FOLK-MUSIC IN ART- MUSICA DISCUSSION AND A THEORY
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Abstract
OR the last fifty or sixty years the practice of using folktunes as thematic bases upon which to erect, or from which to develop, pretentious art-compositions, has become so general and such a well recognized method of procedure that a discussion of it in all its aspects is peculiarly pertinent at this time. It is in fact no new thing. Folk-tunes have been made use of in one way or another in art-music for several hundred years. But they have not always been used with the same end in view. Sometimes they have been introduced into a composition as a purely suggestive extraneous element; a passing reference, as it were, to a well-known idea, and had little to do with the purely musical organism of the composition. In this category belong the reference to the "Marseillaise" in Schumann's "Faschingschwank," or the quotation of "O du lieber Augustin" in Rezni6ek's "Schlemiel,"-mere dashes of local color. Such use of a folktune does not concern itself with the tune as music per se, but merely uses it as a reminder of a well-known idea or emotion. It goes without saying that it most fittingly occurs in music of a romantic or programmatic character. But by far the most important method of using folk-tunes as the bases of art-music, (with which this study concerns itself almost entirely) is that in which a composer, taking a certain folk-tune, considers it as a musical kernel from which ultimately to develop a beautiful and significant art-work. If his work is well done, not only does he develop the musical kernel in accordance with all the resources of musical art, but the completed composition presents in an intensified, enlarged and extended manner the spirit of the original folk-tune. There are many cases, however, in which composers have taken folk-tunes as the musical strands from which to weave a composition, but their interest in the mechanical and purely musical side of their task has so absorbed their attention and captured their interest that they have blindly ignored the emotional