FOLK-MUSIC. Music which is the outgrowth of a people's development, as opposed to national music, which owes its existence to the character istic compositions of a few individuals. National music, however, may be, and generally is. based on the folk-music of the country. Folk-tunes are the wild flowers in the realm of music. They are valued to-day more highly than ever, both for t heir intrinsic beauty and as themes for composers with nationalistic tendencies. By way of supple menting the earlier collections of songs and dances made by private individuals, the governments of several European countries have in recent times borne the expense of gathering and printing what ever could be found of this indigenous folk-musie, while the inventive faculty of composers has been frequently rejuvenated, during the last eight cen turies, at this inexhaustible fount of original melody. This is particularly noticeable in the case of Hungarian folk-music, which has pro vided material not only for native composers. but also for Germans, especially those who made their home in Vienna. Haydn made good use of folk music, and in more recent times Liszt collected a great number of the Magyar melodies as played by the Gypsies, and used them as the themes for his Hungarian rhapsodies. Even Schubert, the most spontaneous of all melodists, was so struck by the charm of the Magyar melodies that he copied some of them and embodied them in his works. Brahms and others did the same thing. In Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and Scandinavia, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Dvoi•iik, Crieg, and many others adopted the melody of the people, or fash ioned their own in its image. Beethoven went to Scotland and Ireland for the melodies of some of his songs, and to Russia for the themes of some of his chamber compositions. Nor have Oriental countries been ignored. Puccini trav eled as far as Japan in one of his operas, Edgar Kelley wrote a Chinese suite, and Ed ward Maenowell an Indian suite based on ab original Anteriean melodies.
The lower the composer descends in the scale of civilization. the MOM refractory his borrowed material is apt to prove. While music I he music of uncivilized peoples—also comes under the head of folk-music, in the widest sense of the word, it is too different in character and too wide in scope to be treated of under this head. One inkconeeption regarding it. may, however, ho corrected here. It is not true. eommonly assumed, that the vocal music of the lower races is always associated with words. The songs of savages are frequently songs without words, or with words that have no meaning. But. when we
come to inedia•al European folk-song, we lied that what Wagner wrote concerning it is true: "The wo•d-poem and the tone-poem are one and the same thing. The people never think of sing ing their songs without words.. . . The two seem to belong together, like husband and wife." Owing to this close adaptation of the music to the words, the mediteval folk-music is indeed more artistic than the art-music of the ecclesiastical composers of the same period, who usually maltreated their words, or buried them tinder a rank growth of contrapuntal artifices. Nor is this the only point of superiority. While the ecclesiastical composers were still hampered by the nowichly Church modes, folk-music had in stinctively adopted the modern major and minor modes, and thus represented, in its day, the mush- of the future. Furthermore, it had much greater rhythmic variety, as well as more melodic originality and charm, so that it is not sur prising that the Church composers began, as early as the twelfth century, to adopt folk-tunes as themes for their masses and motets. Too often they distorted them almost past recognition; but. in the sixteenth century Luther had the courage to discard the monotonous Gregorian chants and substitute for them in church good folk-songs, unaltered except as to the words. It is not difficult to understand why folk-songs should have been, as a rule, more spontaneous than the art-music of these early times. The Church composers were hampered by artificial rules, and there were only a limited number of them, where as the folk-singers were countless in number and could do as they pleased. The assertion made' in musical histories that the folk-songs of Europe were invented by the Troubadours (q.v.) and Minnesingers (q.v.), and from them passed to the people, is contrary to the facts. It was the Troubadours and Itlinnesingers who got many of their tunes from the people; and among the people they were a matter of slow growth. Few, perhaps, were the product of one mind. A man might spontaneously conceive a melody to give expression to his feelings of love or religious fervor, or some other joyous or sad emotion; others would repeat it., with additions and improvements, until finally a perfect melody would be evol•ed—a melody that spoke to the hearts of all. Usually folk-songs were sung as melodies only; in some cases harmonic parts were added, but the best of these melodies are so rich that they seem to require no harmonies.