How old is a traditional song?

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: paddymac
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 09:55 AM

O'Carolan is generally considered to have been a far better composer than player. His compositions are mostly thought to be in the "renaissance style(s)", in contrast to "traditional" styles. Regardless of such scholarly interpretation, right or wrong, most of we mere mortals consider his work to be trad and beautiful. I have a copy of Grainne Yeats' book on O'Carolan and I'll check it later today, just to be sure I haven't strayed too far here.

As to a "technically correct" answer to the question of the thread, "trad" is anything in the public domain.

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: GUEST,Bill Kennedy
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 09:40 AM

The literal meaning and implication is of some information transferred & handed down over time, orally, but that is not to say that something picked up in a book can't become traditional, especially as fiddle tunes are adapted to other instruments, say pipes, that require different phrasing, or note changes, which are then passed along to other pipers, and likewise, from singing to harp, or pipes to fiddle, etc. Tomás o Canainn makes a good point for music that 'sounds traditional' springing fully formed from the head of some musician or singer, and I think he's right. Another case should be made for people learning songs from recordings. That to me is tradition, the only difference being the musician is not physically present, but the action of transmission is similar, nothing beats learning a song from another person when you can ask questions, and hear the story, etc. but the tradition lives through recorded sources in my opinion. Now on to what is Folk music....

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 05:06 AM

I suspect that trad or quasi-trad (yecch! sorry!) tunes are generally older than songs. (I hope that makes sense ...) I'd expect a tune to continue in a recognisable form for a good many years, while a song's words are liable very quickly to become mangled, re-ordered, altered and generally mistreated by oral transmission. Also, I guess that it's easier to date versions of lyrics from printed versions than it is for tunes, because they were much more likely to be written down or printed: so many broadsides have "to the air of ...", but how many have actual music?

Steve

Subject: RE: How old is a traditional song?
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 04:05 AM

I've related these stories on other threads, but I think they might be appropriate here as well.

A couple of years ago, at the local jam session here in the town where I live, someone requested a piece that is apparently considered "traditional" in trad. music circles these days. But the piece was from the renaissance period, and was one I had played many years earlier when I was only playing "early music", which is considered a sub-category of classical.

And I was told by a couple of Scotsmen a couple of years ago a session at Common Ground on the Hill (we thought we were having a "traditional celtic session", but found out otherwise), that Turlough O'Carolan is not even considered traditional Irish music (too newfangled or something?). And if I'm not mistaken, he was composing music in the late 1600s.

So who knows? Maybe some pieces are a lot older than people realize.

Subject: How old is a traditional song?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 03:42 AM

Or, how long is a poece of string? Silly question!

When I was a little lad in primary school, singing songs collected by Sharp and Baring-Gould, ten years was a lifetime and fifty years almost incomprehensible. I used to think--or feel, rather--that trad songs were maybe hundreds of years old. With the experience of my years (now fifty is a lifetime) I think most of the songs I know are probably from the 19th century; some are from the previous century, as they refer to historical events or personages; and a few must be older still. But I also know that Ewan McColl, for example, had several of his songs come back to him as "trad", sometimes with new "trad" verses ...

Any thoughts on this matter?

Steve