From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: period songs
Date: 4 Sep 92 20:48:45 GMT
Followup-To: rec.org.sca
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Anghard ver' Rhuawn.  Ellisif wrote,

>Of these, the only one that is period, according to Julitta's notes, is
>the last.  Others are about period incidents or people, but that does *not*
>mean the song is period.  A song is composed of, among things, language
>and music; you can tell a period story in a very non-period way, and you
>can tell non-period stories in period ways.  What was under discussion here
>was the authenticity of the *songs*.

To which Richard FitzGilbert (hi!) responded,

>Under this definition of period you make it impossible to compose new material
>that is period.  For my own definition of period, a song that is composed and
>presented exactly in a period fashion is period.  If I make a replica of a
>period pavillion, using period tools and period materials I call it a period
>pavillion.

I think it is useful to make several distinctions.

There are period songs.  These are songs with period melodies and period
words.  They are what we use (or anyhow, what I use, and what I think we 
should use) as a standard to measure whether another song is in a period 
style.

There are period style songs.  These are written now, but composed, to a
reasonable extent, according to period forms, and presented, to a reasonable
extent, in a period manner.  In order to know they are not period, even
a fairly accomplished scholar of the form would have to know the facts of 
authorship.

There are "periodoid" songs.  These are written now, and follow styles that
do not, to an _uneducated_ ear, sound ravingly modern.  Someone who knows
either period poetry or period music well might be able to show you that
they could not have originated before some point well after period; but as
a rule, they do not interrupt the feel for someone who listens to music 
and poetry a lot but is not _educated_ in it.

There are modern songs on period themes.  These are songs whose words,
melodies, or both, without introducing elements that are clearly out-
of-place (no jet planes, etc.; no electric guitars and synthesizers 
that sound like synthesizers and nothing else), nonetheless scream 
"modern" at someone who has listened to both medieval/renaissance songs 
and modern ones, even though the hearer knows none of the theory.

Then there are just plain modern songs, with modern themes and the whole
nine yards.

Notice that it takes musical (or poetic, or both) education to tell 
any of the first three apart; from which it follows (or I believe that 
it should) that all three have a completely reasonable place in SCA 
performance at events.  Whether the fourth class has such a place is 
debatable; and so long as such a thing can be debated, I don't think 
it should be excluded.  The fifth just don't belong, but I think most 
of us agree on that.

The problem Ellisif pointed to, I believe, is that of calling something
"period" when you have not only failed to distinguish which of the
first three classes (let alone which) it belongs to, but have not even
shown whether it belongs to any of them or instead to the fourth.  

The reason it is important to distinguish is that if we don't, we start
using our own works as standards of medieval and renaissance forms,
instead of using medieval and renaissance works, and wind up enshrining
as "authentic" uses and forms that are completely mundanely modern.
Sarra Graeham just posted a lovely article describing some of that.
If you think that creating an "SCA-oldoid" form and adopting it for
our performances is ok, then no problem.  If you don't, you'll tend to
have a problem.

To be a little more concrete: Richard mentions "Born on the Listfield",
probably the most popular song in Atlantia now.  Say you are new to
the Society, you've heard this, and you decide to use it as a model.
I frankly don't know its particular form well enough to classify it,
but it is somewhere between class 2 and class 4: potentially an 
excellent model, and certainly not a terrible one.

But then there's the melody we sing it to here.  It's class 4 at best, 
and I tend to place it in 5 (but I'm sensitive to melody, so that may
be unfair).  And if you have never heard any real class 1 melodies, 
it is unlikely that you can know that you are using a modern idiom.
And the more we use modern idioms as our standards, the harder it is
to get someone to step back and listen to something in a different
one.

That's why a lot of people would like to distinguish at least classes
1-3 from class 4 (setting aside the nasty question of 5; I suspect that 
almost everything that is referred to as "filk" in a derogatory way 
falls into class 5).

I hold no awards for music; I am not a mundane expert; I know a little
about it that anyone with an interest could not pick up in a couple of
years.  Perhaps this is naive of me, but I like to think that our models
for period bardic should know at least something close to as much as I
do, or be on the way to learning it, and that they know enough class 1
music to tell classes 2 and 3 from class 4, and think that the difference
matters.  Not even that all our bards satisfy this: just that the ones
we use as models _of period bardic skills_ do.

If you only want good entertainment, your mileage will surely vary; just
as if you only want pretty clothes, there's no reason to wear ones that
are centuries out of date.

Cheers,

Angharad/Terry