British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Vic Gammon
Reviewed work(s):
The Music of American Folk Song by Ruth Crawford Seeger
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 130-133
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036858
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130 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
ing Kurds in Northern Iraq after the [first]
Gulf War" (19). These asides and observa-
tions - in addition to the more technical
commentaries on the instruments them-
selves - expand the book's interest beyond
that of the museum curator.
But if there is one significant drawback
to the book it is in the lack of accompany-
ing illustrations. Other than the front cover,
which has one colour plate, and a handful
of line drawings at the beginning (mainly
of oboes, clarinets and bassoons), there are
no images to give more depth to the
descriptions. This is a pity, since such
images can vastly enrich a book of this
sort; one thinks of Anoyanakis's (1979)
book on Greek folk instruments by com-
parison (one also remembers that this
was sponsored by the National Bank of
Greece). Doubtless this omission was on
grounds of publishing costs, since many
of the entries are referenced against
the author's own photograph collection,
implying that copies already exist and
could easily have been included. Clearly
the author is himself conscious of this defi-
ciency since he has recently acknowledged
it elsewhere.1 However, in this internet
age, it is surely not beyond the means of
the publishers and/or author to establish
these images on a website, where they
could be cross-referenced against the
book's contents. Such a project might also
include soundclips of those instruments
which are in a playable condition. They
could be aided in this by one of our
academic institutions via a research grant,
perhaps in collaboration with similar
institutions, such as the Ashmolean or
Horniman museums, whereby the author's
undoubted erudition and experience
could be made widely available and easily
accessible, and in an information-rich
environment which such expertise
deserves. Now that would be an on-line
resource to treasure, and would undoubt-
edly enrich the fine and detailed work
already evident in this volume.
Note
1. See newsletter of the American Musical
Instrument Society, vol. 32 no. 1.
http://www.amis.org/pubs/newslet-
ter/2003/v32no 1/oxford.htm
References
Anoyanakis, Fivos, (1979), Greek popular
musical instruments. Athens: National
Bank of Greece.
Montagu, Jeremy, and John Burton (1971),
"A proposed new classification system
for musical instruments." Ethnomusi-
cology, 15:49-70.
STEPHEN COTTRELL
Department of Music, Goldsmiths
College, University of London
s.cottrell@gold.ac.uk
RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER. The music
of American folk song. Edited by
Larry Polansky with Judith Tick.
Rochester NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2001. 210pp. Hard-
back $45. Paperback $24.95. ISBN
1580461360.
This monograph, written around the late
1930s and early 1940s, was not published
until 2001. It is by Ruth Crawford Seeger,
modernist composer, pianist and member
of a family who have played a crucial role
in the twentieth-century folk music revival
and the development of the discipline
of ethnomusicology. Originally intended
as an appendix or musical introduction
to John and Alan Lomax's Our singing
country (1941), the piece was rejected by
the compilers and publishers because of its
length and technicality - the publishers are
reputed to have said that they did not want
a thesis in a popular book. Ruth Crawford
Seeger (hereafter RCS, as Polansky refers
to her in his Editor's Introduction) had to
make do with writing a short introduction
to the anthology. Her stepson, Pete Seeger,
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
reported that this was a huge disappoint-
ment to RCS, who believed that her work
was "unique as a musical treatment of
American folk music" (158). And so it is.
Larry Polansky, the editor, has done an
excellent job of reconciling different ver-
sions of the typescript and is scrupulously
honest in pointing out variations, problems
and difficulties in interpreting the text. In
this he has been assisted by Judith Tick,
whose excellent biography of RCS was
published in 1997 and who contributes a
short "Historical introduction". This is
good, but does not substitute for reading
the full account of the background to the
work in Part VI of Tick's biography.
Polansky has described RCS's little
book as her "most visionary, detailed, and
complex writing on American folk music"
(xxxi). It is the result of her observations
and reflections, having engaged in tran-
scribing about 300 sound recordings made
by members of the Lomax family. RCS
was a highly trained musician with an
excellent musical ear. She faced difficul-
ties in trying to put oral music into western
notation. She experienced a dilemma in
trying to produce transcriptions for what it
was hoped would be a successful popular
anthology. She wished to capture much of
the complexity of what she heard. An
important aspect of The music ofAmerican
folk song is precisely RCS's attempt to
deal with these difficulties and dilemmas.
In trying to be both the popularizer and the
scientist, RCS inevitably had to work
through tensions and frustrations that the
different demands of these two roles imply.
That she did so thoughtfully, with care and
honesty, is to her great credit
The first section of the work is "A note
on transcription". This section takes the
reader through six possible stages of notat-
ing part of a performance from a record-
ing. The first is a Metfessel-type graphical
representation. This is reduced through a
couple of stages and then superimposed on
a five-line stave. A moderately "accurate"
version is produced in musical notation,
but this is in four-six and six-six time and
very hard to get "off the page". Finally, a
conventional looking staff notation "sim-
plification" is produced in four-four time,
easy to read but all the interest and the sub-
tlety of the previous version has been lost.
In showing different degrees of transcrip-
tion accuracy RCS illuminates the prob-
lems of the process and her own awareness
of the ways in which inaccuracies and
distortions can creep in. She concludes:
... it must be apparent what a small
part of the original song and its man-
ner of singing is represented to the
reader in customary notation ... (11)
Bess Hawes Lomax reported that RCS
felt that a lot of the music could not be
transcribed successfully for reproduction
via books. She urged the inclusions of
more "ordinary" material in Our singing
country and this led to brisk arguments as
"every-one was just so turned on by the
extra-ordinary" (88).
Clearly RCS had to try to work through
the problems of being an analyst and a
popularizer. The music of American folk
song raises the interesting issues related to
descriptive and prescriptive uses of nota-
tion (a theme developed by Charles Seeger
after RCS's death'), and perhaps ulti-
mately the question: why notate at all?
Personally, I am not one of the anti-nota-
tion people; notation has its descriptive
and comparative uses. I just believe that
we have to be very realistic about the
limits of what we can do with it and what
it can do for us. RCS was certainly real-
istic, while at the same time she managed
to produce interesting, elegant and musical
transcriptions. Appendix 3 (118-26) is
largely a transcription of a verse of a
recording of "Amazing grace". The record-
ing happens to be on the internet - listen to
the recording, read the transcription and
prepare to be amazed at the transcriber's
skill.2
131
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
At times, you can read RCS's thought
processes as this skilled and intelligent
woman weighs issues, thinks through her
role as a mediator and takes decisions. She
is nothing if not frighteningly honest and
completely transparent:
Each individual will have his or her
own preferences in respect to what
should be lost, modified or preserved.
A transcriber is no exception, and
consciously or unconsciously
expresses his own preferences ... (29)
RCS goes on to describe the different
forms of mediation that people with dif-
ferent priorities impose on the material.
Her advocacy of the importance of
sound recording as against notation direct
from a singer reminds one of the debate
between Percy Grainger and Cecil Sharp
and other members of the Folk Song
Society in 1908. Sharp preferred the
impressionistic method of notating the
song directly from the singer and disliked
the way the equipment got between the
collector and informant. Grainger realized
that if one was not to lose many of the
complexities and subtleties of the per-
formance, sound recording was essential.3
RCS shows no awareness of these debates
nor of Sharp's 1907 book, English folk
songs: some conclusions. This is a shame,
for the work of Grainger and Sharp
addresses some of the issues that RSC was
attempting to deal with and could have
provided her with useful thinking material.
She nevertheless had some good intellec-
tual resources on which to draw, particu-
larly in the form of the work of George
Herzog and Bdla Bart6k. There is an irony
in the fact that when she was a piano
student at the American Conservatory, one
of the star performer-teachers there was
Percy Grainger.
The observations in the second section
of the book, "Notes on the songs and on
the manners of singing", brings forth the
fruit of her close study of the Lomax
recordings in precise and well-measured
observations. Every overemotional revival
folk singer and every classical singer who
slips a set of folk songs into their recital
ought to have to learn the first paragraph
of the section "Adherence to a dynamic
level throughout the song as a whole".
RCS ends her first paragraph by saying:
"The calculated gradations of broad
dynamic levels so characteristic of fine-art
performance, with emphasis on climax and
morendo, is not typical of the folk singing
recorded on these discs" (31). Her com-
ment that anticipations and delayings of
the beat are general characteristics of the
singing style is well taken (38). There is a
fascinating anticipation of John Cage (or is
it coincidence of the same idea?) when
RCS remarks: "Silence, or rest, is an inte-
gral part of the artistry of singing" (62).
Questions can be raised about the coher-
ence of the body of material she is working
on, about the category of "folk song",
but one cannot doubt the systematic and
intelligent way that RCS investigates and
observes her material.
It is a great pity that The music of
American folk song was not published in
the 1940s and was not available to readers
between the time of its writing and now.
This is a reflection of the rather fragmen-
tary and uneven nature of British and
American folk music studies. In its present
form the book is not a "finished" and pol-
ished work, but it has two great strengths:
it tells a lot about the musical characteris-
tics of what we know as American folk
song and it tells us about one individual's
engagement with the processes of and
rationale for transcription. We can learn a
lot from both aspects and I am very
pleased the book is now available.
Notes
1. See Seeger 1977, pp. 168-81. The essay
dates from 1958 and Charles Seeger is
clearly indebted to RCS's work and
thinking.
132
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
2. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/D ?lomaxbib:2: ./temp/-~amm
em_fzzV:: (The John and Ruby Lomax
1939 Southern States recording trip,
Library of Congress, American Mem-
ory website, performance by Jesse Alli-
son and friend.)
3. See Brady 1999, ch. 3, and Yates 1982.
References
Brady, Erika (1999) The spiral way: how
the phonograph changed ethnography.
Jackson: University Press of Missis-
sippi.
Lomax, John and Alan (1941) Our singing
country. New York: Macmillan.
Seeger, Charles (1977) Studies in musi-
cology 1935-1975. Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press.
Sharp, Cecil (1907) English folk songs:
some conclusions. Taunton: Barnicott
and Pearce.
Tick, Judith (2000) Ruth Crawford Seeger:
a composer's search for American
music. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press.
Yates, Mike (1982) "Percy Grainger and
the impact of the phonograph." Folk
Music Journal 4.3: 265-75.
VIC GAMMON
School of Music, University of Leeds
v.a.f gammon @ leeds. ac. uk
133