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Thread: Need some great 17th century songs with morals

  1. #1
    poor excuse for anything Charlieshafer's Avatar
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    Default Need some great 17th century songs with morals

    I'm asking this of those living across the pond. I'm putting together a program for a house here in the area built in 1639, and the music should be largely from that time. It also needs to be entertaining for families, so what's better that tales of woe where the person who strays from the straight and narrow gets his/hers. We'll definitely be doing the House Carpenter, known back the as the Daemon Lover. The Fox is another oldie which we'll do. Any suggestions on some more? Death and dismemberment sell, so go for it, and thanks!

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    Registered User foldedpath's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need some great 17th century songs with morals

    Well if it's death and dismemberment you want, then I think "Matty Groves" (better known on the American side of the pond as the Shady Grove melody) dates back to the 1600's. I didn't do a deep dive on this, but mudcat thread dates it to 1611:

    http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=83878#2314206

    I've always loved the Fairport Convention version of this, don't know how authentic the lyrics are.

    Other tunes from the 60's/70's revival British folk bands might work, like Pentangle "Cruel Sister," "Omie Wise," "The Trees they Do Grow High," etc. I don't know if they're all that old, but plenty of darkness there.

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    Default Re: Need some great 17th century songs with morals

    Quote Originally Posted by Charlieshafer View Post
    ... needs to be entertaining for families, ... Death and dismemberment sell, ...
    With all due respect... please don't take this the wrong way...

    I'm not quite understanding how 'family friendly' and "dismemberment" go together?

    Maybe it depends on where one is from.

    I come from a region that has a long history of producing notorious real-life serial killers (victims both men *and* women), and quite frankly hearing a murder ballad song just doesn't go over too well with those who remember the long list of real-life murderers. There's enough of that in real life already, don't need more of it in songs that are supposed to be entertainment.

    If we went somewhere expecting to have just regular music and we heard that kind of stuff being played one song after another, we would turn around and walk out. In fact, we *did* walk out of such a concert once:

    In the early 1970s, a certain out-of-state now-famous musician came to give a concert. The playbill showed it as the usual, great instrumental dance music. So we go to the concert. The performer decided at the last minute to change that evening's ENTIRE concert to reflect that town's current NEWS events instead. No dance music, nope, he spent the ENTIRE CONCERT singing gruesome MURDER BALLADS. Why? Because he MISTAKENLY ASSUMED the audience wanted to hear that type of thing since there was yet another REAL-LIFE SERIAL KILLER running loose and terrorizing people (unsolved at that time, years later was caught, confessed to dozens of killings and was executed).

    The thing is, from an outsiders or newcomers point of view, maybe murder ballads seemed just the right choice of music for a region that's notorious for serial killings.

    But from the AUDIENCE'S point of view, that region's residents who were living in fear wondering if their sons or daughters would be the next victim, a murder ballad was the LAST THING anyone wanted to hear.

    The audience needed to be *distracted* from its troubles, not reminded of all the troubles in the world.

    Most of the audience got up and walked out after it became apparent that his whole presentation was not what they'd paid good ticket prices to hear. EPIC FAIL performance.

    Would never go to another of that performer's concerts, I avoid him like the plague to this day, because if he pulled a stunt like that once, he might do it again. Waste of our time traveling a long ways to get to the concert.

    I realize there is a market for those type of songs, otherwise such songs wouldn't exist, but I would not recommend unleashing a steady stream of such songs on the general public at a general-purpose event. Unless, of course, they're expecting that sort of thing for some reason.

    So I guess my question for the OP is, why does it have to be so dark? Is it for some sort of hardcore Halloween party or death-metal types or ??? Will your audience know what they're getting themselves into? If not, it might not go over too well.

    Dark songs originally served a purpose in society, they warned people of what to watch out for. Such as: ladies, when the guy you're dating wants to take you to the river, you might wanna take a bodyguard with you, etc.

    But nowadays, we're *surrounded* by ugly dismal news everywhere from every angle (information overload), people already know to be cautious about a whole bunch of stuff. I'm just not understanding how dredging up old murder ballads etc would help set a productive mood/tone for a public general-purpose gathering.
    Last edited by Jess L.; Sep-23-2017 at 2:57am. Reason: Spelling.

  5. #4
    Unfamous String Buster Beanzy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need some great 17th century songs with morals

    Quote Originally Posted by Charlieshafer View Post
    I'm asking this of those living across the pond. I'm putting together a program for a house here in the area built in 1639, and the music should be largely from that time. It also needs to be entertaining for families, so what's better that tales of woe where the person who strays from the straight and narrow gets his/hers.
    How about songs looking at emigration, enlisted lovers departing, wounded lovers returning, scorned lovers despair or vengance?
    Maybe getting an insight into the back-stories of people who would have been arriving around the early 1600s? I’m not saying you should fill your set with them, but they could pepper it throughout adding interest with a bit of background in the chitchat.

    In Ireland this would have been pre-Cromwell, pre the 1641 Rebellion etc. But crucially it was post the Flight Of The Earls (The Wild Geese) which was a crucial change in the landscape of Irish political history giving the beginning point of English dominance. However though it might be tempting to look at Irish tunes, the focus in Ireland was towards the rest of Europe and there was relatively little attention to what was an English colony to the west.

    Your best bet would be to look to English Elisabethan ballads to get a reel feel for what the preoccupations of the English of that time settling in America might be in song & the tunes they played.
    A good source would be the Child ballads.

    The Golden Vanity was one such tune, it was re-written from an older ballad to send up Sir Walter Raleigh, this was reworked later to become The Merry Golden Tree done by The Carter Family.

    Tunes & songs from people like William Byrd, John Dowland, Philip Rosseter/Thomas Campion, Robert Johnson etc. (Check out Wikis online for the names of books / collections)
    Although he was later Playford’s collections were of tunes long in use and cover that period.

    My money would be on getting some Dowland and Playford songs & tunes.
    The mistake sometimes made with tunes from this era and later baroque ones is to play them too straight & often either too slow or two legato.
    Don’t be afraid to give them some zip & drive & make them your own ornamenting where you feel it fits.
    You’ll get loads of Playford and a bit of Dowland on searches here on the cafe.
    Eoin



    "Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin

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  7. #5
    poor excuse for anything Charlieshafer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Need some great 17th century songs with morals

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post
    With all due respect... please don't take this the wrong way...

    I'm not quite understanding how 'family friendly' and "dismemberment" go together?
    With many years of doing this, just not with tunes that need to have this old a provenance, we've found that the juicier tunes entertain more across entire age spectrums. it's the whole spooky Halloween type thing. As Beanzy says in the Golden Vanity, when the cabin boy sinks the ship, it's exciting. When the captain won;t let him back on, it's scary.

    It's nothing more than dramatic tension, and that in itself is escapism, from the times of Shakespeare through todays computer graphic superhero movies. An hour of gentle love songs won't go over well, nor will lost loves. Any entertaining show needs variety, and we're short of early murder ballads, or whatever you want to call them. They need to be current to the early 1600 period, so that makes it a little tougher.

    You might think that these tunes are too dark, but when you see the faces of kids light up when the story gets spooky, it's quite delightful. There's quite the intellectual disconnect between a few folks on the yard of an old house playing under an apple tree and real life, so I don't think there's a long term effect on anyone.

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