The Influence of Folk Music on Twentieth-Century Art Music

For contemporary audiences, the term folk music often evokes images of ordinary people singing about the struggles and vicissitudes of life. But folk music is really much more than just the music of lower-class people. Folk music has a long tradition across diverse cultures throughout the world, dating back decades and even centuries. Of unique interest, folk music of the early twentieth century in Europe and America offers students of music significant lessons about how composers like Bela Bartok and many others were influenced by this art form.

Folk Music’s Role on Influencing Art Music

As a matter of defining folk music as it existed in the early 20th century in Europe and America, this art form can fundamentally be described as a cultural, oral tradition. It is an accurate statement to suggest that folk music was mostly a derivative of rural, ethnic life. Yet, in the early 20th century the popularity and appeal of folk music spread to the burgeoning urban centers of the western world across Europe and America. At that time, the common expression used to describe this form of music was folk songs - referring to politically and socially motivated compositions using stylistic elements of the former rural, oral tradition. In many ways, society in the early 20th century began using folk music as a means of expressing deep held attitudes and convictions. While many of the messages inherent to the music were of a positive cultural aspect, folk music was also, in some ways, commandeered for less than noble purposes. Folk music played a significant role, for example, as a propaganda tool for nationalists and even the Nazis prior to World War II. Nonetheless, despite these predictable and unavoidable abuses of a legitimate art form, the legacy of folk music in the early 20th-century art world yet remains a positive historical note - no pun intended.

Artistic Expression

As a matter of deepening discussion about the role of folk music on 20th century art music, one must necessarily turn to a discussion concerning how folk music was integrated with other forms of musical composition. One of the unique aspects of folk music concerns the artistic expression and influence behind it. Unlike traditional forms of music, such as classical compositions, the beauty of folk music concerns the freedom of influence and expression. Traditional folk music composers literally drew upon any aspect of life as a means of artistic inspiration - wars, ethnic heroes, supernatural events, death, everyday labor, and love. As folk music began to influence other genres of music in the 20th century, these types of themes and motifs began to emerge in contemporary compositions. Even composers of classical music like Percy Grainger in England, Bela Bartok in Hungary, and Aaron Copland in America began producing arrangements of folk songs that incorporated traditional folk-like material into original classical compositions. Folk music, in this respect, served to reinvigorate the contemporary music scene in ways previously unforeseen in history.

More than just a Lower Form of Art

For some, the simple inference regarding the role of folk music in 20th century art music might be summed up as a matter of a lower form of art influencing higher art. This is, however, a complete mischaracterization of the truth. In fact, “to portray the history of the interrelation of folk and art music as a commonplace activity of composers can easily oversimplify the more pervasive relationship between different genres of music that characterizes most musical cultures.” In other words, honest intellectual treatment and discussion of the role of 20th century art music require, and even demands, greater sensitivity on a case by case basis. The music student must investigate and consider what individual composers were thinking, how the composers were influenced by folk music, and why the composers chose this traditional form of art as a vehicle for advancing their own skills and acumen as musical specialists.

Three Guiding Conclusions

With the above points in mind, the study of the role of folk music in 20th century art music must be tempered by consideration for three guiding conclusions. Number one, in general, musical art composers of the early 20th century drew upon the influences of folk music for its “great potential.” Many composers during the early 20th century recognized, in this respect, that folk music was far more than just a quaint element of the bucolic lifestyle. Moreover, folk music as an influence should not be construed by the music student as some sort of static form of art. Contemporary composers at the turn of the 20th century recognized that folk music offered dynamic possibilities for expressing new social realities and trends. As a second guiding consideration, it is an artificial notion to think that different forms of music can be cleanly and separately delineated. Stated in different terms, it is a fallacy to construct a classification system of music characterized by stratified models of noninteracting genres because “folk and art music are rarely not influencing each other in some way.” Last but not least, the high art, low art perspective can wrongly lead one to conclude that the role of folk music and 20th century art music was one of subordinate influence, folk music being a mere embellishment to classical compositions, for example. But this is not the case at all. More accurately, the role of folk music during this most interesting period of history can be understood in terms of dialectical interrelations that were remarkably dynamic and multidimensional.

Bela Bartok

In bringing the discussion into the context of specific composers, no other figure in early 20th century European history speaks more definitively about the role of folk music in music art than Bela Bartok. Bartok was a Hungarian composer of great influence and notoriety, not only in his home country of Hungary but also of all Europe in the early 20th century. Bartok’s definition of folk music is quite telling about the role and influences of folk music in his life and work. More specifically, Bartok defined folk music as the “music of the class of population the least affected by city culture, the music of a more or less great temporal as well as spatial extent, which is or sometimes was alive as a spontaneous manifestation of musical impulse.” This fundamental definition reveals the fact that at a most rudimentary level Bartok understood that the influential undercurrents of folk music were all about the message, the words, the meaning of what was being said in lyrics. It is no coincidence therefore, that at the height of Bartok’s success he expressed almost mundane themes previously untreated by classical composers - themes about sex and street life, crime, and the so-called vices of the world. If not for the shock value alone for more conservative audiences and the honesty of expression embraced by the more common listener, Bartok’s music enjoyed broad appeal with this new take on romanticism.

For Bartok, the role of folk music in his art music moved beyond thematic impressions into structural compositional aspects. Bartok was a visionary in many ways recognizing the inherent and potential structural complexities that folk music brought to the table. Many of his contemporaries viewed folk music as a simplistic and predictable art form. This attitude, as Bartok saw it, led other composers to commit what Bartok considered as unfortunate theoretical mistakes in their art music. More specifically, Bartok put it this way:

“Most trained and good musicians then [thirty or forty years ago] believed that only simple harmonizations were well suited to folk melodies. And even worse, by simple harmonies they meant a succession of triads of tonic, dominant and possibly subdominant.”

Bartok’s point, in so many words, can be summed up as an insightful compliment regarding the artistic value of folk music. He recognized, more exactly, that the so-called primitive aspect of folk music should be more properly characterized as a melodically enriched art form. Thus, perhaps the most flavorful contribution of folk music in 20th century art music stemmed from the imbuing of sweet melodies into otherwise dry and austere traditional compositions.

How Composers Incorporated Folk Music into their Compositions and their Motivations

In advancing discussion to the subject of how composers incorporated folk music into their compositions and what their motivations were for doing so, once again the attitudes and insights of Bela Bartok take center stage. To begin, Bartok recognized that traditionally trained musicians held certain mindsets regarding what music should be, how it should be structured, and what the meaning of certain concepts like harmonization meant. From a music theory perspective, for example, a lot of Hungarian music in the early 20th century was built around the pentatonic scale. Yet, the newly emerging music influenced by folk music represented a departure from this theoretical tradition - a departure that puzzled and confused Bartok’s contemporaries. As a matter of folk music’s influence on Bartok, the composer himself believed that "the simpler the melody the more complex and strange may be the harmonization and accompaniment that go well with it. For Bartok and other composers who were influenced by his work, folk music became a means of emancipation from the rigors of conservative compositional tradition.

Philosophical and Ideological Expression

As briefly touched upon in the previous discussion, some of the underlying motivations of composers for incorporating folk music into their work were of a political and/or social order. In this respect, one must understand that in the early 20th century in Europe and America modernity was taking shape. Europe itself was being swept by trends of nationalistic fervor. The old world was clashing with the new world as nations like Hungary and Germany struggled to establish national identities of which they could be proud. It is no wonder, therefore, that composers across Europe turned, motivationally speaking, to folk music as a tool and vehicle for expressing new ideas about life and culture. So to speak, composers were motivated by the prospect of using folk music to expand their expressive, musical vocabularies thereby “resituating folk music in the art music context” while fashioning social and political statements. Thus, it can be said that in the most fundamental of ways, the motivation of composers like Bartok and others was to incorporate folk music into their compositions as a way of making music tantamount to philosophical and ideological expression.

Aaron Copland’s Social and Political Motivations

Across the Atlantic, the motivations of American composers like Aaron Copland for incorporating folk music into contemporary compositions were not too dissimilar to that of European composers. As Copland’s popularity and appeal grew in America and abroad, the composer took advantage of his opportunities to further nationalist agenda. One must understand, however, that Copland was not fundamentally motivated by his own devices. His rise to success came at a time when the world had witnessed the horrors of World War I and the rise of the Third Reich and the nationalistic craze in much of Europe. Perhaps Copeland’s driving ambition, or motivation, in this way was to use folk music to hold up and encourage his fellow countrymen in the face of imminent danger. Copland's formal training allowed him to recognize the potential of American folk songs to achieve a distinctive national sound. In terms of how Copland achieved such ends, he simply integrated folk music melodies into his compositions. As a matter of appealing to the broad swath of Americans living in the heartland, Copland incorporated cowboy ballets such as Billy the Kid and Rodeo, as well as Appalachian Spring. Summarily, the catalog of Copland’s work makes it quite evident that he was motivated to integrate folk music into his compositions for social and political reasons.

Percy Grainger’s Emotional Expression

Not to be outdone by his European and American counterparts, Australian immigrant Percy Grainger also integrated folk music into his compositions as a way of impressing his American and English audiences with “great purity of style.” For Grainger, folk music gave him the freedom as a composer to express whatever emotions he desired to convey to his listeners. In this manner, Percy Grainger used folk music as a way of elevating his music art beyond the constraints of traditionally conceived compositions. Grainger integrated folk music into his compositions, in other words, to lend primacy to the art of feelings. In this way, it could be said that Percy Grainger used folk music as a vehicle for rejecting the prevailing conventions of traditional European compositions.

How the Use of Folk Music Affected their Musical Style

As for how folk music affected the musical styles of Bela Bartok, Aaron Copland and Percy Grainger, the comments of these composers reveal that it was a very personal matter for each one of them. In terms of how folk music most noticeably affected the musical style of Bela Bartok, for instance, the composer himself stated that "the melody only serves as a 'motto' while that which is built around it is of real importance. Melody, for Bartok, was the essence of the song. It was the starting point by which diverse aspects and qualities of the rest of the composition were derived. In this way, one can see that folk music affected Bela Bartok’s musical style rather profoundly. The integrity of the song comes from the words and melody whereby the “accompaniment, introductory and concluding phrases are of secondary importance, and they only serve as an ornamental setting for the precious stone.”

For Aaron Copland, folk music can be said to have influenced his style rather dramatically, even definitively. As he adapted folk music into his compositions, his style became very much directed at, “evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit.” His style, therefore, had a sort of populist appeal that could even be said to evoke a sense of personal identity for Copland’s listeners. His accessible compositional style lent itself to social and political purposes. Stylistically, Copland can be remembered for creating “the optimistic tone,” “his love of rather large canvases,” “a certain directness in expression of sentiment,” and, “a certain songfulness.”

Last but not least, folk music influenced the musical style of Percy Grainger by supporting his artistic goal of making music that was fundamentally driven by emotional currents. In this respect, Grainger explained his use of folk music as a matter of preventing “the possibility of 'dullness' when the underlying emotional urge is played out.” His compositions, thereby, had a common style despite their distinctiveness from one another. He was always authentic in terms of his lyrical expression; stylistically always choosing to say what he felt was meaningful to himself and his audience. For Grainger, folk music made all of this possible.

Conclusion

In conclusion, folk music of the early twentieth century in Europe and America offers students of music significant lessons about how composers like Bela Bartok and many others were influenced by this art form. In the early 20th century, the popularity and appeal of folk music spread to the burgeoning urban centers of the western world - Europe and America. Most often, folk music was used by composers to advance politically and socially charged messages. Traditional folk music composers literally drew upon any aspect of life as a means of artistic inspiration - wars, ethnic heroes, supernatural events, death, everyday labor, and love. As folk music began to influence other genres of music in the 20th century, these types of themes and motifs began to emerge in contemporary compositions. Bartok understood that the influential undercurrents of folk music were all about the message, the words, the meaning of what was being said in lyrics. Copland's formal training allowed him to recognize the potential of American folk songs to achieve a distinctive national sound. Percy Grainger used folk music as a way of elevating his music art beyond the constraints of traditionally conceived compositions. Thus, folk music will forever hold its prominent place in the history of twentieth-century art music.

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