Why were ballads originally sung?
- That is almost always impersonal
- Is objective
- In which the dramatis personae often speak unannounced as in a play
- The language is singularly simple, direct and unlaboured
- Poetical imagery and figures are rarely employed
- What is superfluous is rigorously excluded
- The narrator plunges into his story without preliminaries. ...
What did ballads come from?
The ballad evolved and grew from several medieval roots, most notably Provencal folk music. The form had been known orally for centuries prior, with storytellers using the line breaks and rhythm to enrapture their audiences as they passed along tales and histories – many of them important to survival.
What are ballads usually written about?
What are ballads usually written about? A ballad is a short narrative poem which is written to be sung and has a simple but dramatic theme. Ballads can be of love, death, the supernatural or even a combination of the three. Ballads most often have abrupt openings, brief descriptions and economical, although frequent, dialogue.
What are ballads also known as?
What is a ballad? A ballad is a type of lyric and also known as a Folk song. It is any light, simple, slow song that tells a story. It narrates religious, mythological, historical and war stories. A ballad can be a slow, mournful love song — but it can also be a silly, light poem.
What is the origin of ballads?
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century.
Where did folk ballads originate?
Early ballads, which in English date to before 1600, may also be derived from other medieval sources, including metrical romances, folk tales, and apocryphal gospels about the life of Jesus. Some early ballads from this tradition traveled to North America with the first European settlers.
What was the purpose of ballads?
The key purpose of a ballad is to tell a story, with all of the fundamentals of a story included: plot, characters, narrator, dialogue, setting, drama. Some might be written about current events, whereas others are more sensational, focusing on myths or historical stories.
What ballad means?
Definition of ballad 1a : a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing a ballad about King Arthur. b : an art song accompanying a traditional ballad. 2 : a simple song : air. 3 : a popular song especially : a slow romantic or sentimental song a ballad they danced to at their wedding reception.
What is ballads in literature?
A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines.
When did ballads originate?
By the 15th century, Geoffrey Chaucer began to fine-tune the structure of the ballata to create the modern ballad. Within a century, ballad broadsides written by so-called "pot poets," and shunned by artists who favored the more formal sonnet, spread across the English countryside and into the popular culture.
Why do poets usually write ballads?
Sometimes poets write ballads specifically to react against poetry they see as overly intellectual or obscure. Stories. Ballads tend to be narrative poems, poems that tell stories, as opposed to lyric poems, which emphasize the emotions of the speaker. Ballad stanzas.
When did ballads start?
From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music.
What are ballads written in?
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c, b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. This can be seen in this stanza from " Lord Thomas and Fair Annet ":
What are broadside ballads?
Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem. By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories. They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s. Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions. Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs. The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.
What is a ballad in music?
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music . Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the later medieval period until the 19th century.
How many ballads were there in The Pearl?
The traditional form and content of the ballad were modified to form the basis for twenty-three bawdy pornographic ballads that appeared in the underground Victorian magazine The Pearl, which ran for eighteen issues between 1879 and 1880.
What is the theme of a ballad?
In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic. Themes concerning rural labourers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.
What are the three major groups of European ballads?
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional , broadside and literary . In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term 'ballad' to mean a slow love song.
Where did the ballads come from?
Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the later medieval period until the 19th century.
What is a traditional ballad?
Traditional ballads are narrative folksongs - simply put, they are folksongs that tell stories. They tell all kinds of stories, including histories, legends, fairy tales, animal fables, jokes, and tales of outlaws and star-crossed lovers.
Entries linking to ballad
"dancing party, social assembly for dancing," 1630s, from French, from Old French baller "to dance," from Late Latin ballare "to dance," from Greek ballizein "to dance, jump about," literally "to throw one's body" (ancient Greek dancing being highly athletic), from PIE root *gwele- "to throw, reach." Extended meaning "very enjoyable time" is American English slang from 1945, perhaps 1930s in African-American vernacular..
Share ballad
Harper, D. (n.d.). Etymology of ballad. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved November 7, 2021, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/ballad
How does a folk ballad work?
Typically, the folk ballad tells a compact little story that begins eruptively at the moment when the narrative has turned decisively toward its catastrophe or resolution. Focusing on a single, climactic situation, the ballad leaves the inception of the conflict and the setting to be inferred or sketches them in hurriedly. Characterization is minimal, the characters revealing themselves in their actions or speeches; overt moral comment on the characters’ behaviour is suppressed and their motivation seldom explicitly detailed. Whatever description occurs in ballads is brief and conventional; transitions between scenes are abrupt and time shifts are only vaguely indicated; crucial events and emotions are conveyed in crisp, poignant dialogue. In short, the ballad method of narration is directed toward achieving a bold, sensational, dramatic effect with purposeful starkness and abruptness. But despite the rigid economy of ballad narratives, a repertory of rhetorical devices is employed for prolonging highly charged moments in the story and thus thickening the emotional atmosphere. In the most famous of such devices, incremental repetition, a phrase or stanza is repeated several times with a slight but significant substitution at the same critical point. Suspense accumulates with each substitution, until at last the final and revelatory substitution bursts the pattern, achieving a climax and with it a release of powerful tensions. The following stanza is a typical example:
What is a ballad song?
Ballad, short narrative folk song, whose distinctive style crystallized in Europe in the late Middle Ages and persists to the present day in communities where literacy, urban contacts, and mass media have little affected the habit of folk singing. The term ballad is also applied to any narrative composition suitable for singing.
How do ballads keep tradition alive?
Where tradition is healthy and not highly influenced by literary or other outside cultural influences, these variations keep the ballad alive by gradually bringing it into line with the style of life, beliefs, and emotional needs of the immediate folk audience. Ballad tradition, however, like all folk arts, is basically conservative, a trait that explains the references in several ballads to obsolete implements and customs, as well as the appearance of words and phrases that are so badly garbled as to indicate that the singer does not understand their meaning though he takes pleasure in their sound and respects their traditional right to a place in his version of the song. The new versions of ballads that arise as the result of cumulative variations are no less authentic than their antecedents. A poem is fixed in its final form when published, but the printed or taped record of a ballad is representative only of its appearance in one place, in one line of tradition, and at one moment in its protean history. The first record of a ballad is not its original form but merely its earliest recorded form, and the recording of a ballad does not inhibit tradition from varying it subsequently into other shapes, because tradition preserves by re-creating rather than by exact reproduction.
How many English and Scottish ballads are there?
At least one-third of the 300 extant English and Scottish ballads have counterparts in one or several of these continental balladries, particularly those of Scandinavia. In no two language areas, however, are the formal characteristics of the ballad identical.
What is the role of the ballad in literature?
The ballad also plays a critical role in the creation and maintenance of distinct national cultures. In contemporary literature and music, the ballad is primarily defined by its commitment to nostalgia, community histories, and romantic love. Albert B. Friedman The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
What countries have ballads?
The term ballad is also applied to any narrative composition suitable for singing. France, Denmark, Germany, Russia, Greece, and Spain, as well as England and Scotland, possess impressive ballad collections.
Is a poem fixed in its final form?
A poem is fixed in its final form when published, but the printed or taped record of a ballad is representative only of its appearance in one place, in one line of tradition, and at one moment in its protean history.
Where did the ballade originate?
The ballad evolved and grew from several medieval roots, most notably Provencal folk music. The form had been known orally for centuries prior, with storytellers using the line breaks and rhythm to enrapture their audiences as they passed along tales and histories – many of them important to survival. Troubadour poets developed the cadence we know today, and then spread the sweet, lilting features of the ballade to Spain, post-Norman England, and Italy. Spanish court poets immediately seized on the form, producing beautiful works through the latter Middle Ages. Italians, particularly Tuscan song-poets, created a shorter version, the ballata.
Who wrote the ballads?
When the Romantic poets came along, they found a perfect form for their lilting verbal melodies, and turned the ballad into a writer’s sport. Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Southey, and other Romanticists wrote numerous ballads, but it was the succeeding generation that immortalized the form.
What is the ballad structure?
As the century progressed, English folk and American blues musicians found the ballad structure ideal for songs of the heart. They initiated a movement that eventually swept through country and rock music, making the ballad as popular in America and England now as it was six hundred years ago – only through music, not the spoken word.
What is the rhythmic rhythm of a ballad?
Its rhythmic, alternating 4-3-4-3 line beat per quatrain stanza presents one of literature’s most natural and musical tension-then-release cadences. Verse writers, storytellers, and musicians all instinctively know this most basic, essential form – as do millions of readers and listeners.
Where did the troubadour poets spread the ballade?
Troubadour poets developed the cadence we know today, and then spread the sweet, lilting features of the ballade to Spain, post-Norman England, and Italy. Spanish court poets immediately seized on the form, producing beautiful works through the latter Middle Ages.
Who developed the cadence of the ballad?
Medieval troubadours such as Bernart de Ventadorn developed the cadence of the ballad as we know it today.
Who wrote the most famous ballad?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ’s "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is perhaps the most famous poetic ballad, while William Wordsworth and Thomas Percy also wrote extensively with the ballad form. With the arrival of the 20th century, William Butler Yeats became the foremost ballad writer in English poetry.
Where did the ballad form originate?
The ballad form became widely distributed throughout the British Isles, good songs and tales ignore regional boundaries and whether a ballad originated in England, Scotland or Europe becomes somewhat irrelevant after it has passed through the community. Text.
When did the ballads begin?
It is generally felt that the form of a sung narrative with rhyming lines; refrains etc as we now recognize the ballad had its beginnings in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were a popular form of entertainment up to the Tudor period but fell into decline.
What is the oldest ballad fragment?
There are few surviving examples of the ballads prior to the 17th century; the oldest recognized ballad fragment is Judas (Child #23) from the 13th century but this ballad no longer exists within the living tradition. It is generally felt that the form of a sung narrative with rhyming lines; refrains etc as we now recognize ...
Why are ballads revered?
The ballads were revered for their purity of poetic style and were recited rather than sung so the editors who assembled the text for publication generally ignored the tunes. The various editors and collectors had a tendency to 'tinker' with the collected ballad in an effort to produce a better version.
What is a ballad in music?
It is generally accepted that ballads in the sense that applies to traditional music can be described as narrative stories that are sung. The storylines of the older ballads stretch back many hundreds even thousands of years (e.g. King Orfeo (Child #19) is a retelling of the ancient Greek tale about Orpheus's attempted rescue of Eurydice from the underworld). They often have links with North European and Nordic folk tales and songs; some of the storyline and incidents have come out of earlier epic poems of the Norsemen and Anglo Saxons
When did the collection of old ballads begin?
The beginning of the serious collection of the old ballads began in the early eighteenth century and took up momentum when a collection containing poems and ancient ballads called Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (3 volumes) (1765) edited by Thomas Percy, later Bishop of Dromore was published.
When were broadsheets written?
Sometimes new verses were written so that that they could be sold as a new song. The broadsheets lasted from about 1550 to the early 1800s although some of the ballad sheets were still being published in Scotland in the mid 20th century.
What is a ballad song?
Quatrains are a common structure, yet this depends on the builder. Sometimes ballads feature a refrain or other repetition. While structural elements vary, what is common to all ballads is a story. A ballad is meant to communicate a tale to an audience in a vivid and memorable manner.
How to write a ballad?
To write your own ballad, you must begin by establishing your story. So free-write, as I always say. Start in a general direction and detail the events in your narrative. Feel free to wander off on tangents. Dwell on particular details. Write and write until you’ve created original descriptions. Remember that great storytelling involves making your reader feel involved. Don’t just tell them what happened, but immerse them in your sensory world.
What is the meaning of rhyming ballads?
These stories served both as communication and entertainment. A rhyming poem was an easy way to remember and pass on news.
Who wrote the Lyrical Ballads and a Few Other Poems?
In 1798, William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge collaborated on Lyrical Ballads and a Few Other Poems. This work went against the practice of featuring great royal, historical or mythological characters. Rather, simple country folk were commonly the subjects. This collection includes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, perhaps the world’s best known ballad.
What was the name of the sheet of paper that artists would print their verses and illustrations on?
On a single large sheet of paper, artists would print their verses and illustrations. A popular tune would be suggested for a rhythm. These sheets were known as “broadsides”. They are the forerunner of the pamphlet and the chapbook.
Overview
Ballad form
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains (four-line stanzas) of alternating lines of iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic trimeter (six syllables), known as ballad meter. Usually, only the seco…
Origins
The ballad derives its name from medieval Scottish dance songs or "ballares" (L: ballare, to dance), from which 'ballet' is also derived, as did the alternative rival form that became the French ballade. As a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the Minnesang tradition. The earliest example of a recognizable …
Composition
Scholars of ballads have been divided into "communalists", such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm, who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was one single original author. Communalists tend to see more recent, particularly printed, broadside ballads of known authorship as a debased form of the genre, while individualists see variants as corruption…
Transmission
The transmission of ballads comprises a key stage in their re-composition. In romantic terms this process is often dramatized as a narrative of degeneration away from the pure 'folk memory' or 'immemorial tradition'. In the introduction to Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) the romantic poet and historical novelist Walter Scott argued a need to 'remove obvious corruptions' in order to attempt to restore a supposed original. For Scott, the process of multiple recitations 'incurs the r…
Classification
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a mark…
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a mark…
Ballad operas
In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Rather than the more aristocratic themes and music of the Italian opera, the ballad operas were set to the music of popular folk songs and dealt with …
Beyond Europe
Some 300 ballads sung in North America have been identified as having origins in Scottish traditional or broadside ballads. Examples include 'The Streets of Laredo', which was found in Britain and Ireland as 'The Unfortunate Rake'; however, a further 400 have been identified as originating in America, including among the best known, 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett' and 'Jesse James'. They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th century and most w…