Music - Evolution, development, and interpretation

[Tim Twiss]

Segovia....I am sure we all know this household word. To many, he stands for purity and tradition. He is the one that made Classical guitar so popular in the 20th Century. Consider what he did....just as parallels to our genre. There were many original pieces and contemporary songs he did, but think about the older style he interpreted...Bach, and all the guitar lute and vihuela literature he revived. he added many notes to Bach for his arrangements.....especially if you look at violin partitas. He interpreted material and played them on a non-traditional instrument...the Torres guitar, the growth of the smaller European instruments. Anyway, he blazed a way, and many consider him the gold standard.

He interpreted and brought to life old music. There are many that play period lutes and such....but think of him, as we all interpret the notes of long ago. Play it as it speaks to us.

[Strumelia]

Rob that's a subject that has fascinated me for a while- I hope you continue to do this!

[Strumelia]

Tim, one thought came to my mind about this subject...

Segovia was interpreting Bach's compositions.  Bach was not interpreting someone else's written compositions.

So in the parallel to that... though there are some original compositions, much of the tutor repertoire consists of the tutor-author's 'banjo interpretations' of music and songs of the time.  Briggs would then be in Segovia's role, not Bach's role.  What role then would we be playing in interpreting Briggs' interpretations?  When we are creatively 'interpreting' some of the tutor versions of popular tunes, we are often re-interpreting banjo interpretations of traditional tunes.  In effect, intrepidly interpreting interpretations.  lol.   Not that that's good or bad- but just something to think about and keep in mind when exploring tunes and versions.    :)

[Strumelia]

Joel, I confess, if Mr Bailey came to my house and started doing that, I'd have to pull a John Belushi on him...

http://youtu.be/NqpNQ9AJYgU

[Strumelia]

I agree, though the tutors contain more that are not specifically based on traditional tunes.

       Related to that, some of the songs considered to be "traditional" today in fact started as a commercial Minstrel stage music.  That's a reality check.

I'm a bit fuzzy as to what kinds of tunes you refer to Dan- can you give a few examples of these?  I mean aside from obviously the new pieces labeled as composed by the tutor authors themselves, such as Briggs' Corn Shucking Jig.  

[Tim Twiss]

Wow, that got twisted up a bit. What I meant was, relating Segovia playing Bach, to us playing the tutors ( or whatever ) i.e. people interpreting the dots of an earlier era.
Strumelia said:

Tim, one thought came to my mind about this subject...

Segovia was interpreting Bach's compositions.  Bach was not interpreting someone else's written compositions.

So in the parallel to that... though there are some original compositions, much of the tutor repertoire consists of the tutor-author's 'banjo interpretations' of music and songs of the time.  Briggs would then be in Segovia's role, not Bach's role.  What role then would we be playing in interpreting Briggs' interpretations?  When we are creatively 'interpreting' some of the tutor versions of popular tunes, we are often re-interpreting banjo interpretations of traditional tunes.  In effect, intrepidly interpreting interpretations.  lol.   Not that that's good or bad- but just something to think about and keep in mind when exploring tunes and versions.    :)

[Wes Merchant]

Arkansas Traveler, Old Dan Tucker and  Turkey in the straw (Zip Coon) are some well known  examples. The Gas Light Jig in Buckley's 1860 is Forked Deer, under which title it shows up in Benteen's "Virginia Reels".

[Tim Twiss]

Almost everything in Briggs' has traceable source material. You have to look hard for some of it, but the "originals" are in the minority. That does not take away from the fact that a really good arrangement...soon becomes almost an "original".

[Nicholas A Bechtel]

Going back to "interpreting the dots",  I have been working on Buckley's R. Bishops Hornpipe, and it seems stiffer that Rob Lanham version which seems to have a nice bounce to it. When I do post it I hope that me peers can help me determine whether I am interpreting the dots correctly.

[Strumelia]

So many of these tunes have 'earliest published' dates that can be found, those dates and publishers can be cited as 'sources', also earliest dated written references to someone performing it long ago...but even that doesn't mean they were actually composed at that time or by that person. Unless that person laid claim to actually having composed it.  Most of the tunes I suspect are traditional...traditional meaning passed from musician to musician over time, evolving, with the original composer unknown.

[Tim Twiss]

A book is a snapshot in time. There are youngsters.....and old timers in the photo. ( Maybe female....not wanting to reveal their age )

[Bob Sayers]

"Most of the tunes I suspect are traditional...traditional meaning passed from musician to musician over time, evolving, with the original composer unknown."

Strumelia:  Folklore scholars until quite recently believed in the "folk process," just as you describe it.  Part of the reason is that the early folksong collectors were more interested in the songs than they were in the singers and musicians from whom they collected them.  My friend Stephen Wade has just published a ground-breaking book, "The Beautiful Music All Around Us," that nails the actual origins of several heretofore "anonymous" folksongs collected (and copyrighted) by John and Alan Lomax in the 1930s.  The really good news is that the actual composers are now being acknowledged and in some cases their descendants are being compensated with long overdue royalties.  I highly recommend Stephen's great book!   

just as an aside:  Years ago while I was doing my dissertation research in an isolated corner of southern Arizona, I heard a fragment of an "anonymous" song published around 1910 in John Lomax's book of cowboy songs.  I asked my informant, an elderly Mormon lady, how she knew the song and she replied "My grandfather Peter McBride wrote it."  And, sure enough, that turned out to be the case.  

As far as minstrel-era songs are concerned, I'm hoping that one day (especially now with the digitization of early newspaper archives) we'll be able to ascribe more songs to actual composers.  Of course, the most egregious example is poor Stephen Foster who couldn't control the dissemination of his own songs and died pennyless.          

[Strumelia]

It is now and in the future always possible to track down actual composers of some 'traditional' songs and tunes from the minstrel era and other eras.  Digital searching will doubtless increase findings.  Once a composer is identified with some certainty, a piece is of course no longer 'traditional' in the strict sense of the author being unknown.  But until then, it's still an unknown and commonly referred to as 'traditional'.  And some popular tunes composed in the past 20 years are currently mistakenly believed by the masses to be 'traditional'- Ashoken Farewell, Nail That Catfish to a Tree...