The Music of American Folk Song

This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the notedcomposer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally writtenas a foreword for the 1940 book Our Singing Country it wasconsidered too long and was replaced by a much shorter version.According to her stepson Pete Seeger when the original was notincluded Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the lastten years of her life. It just killed her . . . She was trying toanalyze the whole style and problem of performing this music. Alongwith her children Mike and Peggy Seeger he has long desired to see thiswork in print as it was meant to be read.The manuscript has been edited from several varying sources by LarryPolansky with the assistance of Seeger's biographer Judith Tick. It isdivided into two sections: I. A Note on Transcription and II. Noteson the Songs and on Manners of Singing. Seeger examines all aspects ofthe relationship between singer song notation the eventual performerand the transcriber. In Section I Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive (transcription as cultural preservation) and prescriptive (she intended that others would be able to perform these songs). In Section II she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music and suggests how performers might make the songs their own through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of herown ideas on the topic.Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College anda well-known composer and theorist on American music. Judith Tick isProfessor of Music at Northeastern University and author of the firstmajor biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.