minstrel: period music/period sounding music

[Laura McKinstry]

CONSORTMUS at aol.com wrote:

> I have read here lately about using this tune or that tune from
> contemporary
> sources,  and I'd like to ask, if I may, "why?"

I can only answer for myself, but here's my reasoning:

I listen to period music, love it, and learn the words to it, so I can
perform it as written.  I haven't yet found a song whose words were so
poor that I needed to change them (Except one song about a rose that
I've altered just slightly - typical Troubador rudeness regarding a
young woman's temporary beauty.)

Secondly, I've been writing songs for the SCA and desperately attempting
to achieve both a period melody AND an enjoyable one.  I've failed in my
two recent attempts - the latter of which I specifically wrote to a
slightly altered period melody.  It's STILL doesn't sound period (and my
brother is STILL waiting, for the past 16 years, for me to write a rock
song.  I just don't write that way.  I write folk songs, no matter how I
try to disguise them, no matter how much I listen to a genre of music.
You can't get blood out of a turnip.)

Third, a found a current pop song that with very little alteration is
both EXTREMELY period sounding and, for the vast majority of people,
unrecognizable as having derived from a non-period source.

Having been yanked from the Dream forcibly before, I have an extreme
reluctance to do the same to others by any accident on my part that
associates my music with something other than either SCA or ren/medieval
times - not that I'm belittling those who do.  Know your audience - if
they WANT filk, give it to them.  But for my part,  I've worked hard to
create music that nurtures the Dream.  I sincerely believe that, with
this song, I have finally, for the first time, succeeded.  The fact that
the original source of the music is not period is simply an odd
circumstance.

Ths response sounds a tad testy to me - my apologies, it isn't intended
that way.  I just really wish I COULD write a period melody!  I try
SOOOO hard!  (whimper).  Or a rock song.  My poor brother's career could
hinge on that song I'm incapable of writing.  Oh, woe is me. :)  Until
then, I'll just keep working with stuff that sounds period out of
intent, true periodness, or freak accident.

--
--------------------------------------------------
Laura McKinstry   aka Lark of Cire Freunlaven
Dallas, TX  Steppes, Ansteorra
           dalm at why.net
--------------------------------------------------
Verdant, a songbird rampant sinister Or
within an orle horny Or




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