Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Jan Smaczny: The stuff of life' - aspects of folksong in the fabric of art music in the British Isles
3 Focusing on Bunting and Moore, albeit briefly, raises interesting questions about the nature of the preservation of the folk idiom, questions which were not to be addressed in a more scholarly fashion until much later. But the achievement of these two pioneers is also a clear indication of an enduring fascination with folksong in the British Isles and the way in which a particular philosophical stance can be brought to bear on a national repertoire. The folk, or popular manner was certainly known to composers at this and many other times. The case of the greatest musical visitor to England, Joseph Haydn, in the late eighteenth century is certainly of significance here. Well before coming to England, Haydn had made use of folksong in some of his symphonies, and throughout Central Europe, from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, the practice of incorporating native elements into art music was popular, as the Pastorella genre shows. Nearly contemporary (1794) with the Belfast Harp Festival and Bunting's first collecting trips, Haydn made use of a folksong, 'Lord Cathcart' (or 'Lord Cathcart's Wee') 7, in the finale of his hundredth symphony composed for his second trip to London. Even where the folksong cannot be identified, the popular manner is evident, quite frequently in Haydn, but closer to home as far as the British were concerned in, for example, the chamber music of composers such as Stephen Storace (176296). The plain fact is that composers had been making extensive use of folk material for centuries. There is a whole tissue of folk allusion to be found in the music of the composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Weelkes made extensive and elaborate works for voices and viols, known as 'Cryes of London', from the calls of vendors. Folksong was also used in keyboard music. A number of composers wrote lenthy sets of variations for keyboard (virginals, harpsichord or chamber organ) on songs currently popular. Of the forty two pieces included in William Byrd's remarkable collection of virginal music My Ladye Nevells Booke, the copying of which was completed in September 1591, seven are primarily based on what could be described as folk or popular tunes: (27) Will Yow Walke the Woods Soe Wylde; (28) The Maidens Songe; (31) Have With Yow to Walsingame; (32) All in a Garden Grine; (33) Lord Willobies Welcome Home; (34) The Carmans Whistle; (37) Sellingers 7 See H.C. Robbins Landon, Haydn in England: 1791-1795 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), pp. 564-6. 34
