ON THE back cover of Michael Church’s important book, Musics Lost and Found, is a photograph of the Pegan Indian, Mountain Chief, listening to a field recording with his face turned towards the extended horn of a recording instrument. It is a reminder that the invention of records and recording transformed the collecting of folk songs and dances. Previously, collectors went out with manuscript paper and took down the tunes as they were sung and played. Included among the many collectors in this book are the familiar names of Vaughan Williams, Bartók, Kodály, and Janácek. The melodies that they collected informed the melodies and rhythms of their own compositions.
Church also makes the point that the preservation of this indigenous music is vital, as there is a risk that much traditional music will be lost. The title of the book reflects this double emphasis: a celebration of those who have collected and preserved folk music (the first book to do so) and the imminent death of traditional music around the globe with the loss of villages and village musical culture.
The book follows a logical trajectory, starting with the Jesuit priests who travelled to China in the 17th century and the very first collections of ballads published in Britain in the late 1700s.
The discipline of ethnomusicology began to emerge in America around the turn of the 19th century from the fieldwork among the Native Americans of Alice C. Fletcher. Church gives an account of similar work by Franz Boas with the Eskimos and the tragic story of the priest, musicologist, and composer Komitas, in Armenia.
Cecil Sharp is a familiar name in Britain, and Church is rigorous in his assessment of Sharp’s approach to collecting folk material, his mistrust of the phonograph, and his tidying up of folk texts (including “The foggy dew”) to make them suitable for singing in schools. Another familiar name is Percy Grainger, who “dished up” the melodies, making them into concert items. His popular Country Gardens is a good example of a traditional folk melody that becomes a concert “standard”.
There is an extended chapter on the work of the father and son John and Alan Lomax, who were important for preserving the music of cowboys, recording African American folk music and blues, and bringing to the public artists such as Lead Belly.
Other collectors in Northern and Eastern Europe include Colin McPhee, who spent time in Bali and brought the music of the gamelan to Western audiences, influencing Britten, among others; and Church gives an account of collectors in Morocco and Greece. The final chapters include snapshots of ethnomusicology in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Russia, and pygmy polyphony from the Congo.
Church emphasises the importance of record companies, sound archives, and UNESCO. The book is a fitting and timely tribute to those who toiled to preserve folk music, and a wake-up call to us to continue to preserve it.
The Revd Ronald Corp, an assistant priest at St Alban’s, Holborn, in London, is a composer and conductor.
Musics Lost and Found: Song collectors and the life and death of folk tradition
Michael Church
Boydell Press £25
(978-1-78327-607-3)
Church House Bookshop £22.50