Q
"In any case, a musical break, or a brief spoken piece that furthers the lyric's story, may be one answer."
I don't know anything about Aragon singing, but would be very interested in finding out in order to compare.
For me, the tight, bare narrative of the English language balladry militates against introducing musical breaks in ballads, or any narrative song for that matter. In the end, I really don't believe that a ten minute ballad presents any problem to the listener as long as it is well enough sung. Some of the techniques that could be used have been discussed earlier on. I think there is more room for discussion as length is an (I believe) over-exaggerated problem - usually blamed on the audience's attention-span but far more likely to be down to the singer's lack of confidence in his/her ability to hold the attention of an audience. MacColl admitted as much when he described how, when he first started singing ballads at clubs, he broke the ballad Gil Maurice into two parts, one before the interval, the other after it. He desisted when audience members complained.
Up to twenty years ago here in Ireland we were still able to record storytellers with tales lasting well over an hour long, and the shorter ones were far longer than the avarage ballad.
Jim Carroll