{"id":1188,"date":"2018-10-01T12:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2022-10-28T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:15:27","slug":"look-whos-bartokin-folk-song-reinvention-from-bela-bartok-to-chick-corea-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2018\/10\/01\/look-whos-bartokin-folk-song-reinvention-from-bela-bartok-to-chick-corea-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Look who’s Bartok-in’: folk song reinvention from Bela Bartok to Chick Corea and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently watched a PBS documentary called \u2018The American Epic Sessions\u2019,\u00a0 which features the producer and guitarist Jack White resurrecting a Western Electric recording lathe from the early twentieth century for modern-day use.\u00a0 ‘The American Epic Sessions’ is the concluding episode of the PBS series ‘American Epic’; earlier episodes focus on early twentieth century U.S. musicians who used this technology when it was new, such as the Reverend Gary Davis, while the final episode focuses on current pop, blues and jazz performers who re-record the earlier artists\u2019 songs under White\u2019s supervision.\u00a0 Rev. Gary Davis\u2019 \u2018Candy Man\u2019<\/a>, for example, is performed in \u2018American Epic Sessions\u2019 by a contemporary singer-guitarist with a vintage name, Jerron \u2018Blind Boy\u2019 Paxton.<\/p>\n

While \u2018American Epic Sessions\u2019 includes artists such as Paxton who faithfully recreate an earlier artist\u2019s work, it also includes performers who compellingly update the earlier songs with a more modern sound.\u00a0 When Elton John visits the studio, the old recording equipment is used to record a new song which he composes on the spot from a sheet of new Bernie Taupin lyrics, and which showcases the high level of technique and what might be called \u2018blues literacy\u2019 in his piano playing.\u00a0 Although the use of antique recording equipment makes \u2018The American Epic Sessions\u2019 look almost like a project of \u2018reenacting\u2019 the earlier songs (in the sense of Civil War reenactments), the shrewd decisions White makes in combining songs and performers (such as Alabama Shakes covering Memphis Minnie<\/a>) often results in a re-invention which gives the song new life, rather than just a higher-fidelity recording.\u00a0 Even the more historically faithful performances, such as Paxton\u2019s, are for me a musical demonstration of the Uncertainty Principle<\/a>, which was developed by the physicist Werner Heisenberg around the same time as many of the earlier recordings featured in \u2018American Epic\u2019 were made.<\/p>\n

In the process of studying small particles such as the electron, Heisenberg posited that \u2018It is impossible to determine accurately both<\/em> the position and the direction and speed of a particle at the same instant<\/em>.\u2019\u00a0 In other words, Heisenberg posited that in his area of study, the act of observation itself changes the event is being observed.\u00a0 Even though Paxton\u2019s singing and guitar playing are modeled on that of Davis, and he is playing a similar guitar and singing into a similar microphone to the one Davis used, there is a modern swagger and vitality to his performance that helps the song reach a twenty-first century listener.<\/p>\n

The Western Electric recording lathe used on \u2018American Epic Sessions\u2019 is also a star of the documentary; the camera shows how the machine\u2019s slow lowering of a concrete block governs the three and a half minute limit of its recording capacity.\u00a0 A Wired magazine article\u00a0<\/a>mentions that this time limit had a direct effect on the development of folk and popular music, as it led musicians who recorded on the early machines to devise shorter songs.<\/p>\n

A piece of recording technology which predates even the Western Electric lathe, the Edison Recording Phonograph, played a central role in the music of pianist and composer Bela Bartok.\u00a0 In the very early twentieth century, Bartok used the Phonograph to record folk music from a number of Eastern European countries (including Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria) on wax cylinders.<\/p>\n

In Bartok\u2019s field recordings<\/a>, melodic lines are in the extreme foreground and the accompaniment is sometimes close to inaudible.\u00a0 It seems likely that this is one of the factors which led Bartok to create piano music from the recordings in which the right hand plays a folk melody (often transcribed from his recordings) and the left hand plays a significantly altered (or in some cases, completely different) accompaniment.\u00a0 Some of this music can be found in Bartok\u2019s multi-volume collection entitled \u2018For Children\u2019, which has been beautifully recorded by my colleague Sylvia Parker. (Her CD ‘Peasant Jewels’ can be sampled on YouTube <\/a>and purchased from Amazon<\/a>.) One could say that in these pieces Bartok, like Jack White, had an artistic mission to\u00a0 modernize the folk music he studied.\u00a0 On the other hand, he was also responding to a practical need, using his considerable musical imagination to supply an accompaniment that was either missing or obscured in the recordings he made.\u00a0 Bartok may well have also created the \u2018For Children\u2019 out of a need for attractive and appropriate pieces he could use to teach basic piano skills to his own children.\u00a0 This is a long tradition among keyboard-playing composers; Bach\u2019s \u2018Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach\u2019, Schumann\u2019s \u2018Album for the Young\u2019 and Stravinsky\u2019s \u2018Les Cinq Doigts\u2019 were created for the same purpose.<\/p>\n

For me, some of the more affecting of Bartok\u2019s pieces in \u2018For Children\u2019 are those in which he first sets up an ostinato (repeated figure) in the left hand.\u00a0 After adding the folk tune in the right hand, he then works subtle variations in the left hand figure, creating a hypnotic effect.\u00a0 Two of these pieces in Parker\u2019s collection which are accessible to beginning pianists are \u2018Rondo (There is an old witch)\u2019<\/a> (titled \u2018The Old Witch\u2019s Sons\u2019 in other collections) and \u2018I lost my handkerchief\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other pieces from \u2018For Children\u2019 such as Song of the Rogue<\/a>, the two-note chord voicings Bartok uses in the left hand (which usually combine the root of a chord with the third, fifth or seventh) have similarities to the two-note voicings used by jazz players such as Thelonious Monk (which I discuss in an earlier post, ‘The Neighborhood Hang and the History Hang’<\/a>.)\u00a0 While in some editions of ‘For Children’ the pieces are identified only with numbers, the titles given to the pieces in collections such as Parker\u2019s provide enticing glimpses of stories, perhaps from original folk song lyrics, which may be hidden in the music.<\/p>\n

In a 2013 piece for Harper\u2019s Magazine titled \u2018Bartok\u2019s Monster\u2019<\/a>, Jay Kirk gives a vivid description of the process through which Bartok first collected the distinctively rough-sounding folk music of Eastern Europe and then transformed it into something of his own.\u00a0 \u2018Like Rumpelstiltskin,\u2019 Kirk writes, \u2018[Bartok] hurried back to Budapest to spin the bales of itchy straw into chaotic threads of Lydian gold.\u2019\u00a0 In addition to giving elements of Bartok\u2019s story a phantasmagorical edge, Kirk gives a vivid account of his own trip to Hungary, where he visits a Bartok museum as well as some of the same villages in which Bartok made his recordings.\u00a0 Kirk weaves all this into a compelling personal narrative, describing what he sees and what he hallucinates with equal lucidity.\u00a0 I highly recommend \u2018Bartok\u2019s Monster\u2019 as an absorbing read and a fascinating look into Bartok\u2019s use of early recording technology.\u00a0 Kirk has also expanded the article into a book<\/a>, \u2018Avoid the Day\u2019, a wild ride through musicological detective work and environmental tourism, among other topics, that I highly recommend.<\/p>\n

I think Bartok\u2019s piano pieces that combine folk tunes with ostinato accompaniment were likely a source of inspiration for jazz pianist Chick Corea in composing his tune \u2018Children\u2019s Song\u2019, which has become something of a jazz standard and eventually led Corea to compose a whole set of similar pieces.\u00a0 The version Corea recorded on his legendary duo recording with vibraphonist Gary Burton<\/a>, ‘Crystal Silence’ includes only the composed melody, while version he recorded with his band Return to Forever<\/a> includes improvisation.<\/p>\n

Like Bartok in a number of the \u2018For Children\u2019 pieces, Corea creates a hypnotic effect through pairing a repetitive left hand figure with a folk-like melody in the right.\u00a0 One of the more recent adaptations of \u2018Children\u2019s Song\u2019 was made by the jazz vocal group Manhattan Transfer<\/a>, who recorded it in an arrangement by pianist Fred Hersch.<\/p>\n

I hope this blog post inspires you to listen to and practice either some of Bartok\u2019s music from \u2018For Children\u2019 (the edition available from Dover Publications<\/a> is a useful starting place) and\/or Chick Corea\u2019s \u2018Children\u2019s Song No. 1\u2019, which is available (along with some other pieces from his \u2018Children\u2019s Songs\u2019 collection) from musicnotes.com<\/a>.\u00a0 I also, as always, welcome any comments of any kind, particularly on any of the thoughts or links above, as well as any other links that this post might inspire you to share.\u00a0 Is there other music based on ostinato patterns or folk tunes (or both) that you like to play or listen to, or which you\u2019d like to learn?\u00a0 Have you ever learned an existing melody and given it a new accompaniment, or do you have a favorite piece or song where that happens?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently watched a PBS documentary called \u2018The American Epic Sessions\u2019,\u00a0 which features the producer and guitarist Jack White resurrecting a Western Electric recording lathe from the early twentieth century for modern-day use.\u00a0 ‘The American Epic Sessions’ is the concluding … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/2294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}