Wu-Hsiung Chen¡]b.1945-¡^is a Kaohsiung local composer. Although he never received any formal music education, he dedicates himself to creating Taiwanese songs. Chen started to compose when he was in his twenties. His early works were piano variations of Taiwanese folksongs. Several years later, he tried to write choral arrangements of Taiwanese folksongs, and he also found the Red Clogs Choir. In recent years, Chen cooperates with many Taiwanese local poets to create nearly one hundred choral songs. Chen hopes his songs could touch the local people¡¦s hearts and bring the awareness of Taiwanese language and culture. Chen emphasized, ¡§If the lyrics cannot inspire me, I will not be able to compose.¡¨ Songs are the artistic extension of the poems. The author of this paper has been the conductor of Red Clogs Choir for ten years and worked with the composer since young. She synthesizes the composer¡¦s creative motives, the lyric writers¡¦ reactions with the musical works, and the audience¡¦s response and chooses eight representative songs written by eight different poets among Chen¡¦s numerous Taiwanese choral songs. The first song, ¡§Four Seasons, Four Sentences¡¨, is a joyful panegyric on the four seasons in Taiwan. The second song, ¡§Spring Dream¡¨, strongly expresses a young man¡¦s yearning for love. The third song, ¡§Earthquake¡¨, emphasizes Taiwanese strong personality no matter how bad they have suffered from severe earthquakes. The fourth song, ¡§Beloved Four-leaved Clover¡¨, expresses the anticipation that four main ethnic groups of Taiwan can respect, and benefit from, one another and unite together as a clover. The fifth song, ¡§Rats¡¨, vividly portrays the old Taiwanese saying: Raise rats to bite your own sacks (which mean being betrayed by those whom you brought up). The sixth song, ¡§Night Scenery of Hsitzu Bay¡¨, represents the beautiful night view at Hsitzu Bay. The seventh song ¡§Taxi¡¨ depicts the lives of hard-working taxi drivers. Finally, the last song, ¡§Taiwan, My Country¡¨, speaks of Taiwanese people¡¦s praise and warm feelings for this island. An obvious song-writing style can be found in these eight choral works. There is always a major melody in each song which matches the rhymes of the text. Chen likes to use jumping intervals with rhythmic change when he wants to display passionate, enthusiastic, heroic or spirited feelings. The harmony is generally in traditional Western style. Chen often uses syncopated rhythms to emphasize some lyrics and sometimes adds semitones to change the music color. He likes to use the piano accompaniment. It brings out the atmosphere, provides harmony, and helps the chorus to maintain its Taiwanese rhymes and poetic expressions. This paper consists of six parts: the preface, Wu-Hsiung Chen¡¦s life, Chen¡¦s works, Eight Taiwanese choral songs, the characteristics of Chen¡¦s songs, and the conclusion.

The Hindi author Phanishwarnath Renu (1921-1977) is credited with initiating the “regional” literary genre in India—a form characterized in part by its use of village song and performance. Renu's work is unusual for the deep debt it owes to his village's performance community; he described himself as a product of folksong, and there are hundreds of textual examples of village song in his writing. Both the songs performed in Renu's village, and also those performed in his fiction, are products of sensibilities local to the folklore region of northeast Bihar. This dissertation draws on textual analysis and on fieldwork in Renu's village, Aurahi-Hingana, and uses a performative approach to explore this Hindi author's unusual station on the border of written and oral tradition. Renu was no passive reproducer of song, but a performer himself, and for certain individuals in his village Renu was a singer first and writer second. Some illiterate village singers even claim him as one of their own. He had a direct hand in shaping the life of his community's folklore as a singer and teacher, and his influence is such that he has become a character within the twenty-first-century village performance repertory. If Renu was a performer, then there is something to be gained from considering his writing as a performance category. The songs in his writing inhabit space, geography, and history—they are worldly—in the same way that live performances of village song inhabit the world. This dissertation proposes a contrapuntal method of reading both fiction and performance that demonstrates the multi-layered complexity of one of Hindi's much-loved authors, and affirms the many layers, the complexity, and the importance of the song tradition to which that author belonged. / text

Focusing on interactions between Britain and the US in the field of popular song, this thesis explores the constitutive relationship between discourse, performance, and identity via critical and postcolonial theory. I interrogate how and why nostalgic and essentialising visions of alterity were used to resist mass consumption, global capitalism, and the changes wrought by modernity during the twentieth century. I argue that folk music does not exist outside the discourse of revivalism and is therefore best seen as an institutionalised system of knowledge animating the 'low Other'. Chapter 1, '"Dancing Puppets": Nationalism, Social Darwinism, and the Transatlantic Invention of Folksong', uncovers moments of mediation between 'primitive' cultures and metropolitan elites during the early twentieth century. Employing the idea of gatekeeping, I critique a genealogy of powerful voices including Cecil J. Sharp and John A. Lomax alongside others who persistently challenged their orthodoxies. Chapter 2, '"His Rough, Stubborn Muse": Industrial Balladry, Class, and the Politics of Realism', investigates Marxist visions of working-class culture, showing how ideas of rural authenticity were translated onto urban contexts. Focusing on the BBC 'radio ballads', I argue that industrial folksong was a form of social realism intended as a gendered bulwark against threats posed by Americanisation and postwar affluence. Chapter 3, '"Found True and Unspoiled": Blues, Performance, and the Mythology of Racial Display', explores African American culture, showing how desires written into a revivalist gaze forced artists to assume what I term 'black masks' for the benefit of white male fantasy. Focusing on televised performances, I argue that the semiotics of blues events provide a way of understanding the workings of racial identity itself. I conclude by proposing that what I term the 'folkloric imagination' is a simulacrum brought into existence by ideological fantasy - a manifestation of the colonialist Real.

Annotation: My graduation work deals with the usage of a traditional song as a genre at primary school. The aim was to bring a traditional song closer to children using genre and find out whether they can also feel and appreciate different kinds of genre work than the media provide them . I also tried to find out what kind of music children like and according to this information I tried to make my own interpretation. As the method of research I chose an observation and an interview which I did in the school club and in the centre for children and youth in Jindřichův Hradec. As a result I found out that children are able to accept different kinds of music than media and they like learning folk songs of various genres during their own participation in a music activity.

The significance in Jung-Sun Park's Arirang Mass is the discovery of artistic value in folk song and its applicability to art music. By using fragments of the Arirang folk songs, or by imitating its musical character, composer could create and develop musical characteristics that are recognizably Korean. The work exhibits his remarkable compositional style, which shows a relationship between Korean traditional style and Western style. This analysis demonstrates specific examples of the elements of Korean traditional folksong, such as Sikimsae, Jangdan, Han, and pentatonic scales which are permeated into this mass setting, and how composer uses fragments of the Arirang tune.

Jean Ahn (b. 1976) is one of the active Korean woman composers in the U.S. Ahn’s goal is to introduce her works in the U.S. by composing pieces that combine Korean musical elements with Western compositional techniques. The purpose of this study is to provide an introduction to and analysis of Folksong Revisited for solo piano by Jean Ahn. This work demonstrates how Jean Ahn integrates Korean traditional musical elements and Western musical compositional techniques. For better understanding of Ahn’s three Korean folksong arrangements in the Folksong Revisited, this document provides brief information about Korean traditional music and explores elements of it. This document also examines the folksong sources of each piece and Ahn’s compositional approaches to them, and then provides performance suggestions.

The submission focuses on the performance of violin works that incorporate elements of folk music. It investigates some of the ways in which traditional folk melodies are utilised in violin repertoire and considers the implications for performance. It recognises that when performing music inspired by folk idioms the classical violinist often needs to adopt a different set of technical and musical objectives relevant to the cultural origin of the work. The submission takes the form of two CD recordings with a supporting exegesis. The exegesis discusses those aspects of the performances that stem from the cultural traditions to which the repertoire is related. Due to the broad nature of this topic my investigation was confined to selected works that stemmed from English and Hungarian traditional music. The exegesis examines the relevance of the research and the application of these discoveries in performance. The main focus is the incorporation of traditional Hungarian characteristics in the performance of Bartók’s Rhapsody No 2 for Violin and Piano, and Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Violoncello, Op 7. Discussion then moves to Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and the differences required to recreate the sound of the traditional English fiddler. / Thesis (M.Mus.) -- University of Adelaide, Elder Conservatorium of Music, 2007

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abstract: Lu Pei (b. 1956) is a celebrated Chinese American composer who currently serves as a composition professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. His work is known for its varied use of Chinese folk tunes. He lived in the United States a long time, which cultivated within him abundant Western musical influences. The sound of multi-ethnic elements is greatly reflected in his own music. Writing an opera has always been his ultimate dream as a composer, and after many years of work, the opera The Third of March was completed and premiered in 2018 in Guangxi. It has received wide acclaim and has been a favorite of younger listeners. Lu Pei aims to bring young people to modern music and the Chinese opera, not only using traditional Chinese musical elements, but also adopts “reinvented” modern Western musical styles, giving a new identity to the Chinese opera is the main foci of The Third of March. To prepare for my performer’s guide to The Third of March, I will discuss Lu Pei’s inspirations from the Guangxi Song Fairs, and the music and culture of the Zhuang people surrounding the date in the Chinese lunar calendar, March Third. For Westerners unfamiliar with Lu Pei’s music, I will briefly introduce the compositional blending of Western and Chinese musical styles with a section about Chinese composers active in the United States, Chen Yi (b. 1953), and Tan Dun (b. 1957). I will also include a brief outline of the history of Chinese opera development, and Lu Pei’s compositional concepts and the background of the opera The Third of March will be discussed. My performer’s guide, the primary focus of this project, will begin by stressing Lu Pei’s adoption of different Chinese folk songs and Western compositional elements. These techniques clearly gave the piece a unique stylistic identity. I will give a brief overview of the Chinese language diction in International Phonetic Alphabet. Finally, the qualities of the main arias in the opera, and some of the Chinese operatic techniques for singers, and their special effects, will be explored. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

Beethoven's folksong arrangements and variations have been coldly received in recent scholarship. Their melodic and harmonic simplicity, fusion of highbrow and lowbrow styles, seemingly diminished emphasis on originality, and the assorted nationalities of the tunes have caused them to be viewed as musical rubble within the heritage of Western art music. The canonic composer's relationship with the Scottish amateur folksong collector and publisher George Thomson, as well as with his audience, amateur music lovers, has been largely downplayed in the reception of Beethoven. I define Beethoven's engagement with folksongs and their audience as the "Beethoven Folksong Project," evaluating it in the history of Beethoven reception as well as within the cultural and ideological contexts of the British Isles and German-speaking lands at the turn of the nineteenth century. I broaden the image of Beethoven during his lifetime by demonstrating that he served as an ideal not only for highly educated listeners and performers but also for amateur music lovers in search of cultivation through music. I explore the repertory under consideration in relation to the idea of Bildung ("formation" or "education" of the self or of selves as a nation) that pervaded contemporary culture, manifesting itself in music as the tradition of Bildungsmusik ("music for self-improvement"). Drawing on both contemporary reviews and recent studies, I show that the music's demanding yet comprehensible nature involved a wide range of elements from folk, popular, and chamber music to Hausmusik ("house music"), Unterhaltungsmusik ("music for entertainment"), Alpenmusik ("music of the Alps"), and even Gassenhauer ("street music"). Within the tradition of Bildungsmusik, adaptation of folksongs for domestic music-making, recomposition of pre-existing materials, collaboration between professionals and amateurs, and incorporation of musics familiar to and popular with contemporaries served as significant means for the composer to communicate with a middle-class audience. The hybrid and flexible nature of the folksong settings was not an awkward mix of various kinds of "trivial" music but rather a reflection of political, cultural, and social phenomena in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century.