To: fsjlb4@aurora.alaska.edu
Cc: Cley@juno.com, minstrel@pbm.com
Subject: Re: minstrel: Bardic, Period, Etc. (fwd)
Message-Id: <19980930.130954.4543.0.cley@juno.com>
References: <Pine.OSF.3.96.980930094539.25517I-100000@aurora.alaska.edu>
From: cley@juno.com (Cynthia J Ley)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 17:23:05 EDT
Sender: owner-minstrel@rt.com
Precedence: bulk

On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:45:48 -0800 (AKDT) Joshua Badgley
<fsjlb4@aurora.alaska.edu> writes:
>On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Melvin, Stephen: wrote:
>> > And frankly, original music is
>> > perhaps the MOST period choice a bard can make.  
>
>The choice is period, but is the music?  Do you know what that 
>audience would have liked because if you want to 'recreate' medieval
music then 
>it needs to be for a medieval ear.  If, on the other hand, you want to
>entertain a modern ear -- perhaps with folk and medieval tendancies --
>that is not going to be a 'medieval' song but instead a contemporary 
>song,as contemporary as rap and rock n' roll for purposes of
periodicity.

And this is wrong how? As a friend said, this is the Society for Creative
Anachronism, not the Society for Compulsive Authenticy. What you're
talking about here is "perioyd" music as opposed to "period." Don't we
refer to our time period as "the Current Middle Ages?"

This is not to say that we should be composing Renaissance rap music.
What it does say is that we can be following the known styles of the day,
creating original music based thematically on it. Most of the SCA-period
songs floating around are based on modern music theory, but it's what
most of us and our ears know.

An aside, but something to think about as a performing singer. There is 
the essential fact that a folk song recreates itself every time it is
performed. No two people will sing the same piece exactly alike. A ballad
needs a framework as well as evolution--otherwise all you have are some
30 verses of  "Thomas Rhymer" being sung exactly the same verse after
deadly verse.  It is an oral tradition, and one of the joys and
challenges of maintaining an oral tradition is that songs evolve and
change to suit the wearer. I sing songs I like and shift them subtly to
please me--I consider them all to be stories, and do what I feel suitable
to evoke the drama and the mood. Can I point to the things I do and
document them as period? No. I go with what my instincts and my musical
senses tell me, and I'm willing to bet that quite a few of our forebears
did the same. But the tradition was oral, passed down by word of mouth
rather than by pen to paper.

>I have no qualms about introducing folk songs to people if that's what
>they want to hear.  On the other hand I don't claim that it's period 
>or 'like period' because that would be a lie.

Nothing wrong with that. It's your music.

>And for those truly interested in creating period music I'm sure you 
>can find ways of filking period tunes as much as modern ones, and
learning
>what it is it sounds like, then make more period-sounding tunes from
>there.  It's all what you want to put in and what you want to get out 
>of it, IMHO.

Great case in point: Tania Opland wrote a filk song based on a medieval
Danish piece, the Oerthan Call To Battle.


				yis,

				Arlys

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