"150 traditional songs from the British isles. Historical, informative and witty discourse about each song, with notes on original songs, a discography and a bibliography. Complete with guitar chords and special tunings."--Cover
Traditional songs from the British Isles, each features guitar chord symbols and special tunings. Informative notes to each song, a discography and a bibliography.
The Song Index features over 150,000 citations that lead users to over 2,100 song books spanning more than a century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. The songs cited represent a multitude of musical practices, cultures, and traditions, ranging from ehtnic to regional, from foreign to American, representing every type of song: popular, folk, children's, political, comic, advertising, protest, patriotic, military, and classical, as well as hymns, spirituals, ballads, arias, choral symphonies, and other larger works. This comprehensive volume also includes a bibliography of the books indexed; an index of sources from which the songs originated; and an alphabetical composer index.
I saw the field of battle' It still exhibits a most striking picture of desolation all the neighbouring houses being broken down by cannon-shot and shells. There was one sweet little chateau in particular called Hougomont which was the object of several desperate assaults and was at length burned to the ground' There was an immense carnage on this spot and the stench of the dead bodies is still frightfully sensible. WALTER SCOTT Why was the Battle of Waterloo so significant for Scottish history? How has the conflict been represented in Scottish art and literature? What did the Scots who witnessed the battle and its aftermath have to say about it at the time? The Battle of Waterloo represented a seismic shift in the tectonic plates of national identity for Scotland. In art and political rhetoric, the Scots became the poster boys of the British Empire at Waterloo. Ostensibly fighting alongside England against France, the battle also arguably saw Scotland move away from the Auld Alliance towards identification with the United Kingdom. Scotland's Waterloo concentrates on how the battle was perceived at the time, showcasing the different ways that illustrious Scots documented and responded to the battle in its immediate aftermath. Owen Dudley Edwards starts with the painters and their patrons, before moving on to the fascinating eyewitness accounts of Scottish soldiers and doctors. He finally introduces the voices of two of the most famous Scottish writers who experienced the horrific aftermath of the battle first-hand, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron.
This Critical Companion to the work of one of Ireland's most famous and controversial playwrights, Sean O'Casey, is the first major study of the playwright's work to consider his oeuvre and the archival material that has appeared during the last decade. Published ahead of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland with which O'Casey's most famous plays are associated, it provides a clear and detailed study of the work in context and performance. James Moran shows that O'Casey not only remains the most performed playwright at Ireland's national theatre, but that the playwright was also one of the most controversial and divisive literary figures, whose work caused riots and who alienated many of his supporters. Since the start of the 'Troubles' in the North of Ireland, his work has been associated with Irish historical revisionism, and has become the subject of debate about Irish nationalism and revolutionary history. Moran's admirably clear study considers the writer's plays, autobiographical writings and essays, paying special attention to the Dublin trilogy, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. It considers the work produced in exile, during the war and the late plays. The Companion also features a number of interviews and essays by other leading scholars and practitioners, including Garry Hynes, Victor Merriman and Paul Murphy, which provide further critical perspectives on the work.
Originally published in 1977. The Travellers, from those living in bow-tents and horse-drawn caravans to those dwelling in motor caravans and permanent homes, are an important source of traditional music. Their society means that songs that have died out in more settled communities are preserved among them. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, widely known as two of the founding singers of the British and American folk revivals, here display a vast fund of folklore scholarship around the songs of British travelling people. Resulting from extensive collecting in southern and southeastern England and central and northeastern Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, this book contains 130 songs with music and comprehensive notes relating them to folkloristic and historical points of interest. It includes traditional ballads and ballads of broadside origin, bawdy, tragic and humorous songs about love, work and death. Most are in English or in Scots dialect with four in Anglo-Romani.
Establishing an intersection between the fields of traditional music studies, English folk music history and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this book responds to the problematic emphasis on cultural identity in the way traditional music is understood and valued. Williams locates the roots of contemporary definitions of traditional music, including UNESCO-designated intangible cultural heritage, in the theory of English folk music developed in 1907 by Cecil Sharp. Through a combination of Deleuzian philosophical analysis and historical revision of England’s folk revival of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, Williams makes a compelling argument that identity is a restrictive ideology that runs counter to the material processes of traditional music’s production. Williams reimagines Sharp’s appropriation of Darwinian evolutionary concepts, asking what it would mean today to say that traditional music ‘evolves’, in light of recent advances in evolutionary theory. The book ultimately advances a concept of traditional music that eschews the term’s long-standing ontological and axiological foundations in the principle of identity. For scholars and graduate students in musicology, cultural studies, and ethnomusicology, the book is an ambitious and provocative challenge to entrenched habits of thought in the study of traditional music and the historiography of England’s folk revival.