" don't know what you mean by oral tradition ..."
Perhaps this might help - plenty of'big' words here
Jim
Oral tradition in music
The term “oral tradition,” long used to denote a concept of basic importance in the study of folk speech, has been adopted without reserva¬tion by students of folk music in the Western world. It has given good service in that field and in the integra¬tion of the twin studies of speech and music within the more general folklore. Presumably, it could serve also to tie together the studies of the folk and the fine arts of music within the more general musicology—an equally desirable end. But there are several reasons why the term does not serve this second function any too well.
In the first place, it is a curious but incontrovertible fact that the term “oral tradition” and the study of folk music have not only been elaborated outside of musi¬cology, but have never become acclimatized there. On the one hand, to paraphrase Leonard Bloomfield’s re¬marks upon students of (speech) literature, the majority of musicologists are not primarily interested in music, but in the literature of the European fine art of music, its grammar and syntax (harmony and counterpoint), and have dug neither deeply nor broadly enough even in that rich field to find either oral tradition or folk music, except in some rather superficial aspects. On the other hand, the valiant little minority of comparative musicologists—primarily interested in music rather than the literature of music—has not yet worked up far enough from its logical beginnings with primitive music to tie in either the concept of oral tradition or the study of folk music with the fine art of music, European or other. See discussion in SONG: FOLK SONG AND THE MUSIC
OF FOLK SONG.
In the second place, though students of folk speech in the Western world can perhaps afford to ignore the comparatively rare instrumental speech (signal-drum¬ming, Morse code, deaf-and-dumb manual speech, etc.), and while students of folk music can make the term “oral tradition” stretch to serve consideration of fiddle- tunes, banjo-picking, and harmonica-playing, musicians can hardly be expected to regard the term seriously in speaking of a Beethoven symphony. They would recog¬nize the role of oral transmission in the fine art of music if it were explained to them. But they would know it as plain “tradition”—the tradition of Joachim, Caruso, or De Reszke, or of Palestrina or Bach. In the former cases, they would be referring to very concrete musical realities, transmitted largely by word of mouth. In the latter, they would be referring to substantial stylistic generalizations conventionally dealt with in written words. In both cases, they would be journeying far from what the folklorist calls “oral tradition.” The increasing dominance of in¬strumental music in the Western world since 1600 has pushed consciousness of oral processes into the back¬ground and placed main emphasis upon aural processes Musicians recognize “playing by ear” and “singing by rote” (singing what is heard); but traditions of both, together with the allied art of improvisation, are utterly dead in professional life, and no serious consideration— to the best of present knowledge—has been given to their revival. The term “aural tradition” is no substitute. For the mere suggestion, that there were any but heard music, would seem ridiculous.
In the third place, it may be remarked that in the study of folklore in general the term “oral tradition” is used a bit loosely. Three separate meanings in common use may be distinguished: 1) an inherited accumulation of materials; 2) the process of inheritance, cultivation, and transmission thereof; 3) the technical means em¬ployed. This is not an unusual semantic complication and does not confuse us unduly as long as we remain in the field of folk music. But it may confuse us when we attempt integration of the folk and fine arts of music. And the uninitiated musicologist, upon whose coopera¬tion we would largely depend in such an endeavor, might be pardoned if he were to accuse the folklorist of cult- worship in placing such strong dependence upon a con¬cept that must seem almost mystical to him.
A fourth consideration bears upon this misunderstand¬ing. Popularization of the European fine art of music has itself achieved such cultlike devotion that oral tradi¬tion and folk music alike are very generally regarded, by professional musicians, as a low form of musical life Almost universal adoption has been given to a theory of unilinear evolution whereby the art of music progresses ever onward and upward from primitive, through folk and popular, to the fine art. The possibilities that esti¬mable qualities may be lost as well as gained, that the order of historical development may have been different in different places, and that the whole hierarchical con¬ception may be unwarrantably subjective, have ap¬parently been little explored.
With these considerations in mind, it would seem that our difficulty were twofold: on the one hand, ambiguity in the use of the word “oral”; on the other, lack of at¬tention to the basic conditions and processes—the dynamics—of music tradition in general. Oral tradition is only one of many kinds of tradition. Examination of other traditions, or rather, classes of tradition, as they function in connection with music will show that if we range beside each other the main classes of tradition that affect both the folk and the fine arts of music, they cease to be mutually exclusive categories of things, but rather generalizations, useful to study, of a flow of events whose outer limits show well-defined opposite characteristics at the same time that the inner relations show almost unbroken shadings of hybridization or accultur from one extreme to the other. After this is done, may hope to make some progress with the proble oral tradition.
Tradition, as the handing on of acquired charistics, has been said to be the basic distinction be man and the other animals. Korzybski, in adoptiwj more abstract homolog, refers to “time-binding” as abling men to communicate over intervals of time, that the younger members of a group can begin wf the older leave off. According to him, it is man’s prin survival mechanism, in terms of which relative or insanity can be measured. Whether or not acqu- characteristics can be inherited biologically, there can no doubt that they are inherited socially. And whc or not these serve, as Korzybski believes they do, principal survival mechanisms of individual men, t' can be no doubt that they do serve human culture munities in such a way. There would seem to be t grounds for very serious evaluation of tradition in study of cultural activity.
In the schematic outline given below, the main i] to which we already admit the term “tradition,” gether with some additional uses to which it would ; we must admit it, are grouped so as to show a field operations within it, and the environment in which beet are present to us.

Music tradition, as envisaged here, is a function of culture—a dynamic conception. With respect to the finr sense of the term “oral tradition” to which reference wm made above, this appears to us, however, as an accumu¬lation of material products-a repertoire of songs, dancesi etc.-and so, structural in character. But we must not be deceived by this illusion, which is entirely subjective and a direct result of our individual existences in generic! space-time. The repertoire as a whole and its relatic® to the culture of which it is an accumulation of tradi¬tions are in a constant state of flux.
With respect to the second sense of the term to whicr reference was made above, we must recognize two main types, oral and written, which combine in a variety of ways that we may conveniently set down as: predomi¬nantly oral, mixed (more or less equally) oral and writ¬ten and predominantly written. Unquestionably, pure oral tradition can only be found in the more primitive musics. Whether or not a pure written tradition, com¬parable to the higher mathematics of speech, exists or
here ^        ^ ^ mUSÍC need not be sPeculated upon
With respect to the third meaning of the term, atten¬tion should be called to another type of tradition, that operates not only through the persons in the field which is studied, but also through the persons who do the study¬ing of the field. Traditions of control are of two main types: intrinsic, D, operating within the music activity, and extrinsic, E, operating from outside the music activ¬ity, in the environment-the general field of culture. We aie conscious of traditions of control in the field of municipal, state, national, and international politics, and even in the politics of organizations and other groups. In our study of folk music, as elsewhere, these operate laree- y below the threshold of consciousness and receive little if any criticism from their owner (though plenty of it from his f
ellows!). It is evident that both carriers and students of folk music hold a variety of traditional attitudes toward their respective activity—attitudes fostered and expressed, often as not, qua oral tradition, rr want it, or expect it, to change; or they do not bk it or do not expect it to do so. They want to ve it, but not to put it to new uses; or vice versa. They i to preserve it for themselves, or they want to popu- it. And so on. Sometimes they want to do two are apparently contradictory things at once, or at ent times, or in different ways. These attitudes and ! actions that flow from them are essentially critical I character. But we seldom subject them to disciplined sm, because they appear to us as self-evidently . good, desirable, or beautiful. In fact, they present thoughts and feelings about what is right, good, ible or beautiful, not only in musical terms, but in • of life and culture in general.
This map has been made as comprehensive as possible within a small space. It is not to be confused with the territory mapped. There is quite a bit of dead reckoning in it, and there are many omissions. It is based upon a competence solely within captions A.5 and B.2 of the field. The validity of captions ^4.1-5 and £.1-4 is, how¬ever, customarily granted by scholars for purposes of discussion. As to captions A.6-9, the question marks indi¬cate a doubt their reality is more than suggestive.
We may presume that in using the term “oral tradi¬tion” students of folk speech and of folk music have taken for granted that what the voice produces is sound and that it is heard. Extension of the term to include sound produced by instruments has not disturbed them, though it might well have done so. Oral-ness easily implies aural-ness, and avoids the clumsy hyphenated term. The heart of the problem of the use of the term “oral tradition” in the integration of folk music and the general study of music is reached, however, when we face the tradition of writing—written tradition. Both music and speech must have been purely oral up to the time writing—even the crudest visual-oral correlations other than gesture—was introduced, and they have re¬mained so ever since in many places where writing has not been cultivated. A very vigorous oral tradition in speech can flourish among people who are literate in speech. Music literacy being even rarer than speech literacy, oral tradition in music is probably the more widespread. But without a very vigorous oral tradition of writing, neither speech nor music writing can be learned. Writing cannot be read—either in song or upon an instrument—without recourse to that same oral tradi¬tion. What the connection is between the oral tradition of folklore and the oral traditions of speech and music writing in general is difficult to say.
Though competent students may disagree upon the amount of material (A and B) for which there may be provenience in written tradition and the amount of influence music literacy may have upon the processes (C and D), there seems to be general agreement that both provenience and influence are ponderable. What we conventionally call “oral tradition" in folk music is, then, only predominantly oral (or even oral-aural). For though in many cases we cannot prove written provenience or influence, there are so many cases in which we can prove it, that the inference is: folk music is definable in part by survival in it; upon a “lower” social level where writing is rare, of traditions that have sifted down from a “higher” social level where writing is more common. It seems untenable today to say it is exclusively this, but equally so to say it is none of it. A theoretical 50-50 normal ratio between the dying survival of written tradition and the living creation of oral tradition would seem to be the safest working hypothesis. This would apply, of course, to the field (A.5 and £.1-4)—the accumulation of materials—and might, with respect to individual products (songs, dances, etc.) vary theoretically from a ratio of 1-99 to one of 99-1, but ordinarily within a much narrower neighbor¬hood of the norm, 50-50. We are, however, speaking here mainly of norms, rxot of the infinite variety of departures from them.
Taking all these considerations into account, it would seem the better part of wisdom to confine the use of the term “oral tradition” to bona, fide word of mouth (os, oris), substituting for it, as the main technical process of folk music, the less picturesque but more accurate “unwritten tradition,” with the understanding that by “unwritten” we mean “predominantly unwrit¬ten.” This would seem especially desirable in connection with the discussions now being held more and more frequently on both sides of the Atlantic relative to the problem of the notation of folk music.
The Occidental (international) technique of music notation—probably the most accurate and most widely used throughout the world—is a development of the fine art of European music. With its use, throughout more than a thousand years, this art has been able to individualize its products and assure reproduction of them wherever its traditions are elaborately maintained with a high degree of accuracy. Ur-texte have become defined by their composers, during the last century, with increasing precision. This means with increasing elab¬orateness. Today, notation of very minute inflections of phrasing, accentuation, nuances, etc., are a sine qua non of the typically unique product of value. The tendencv shows no sign of abating.
When we range beside such products a product of foli. art, we see at once they are upon two very different levels. If one were asked, “Where is the First Prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavichord?” one could say, “Here." And if it were played within established norms of scholarship, that would be it and all of it. But if one were asked, “Where is Barbara Allen?” the answer. “Here,” followed by the best rendition of an excellent informant, might be difficult to explain as “both it and not it, and certainly not all of it.” One could sing only one variant of one version.
The gap between the highly individualized identity of the product of fine art and the highly generalized identity of the product of folk art must not be under¬estimated. Their treatment by a science of folklore oi by musicology demands two very different techniques. Their evaluation in terms of critical method involves two very different sets of criteria. The single standard of musical value, maintained by many historico-musicol- ogists, cannot serve here. And the study of folk song might help to demonstrate that it should not serve any¬where.
The last matter to be stressed at this point is the usefulness of a revised concept of oral tradition in cor¬recting unilinear theories of the evolution of music in another connection. If the above analysis can stand, the order of historical development is definitely as in sec¬tion B of the conspectus, i.e. there can be no folk music in the proper sense of the word until there has been for some time a fine art of which it can be in part a dying survival. The common confusion of primitive and folk music, as idioms, should be clarified from a music- technical as it can be from an anthropological viewpoint. We can then envisage the formation and differentiation of music idiom as twin processes of ac¬culturation: a) between families and b) between idioms, with the potentiality always that both may operate at once or separately and in various ways in one and the same situation.
Perhaps in conclusion the reader should be reminded that the latter part of the preceding argument applies solely to the Occidental family of music tradition. The relationship of oral and written traditions undoubtedly differs greatly in the other families. One of the most important tasks of comparative musicology is to clarify this relationship upon a world basis. This will involve a revaluation of the notation system and a thorough critical and technical revision of the whole concept of written tradition and its relation to unwritten tradition. For the basic differences between the idioms and their respective products are largely the result of the notation system and the elaborate traditions by which its cur¬rency is maintained.
The Occidental notation system is par excellence a control system, and its use is a process by which traditions of control of the most varied, even opposed, kinds may be exercised. It is a set of directions for the reproduction of products so as to conform to the peculiar traditions of the Occidental fine art. When, therefore, we notate in it a product of the traditions of the folk art, the reproduction is almost bound to be as much, if not
more, in the traditions of the fine art than in those of the folk art. The act, in short, is one of translation from one idiom into another. The notated folk song is, then, not a primary but a secondary datum of study. Employment of special diacritical symbols to indicate deviations from the 12-tone equal temperament, short¬ening or lengthening of the duration of notes and rests, presence of slides, waverings, peculiar attacks, releases, etc., not traditional in the fine art, may increase the accuracy of the translation. But at the same time, it may lull the student into an illusion that it is not a translation and that he has before him a product with something of the individuality of a product of the fine art.
To offset these dangers, we have fortunately, in an increasing number of cases, the sound-recording-a primary objective datum for study, especially when it is accompanied by motion-picture film. Furthermore, it may perhaps not be premature to mention the fact that both in Europe and in the United States electronic- mechanic devices are being experimented with by which at least the single, unaccompanied melodic line may be automatically and objectively graphed. With the perfection of these devices, the rigorously scientific study of unwritten tradition in music (and possibly also in speech) can finally get under way, clear not only of the inaccuracies of our conventional techniques of writing, but of the subjective element inherent in even the most conscientious and skilled use of added dia¬critical symbols.        
CHARLES SEEGER

Standard Dictionary of Flklore, Mythology and Legend, Funk and Wagnaall 1950