Who wrote the first English ballad collection?
Early collections of English ballads were made by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, 1st (1784), which paralleled the work in Scotland by Walter Scott and Robert Burns.
What is the origin of ballad music?
The word ballad is thought to derive from the same root as ballet (dance). · Dance tunes: Another theory is that the dance tunes were adopted to carry the burden of the text; this had a double effect in helping to keep the audience attention because the tunes were familiar and the simple melody lines did not interfere with the story line.
When were the first Robin Hood ballads written?
A reference in William Langland 's Piers Plowman indicates that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.
Are there any printed ballads of the 15th century?
From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who were the originators of the ballads?
The theory that the minstrels were the originators of the ballads was held for quite a long time; Thomas Percy included an essay in volume one of his collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry giving a strong argument in favour of the minstrels.
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.
The First-Ever Song Was Written 3400 Years Ago
M usic itself is and had always been more than a form of entertainment for humanity. Artists find music as a way to express their emotions and for those who listen, a way to amplify or reduce emotions. The first forms of music were used as war sounds by the Vikings to motivate and encourage the warriors.
An older era for Music
However, it has been recently discovered that music as a form of entertainment goes back many years back, to be more exact around 3400 years ago. This discovery has been made from a piece of paper from the Syrian city of Ugarit.
Does music go further back?
It is presumed that this song was sang using the flute which is considered to be also the oldest instrument. What is also very interesting and makes the age of this song questionable is that the origin of flutes had been estimated to go back as far as 67,000 years ago.
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…