popular song and fairy tales
Popular song is a short vocal item whose melodic line is performable by singers of all standards—from amateur to professional. Thus, an important element in what makes a song popular is the ease with which it can be sung. Closely allied to this is the nature of the words—a successful fusing of text and music frequently produces the most memorable songs. Yet another ingredient is the character of the song's accompaniment. As the European art song developed, German romantic composers especially cultivated a particularly fluent style in establishing and maintaining the mood of a song through the piano accompaniment.
1. History
Singing is the most natural form of all human music‐making, with its origins in prehistoric times. Most early surviving music dates from around the 13th century, being a variety of church music, and secular songs, notated either by clergy, or aristocratic laity educated by clergy. The 13th century also saw the rise of the troubadours—singers and poets, who frequently performed their own material at important court functions, or for the delight of a favoured lady. Originating in France, the art of the troubadour spread quickly throughout Europe, helped immeasurably, no doubt, by the great mobility of knights and their armies en route to the crusades.
By the late Middle Ages, part‐singing (a group of singers with one or more of its number assigned to a series of individual parts, which when performed together create a satisfying whole), had developed to the point where it was a fashionable social pastime. This is not to overlook the evolving importance of religious choral music, which for many Christian denominations was central to their acts of worship. Meanwhile, stage plays in late Renaissance Britain often helped individual secular songs achieve popularity through the widespread habit of inserting them into the drama. William Shakespeare made extensive use of music in his plays, including a great quantity of song.
2. Appearance of songs with supernatural‐related texts
As the Age of Reason dawned (18th century), the Italian solo art song was already well established. Later, during the 19th century, the form found its greatest expression in Germany and to some extent in Russia also. This was a time when poems dealing in supernatural elements began to interest composers. Schubert's Erlkönig (The Erl King) of 1817 is a setting of Goethe's celebrated ballad, concerning a young boy who is lured to his untimely end by an evil goblin. The same composer's Der Alpenjäger (The Alpine Hunter), another Goethe setting, invokes the spirit of the mountains.
3. Nursery and cradle songs
A point worth bearing in mind is that many leading composers of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries wrote cradle songs—Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms (his Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4, being especially famous), and Richard Strauss. The Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81), set a cycle of five nursery songs. (He also composed a setting of Goethe's The Flea.)
4. Folk song and community songs
The folk song tradition is widespread throughout Europe and Russia, being most often at its strongest in rural and industrial communities. For centuries it relied for its continuation on transmission from parent to child. Many leading composers in the 20th century have turned to arranging such material. Manuel de Falla's collection Seven Spanish Folk Songs contains a cradle song, ‘Nana’, as does Béla Bartók's Hungarian collection, Village Scenes.
The arrival of printed collections, as distinct from the arrangements mentioned above, indicated that countries were becoming more aware of their cultural heritage, including indigenous folk or fairy tales. With the absorption of traditional airs into the public consciousness, together with a heavy reliance on contemporary popular commercial song, community singing arose in the early 20th century, attaining an especial vogue in the United States, Britain, and Australia. During World War I, in both America and Britain, the practice was a popular pastime within the armed services.
The movement went on to gain impetus with the publication of special song books. In Britain it reached a peak of popularity, helping to draw vast crowds to public events such as in 1926 when 10, 000 people attended London's Royal Albert Hall to inaugurate the Daily Express Community Singing Movement. The repertoire was, by and large, an amorphous collection of traditional airs, interspersed with hymns and carols, sea shanties, and Negro spirituals, including songs which had fairy‐tale‐style narratives, such as ‘Old King Cole’, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, or the nursery rhyme ‘Hot Cross Buns’.
5. The 20th century
Through the continuing demand for pantomime in the 20th century, many popular songs have found themselves allied to fairy tales, while not in themselves dealing with the subject. Thus a pantomime about ‘Cinderella’ or, say, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, might not contain a vocal item which relates to the story as such. A good example of this is the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, although it could be argued that the song, ‘Some Day my Prince Will Come’, is part of the narrative.
Elsewhere, fairy‐tale references were to be found, including a show with a fairy‐tale title, Cinderella on Broadway (1920), and a song, ‘Cinderella stay in my arms’, written by Michael Carr and Jimmy Kennedy in 1938. Before that, in 1933, Kennedy, in collaboration with Harry Castling, wrote what became probably the most popular of all songs in the fairy‐tale tradition: ‘The Teddy Bears' Picnic’. The song has long been established as a ‘classic’, being a favourite among young and old alike.
A modern fairy tale created especially for popular song was ‘Rudolf the Red‐Nosed Reindeer’. Based on a story by Robert L. May written in 1939, Rudolf the Red‐Nosed Reindeer was fashioned into a song by Johnny Marks in 1949. An enduring favourite, especially at Christmas time, it first gained popularity with a recording made by the renowned American actor and singer Gene Autry. A similar tale of an animal disadvantaged by its physical appearance, yet who eventually wins acceptance, emerged with a song made famous by the British actor and dancer Tommy Steele in 1959. ‘The Little White Bull’, which he sang in the film, Tommy the Toreador, became one of his greatest hits. Hans Christian Anderson's ‘The Ugly Duckling’ found its way into song thanks to the 1952 film based on the life of the Danish writer of fairy tales. With music by Frank Loesser, the film Hans Christian Andersen starred the celebrated American comedian and singer, Danny Kaye.
The rise and eventual domination by ‘pop’ and ‘beat’ music in the last few decades has not tended to include the traditional fairy tale. Nevertheless, it continues to have a firm place in commercial ventures, as can be seen with the number of musical shows and films (such as Beauty and the Beast from Walt Disney Studios), based on such stories.
Bibliography
- Fischer‐Dieskau, Dietrich, Book of Lieder (1976).
- Gammond, Peter, The Oxford Companion to Popular Music (1991).
- Goss, John (ed.), Daily Express Community Song Book (1927).
- Larkin, Colin (ed.), The Guinness Who's Who of Stage Musicals (1994).
- Sadie, Stanley, (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, xvii (1980).
— Tom Higgins
