Shambles, I'm thinking about what you've written. Some interesting points but you appear to have a bias against those who sight read, and you are confusing those who use collections with those who collect."The best way to communicate a folk song/tune is by hearing it live. Next best is a recording and lastly, the printed page. There are a few gifted 'sight' readers of music who can read the melody from a page as most of us would read a poem but this is not true for all." What happens when you cannot hear the music live because you're stuck away among people that listen to an entirely different style of music? A style of music, through radio perhaps, that seeks to place a greater and greater distance between those favoured few who make the music and the rest of us uncultured, unmusical peasants who must be grateful for the chance to hear it? Murray Schaeffer (Sp?) opined that recording was a death knell for traditional folk as people began to see the recorded versions as the only version and ceased to transmit the tunes live. Those who were collecting the tunes at the beginning of last century didn't have the recording devices we now have and take for granted. Written music is a short hand way of transmitting specific musical knowledge in the abscence of the performer, and it can work reasonably well. There are a few gifted peformers who can hear a song once and then play it back well but this is not true for all.
Years and years ago here in Canada and the States the ground apparently trembled with the sound of the herds of buffalo. We can no longer hear that sound, the buffalo have been killed and driven away and have almost died out. If it were not for the writings of those who were here at the time of the buffalo we would not know what had been done and what had been lost. Folk song collectors were often moved by a genuine interest in the people whose songs they were collecting and were led also by a feeling that something was passing and that it should not go unmourned and unnoticed.
In another thread folk music, traditional music, is likened to a river. I think of the tunes and songs more as vessels. Some are more durable than others, some have cracked and been repaired, news ones are being made, some don't last very long, others broke long ago and can only be seen or used carefully and sparingly, others are packed away in an attic trunk and wait for some future explorer to open the box and wonder what this thing is, for some we only have a description of how our ancestors used leaves, hands, or bark to make a cup. In all cases the singer, the musician, is the water that fills the cup and shares it. So when I take granny's old mug off the shelf, with the chip repaired with china bond and hold it in the wrong hand as I hand it to my guest, does it matter when the water in it is good and refreshing?