!

Enjoy--

V

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:13 AM

The American composer, Roy Harris, did a beautiful piano suite of trad. tunes, including "Black is the colour of my tru love's hair" and if I remember right, "streets of Laredo". If you need more info, let me know. My brother studied privately with him.

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:33 AM

Besides "Simple Gifts" in Appalachian Spring, Copeland used the fiddle tune "Bonaparte's Retreat" (as played by W.M. Stepp, collected in the Library of Congress, and reissued on CD) in "Rodeo", and several other folk songs in A Folk Song Suite (the cumulative song "I Had a Cat, My Cat Pleased Me" stands out in my memory as one of these).

Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst all collected and orchestrated English Folk Songs. Tchaikovsky used a folksong ("Dunai, moi dunai"), a Russian Orthodix hymn, a tsarist anthem and the French national anthem in his 1812 Overture. Charles Ives used lots of American folksongs and hymn tunes in his works (for example, "Three Places in NEw England").

But the tune for "Going Home" was written by Dvorak for his New World Symphony (Symphony No. 5 or 9, depending on your numbering system) and became a "folk song" only afterward.

Or you could contrast a field recording of a song, versus it's "Souped-up" version by a group like the Limeliters or Peter, Paul and Mary.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,Yuval Berger
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:45 AM

Hi! Hoe about comparing Van Morrison's rendition of the "Star of the Couty Down" (or even a more simple version) with the Swingle Singers' rendition to the same song? Good Luck! Yuval.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Molly Malone
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:47 AM

Just don't do Metallica's "Whiskey in the Jar"!

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Mbo
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:49 AM

Oh, I could mention lots o' em. In Beethoven's "Battle of Vittoria" he encorporates the French folk song "Malbrouk," more well known to us as "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow." Oops, gotta run. I tellee more later!

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,LEJ
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 12:27 PM

Copland, in Appalachian Spring, used an old Quaker song "It's a Gift to be Simple."

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Jacob B
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 12:28 PM

You couldn't ask for a simpler tune than Shepherd's Hey, with it's pentatonic scale. I believe that either Percy Grainger or Ralph Vaughan Williams did an orchestral arrangement of it.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 02:30 PM

"'Tis a gift to be simple" is actually the first line of "Simple Gifts", and it's a Shaker song originally, not Quaker, although the Quakers are fond of it, too.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Jacob B
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 03:54 PM

And, Mahler used a minor-key version of Frere Jacques in his second symphony.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Jo Taylor
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 06:44 PM

Or a third version of Shepherds' Hey - that recorded by Edward II.
Jo

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Jo Taylor
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:00 PM

Sorry - if you've not come across Edward II have a look
here
and here
and here

Jo

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From:
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 07:08 PM

Or in the instance of Stan Rogers' Mary Ellen Carter, Scott MacMillan, has taken it and arranged it for a Choral group, the Chebucto Community Singers. This group has sung a number of Folk Songs using choral arrangements.

Another group, the Cape Breton Chorale, who have a web-site, has sung arrangements of other folk songs, as well as quite a number of other types of songs over the years. For instance, the "Cape Breton Anthem", The Island. IF you need more information on these groups, let me know by e-mail and I'll get you more information.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 28 Jan 00 - 11:28 PM

Is the waltz from Aaron Copeland's Rodeo the same as "I Ride An Old Paint"? The rhythm is a little different, but is this the kind of thing you're looking for?

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Brendy
Date: 29 Jan 00 - 01:06 AM

Martin Simpson's version of 'Your Cheatin' Heart', and the Hank Williams' one.
Alternatively, Simpson's '(You) wont matter anymore', and Buddy Holly's.
B.

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From:
Date: 29 Jan 00 - 02:25 AM

Domestic label for Rich Minus, blues singer out of Austin, Texas?

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Mbo
Date: 29 Jan 00 - 09:35 PM

Virgil Thompson's suite for the documentary "The Plow That Broke The Plains" has a section called "Cows" is THE best arrangement of "I Ride An Old Paint." It also has lots of his own beautiful music in it.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: Sourdough
Date: 30 Jan 00 - 01:16 AM

I recall vaguely hearing someone lecture on jazz musicians who have been heavily influenced by folk musicians. I'm not talking Dixieland although that certainly would work but there are musicians such as Miles Davis or Thelonius Monk who have studied taditional music for themes. Perhaps Cannonball Addrly was one. I don't remember any details but maybe this is enought to jog a memory loose form someone else.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: dusterjim
Date: 30 Jan 00 - 04:31 AM

Peter, Paul and Mary did a song that comes to mind about a folk song that went through a couple of modifications. I think that the song was titled Ole' Blue, or I had a dog and his name was blue, or something like that. It was on their Peter Paul and Mary In Concert album recorded way back in the "Whoagee Days"

duster
http://sites.netscape.net/dusterjim1/volunteers

Subject: Thankyou
From: GUEST,Cris
Date: 30 Jan 00 - 03:02 PM

Thank you all so much for your wonderful suggestions. I will do a little research and let you know what seems to work out. Thanks again!

Subject: RE: Can anyone help?
From: alison
Date: 30 Jan 00 - 06:01 PM

Copeland again.. wasn't the "I ride old paint" part of the "Corale Nocturne" from "Rodeo".

If you did "appalachian spring/ simple gifts" then you can show how it changed into "Lord of the Dance"

slainte

alison