From: cozzlab@garnet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Period vs. Filk (was Basic Courtesy)
Date: 28 Jul 92 23:45:11 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu

In article <ao6moB4w164w@ailanth.UUCP> ailsa%ailanth.uucp@wang.com (Ailsa N.T. Murphy) writes:
>
>by this definition, a song can be filk AND period at the same time.  i 
>went to a midieval christmas carol concert a few years back, where they 
>explained the background of the songs before they sang them, and one of 
>them had been this REALLY bawdy tavern song about a prostitute with 
>bedsores...  but it was a lovely carol...
>
>i favor a more restrictive definition of filk, myself...  are songs 
>translated form the original language filk by this definition?
>
Please, may I speak in support of a distinction that has been suggested
before.  Let us distinguish

	FILK -- new words to a modern/mundane tune, or
		new words to a period or perioid tune on a modern/mundane
		subject

	from

	CONTREFAIT -- new words to a period tune on a period or perioid
		      subject.

I am using "modern/mundane" to correspond loosely to that other loose
concept, "anything that jars."

I am using "perioid" to describe SCA-related topics and things slightly
chronologically out of period but not jarringly postindustrial.

If we were all to make this distinction, we might be able to communicate
a little more clearly.  It has in any case been an interesting week for
interkingdom anthropology, hasn't it, with the range in definitions running
from Trimaris's, where anything written after 1600 is a filk, to the West,
where almost anything is permissible.  

Myself, I don't much care for SCA-filks on modern show tunes, the kind
where the only changes made from the original has been the substitution
of a few nouns.  I don't even like those outside an SCA context, because
they are sloppy: insufficient work has been done on them to make them
worth listening to.

On the other hand, at Master Flieg's bardic last Saturday night at the
Arts&Sciences, we had people singing Purcell, which I didn't mind, and
Wagner, which I rather did but mightn't have if the tenor had been a
better tenor.  Purcell is a good example of perioid: you have to have
studied music history some to realize he is as late as he is (Queen
Anne).  You'll recall he wrote the tune to which Hole-in-the-Wall is
danced.

And it does depend a great deal, as many people have pointed out, on how
much you know to determine what you'll find jarring.  I, for instance,
can usually tell medieval from renaissance and 16th century from 17th
century--but I have never heard the tune from Gilligan's Island (What,
never? No, never.  What, *never?* No, NEVER.) and if it's true that it's
derived from a Renaissance piece, that is probably what I would consider
it.

On the _other_ hand, I just did a reference check and discovered John
Dowland's _First Book of Ayres_ is 1597, so I know what I can sing if
I visit the Elizabethan camp....


Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin                               Dorothy J. Heydt
Mists/Mists/West                                              Albany CA
Argent, a cross forme'e sable

Disclaimer: This is the Cozzarelli Lab's account, not mine--but I don't
think anybody else ever reads it.
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca