>>> characteristics of this music. i imagine that country music in one
>>> country sounded pretty much like country music in another. keeping in
>>> mind the simple types of instruments that country people in europe had
>>> at the time and the unsophisticated melodies they usually produce, it
>>> was probably as true then as it is today.
>> Europe is not Nashville, national musics were/are extremely distinct in
>> character and the melodies they produce are far from unsophisticated,
> spiced
>> with local intervals, often in unusual meters.
>> RT
> I think it's true that in the realm of 'folk' music, there is a lot more
> sophistication than some of the instruments would seem to offer. There are,
> and I speak from some experience, a lot of unsophisticated melodies too,
> with little more than a drone and the patter of tiny clogs to accompany
> them.
So you would draw a line between medieval folk and medieval country?
> One way or the other, I feel that the idea of "national" musics as early as
> Brueghel is a bit unlikely.
Why? Absence or rarity of traces thereof in art music does not mean there
was no national character.
> We only think of any idea of a "national"
> spirit from about 1420 in Western Europe, and for that to translate to music
> in the form of some cultural flag of the realm in 150 years would have
> required some pretty serious manipulation.
>
> I think it is more helpful to think in terms of "local" musical idioms, but
> even these would have crossed borders (and did). We could ask "How German
> is an Allemande?" and later still "How Scottish is a Schottische?".
Wrong questions. I'd ask "How Italian are diminished 6ths?", "How Ukrainian
are 5/4 or 7/4 meters?", "How melismatic is Eastern-Mediterranean music",
"Is there Spanish music with well-defined melody, or Ukrainian in major?"
("Yes, but not a lot" for both), "Is there Sardinian music in minor" etc.
RT
______________
Roman M. Turovsky
http://turovsky.org
http://polyhymnion.org
