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Recent Work in Folk-Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
In the years before the European War folk-music was an issue in English musical politics. That is to say, musicians debated how far the revival of interest in our own national melody, which was an undisputed fact, was really important for English musical life and, as a further corollary, for the whole art of music. The issue no longer burns. People like myself who have an intense personal love of folk-song think that the case for it has been established; those who do not include it among their musical enthusiasms point to the apparent general apathy and say, if not in so many words, at any rate with a movement of their shoulders: We always said the stuff was only fit for cranks. It is not my purpose to try to fan these dead embers, though I am going to rake over one old controversy in this paper. My aim is to offer to you as a jury representing the musical people of this country a survey of the present position of folk-song regarded both scientifically and artistically, and more particularly to present a balance sheet of the last dozen years' working in this department of national music.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1937
References
1 Journal of the English Folk-Dance and Song Society (1934), vol. 'I p. 173.Google Scholar
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