Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/617

SONG. Until the time we have now reached—that is, about the middle of the 18th century—ballads, as a class of songs, may be said to have retained their popular origin. Not a few had, doubtless, already been written by scholars, but for the most part they were the spontaneous outpouring of uncultivated thought and feeling. Henceforth however, they were to be a special branch of art pursued by regular musicians. At this point, therefore, a few words may be fittingly introduced on the form of popular English ballads. In dance or march or ballad music, which has grown from the recitation of words to a chant or to a short rhythmical tune, the musical form or design is found to reside chiefly in the rhythm, and not in the balance of keys. The ordinary rhythm of ballads was the even fashion of four-bar phrases, as for instance in 'Now is the month of Maying' or 'The hunt is up':—

The three-bar phrase rhythm is generally met with in the jig and hornpipe tunes of England, such as 'Bartholomew Fair':—

but it sometimes occurs in songs of other kinds. Of the rhythm in 'My little pretty one'—

which has three phrases of two bars each and a fourth of three bars, there are several other examples; and indeed there are abundant varieties of irregular rhythms; but it may be held, as a general conclusion, that the musical rhythm follows the variations of the rhythm and metre of the words, and varies with them. And this tendency of the rhythm is seen to be natural when we reflect that popular music began with the recitation or declamation of historical poems, in which the music was subordinate to the words. Compound time is very common in English ballads, especially during and after the reign of Charles II, and may be accounted for by the influence of the French dance-music, which Charles II. brought into England. In modulation they exhibit but little variety. The most frequent arrangement is the half-close on the dominant and the leadingnote preceding the tonic at the end of the melody, as in 'The bailiff's daughter of Islington':—

In another arrangement the half-close is on the subdominant, and the penultimate note is the supertonic. In minor-key ballads the relative major key often takes the place which is held by the dominant key in the major-key ballads. Another peculiarity of many old ballads are Burdens. Sometimes the burden was sung by the bass or basses underneath the melody, and to support it, as in 'Sumer is icumen in'; or it took the shape of 'ditties,' the ends of old ballads, introduced to eke out the words of the story to the length of the musical phrase, as in the 'Willow Song'