Folk ballad

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The folk ballad is a genre of poetry that is shaped by oral tradition.

Concept and literary classification

The relationships that are cited for the term ballad (Romance dance song) are mostly misleading. Together with the term folk song and going back to Johann Gottfried Herder (cf. his collection of folk songs 1778/1779, called Voices of the Nations in Songs in the second edition in 1807 ), it describes a song form that (according to JW v. Goethe) is epic, lyrical and connects the dramatic.

An early source of European folk ballad research is the “Hundertliederbuch” by the Danish historian Anders Sørensen Vedel , printed in Ribe in 1591.

The folk ballad tells ( epic ) a story by using the simple metric of the popular traditional song (two- or four-line folk song verse with end rhyme) and incorporating one's own feelings ( lyric ) into a refrain or special stanzas. Forms of representation are dialogue and an abrupt sequence of events in the change of scene (elements of the drama ) without explanatory additions.

In contrast to the legend , the folk ballad makes no claim to historical reality, but also processes topics of history in a de-historicizing, generalizing way (for example when it deals with the fate of Bernauerin in a ballad-like form ). However, she insists on the “truth” of her portrayal, which distinguishes it from folk tales as deliberate fiction and brings it closer to the realm of the mythical. The folk ballad has its own claim to truth, which does not depend on historical facts and certain forms of name (compare Tannhauser ). The claim to truth is also connected with the fact that folk ballads are usually handed down in the high-level language (High German and Low German), not in everyday vernacular. Fairy tales, sagas, songs are the main forms of folk poetry, to which there are parallel genres in high literature, for the folk ballad the art ballad .

Characteristic of the genus

The folk ballad, like any tradition under the conditions of orality (compare Oral Tradition ), is a strongly concentrating, narrow literary form characterized by repetitions, formulaic language ( epic formula ), brevity and stylization. Preformed, stereotypical stanzas are used for identical and similar scenes in the plot; by repeating parts and lines, stanzas are strung together and bound together. The main feature is the lack of a solely authorized text; the creation of the text and melody is anonymous or the author's name is forgotten.

The folk ballad lives in a multitude of variants. We speak of a song type with the same basic structure, which can be worked out very differently in the individual variants in the details (compare variability (folk poetry) ). Constant variability (and thus the ability to adapt to changing generations in the course of tradition) is an important characteristic of oral tradition. The folkloric (literary folklore , folklore ) interpretation tries to take this into account.

The starting point of a comment can only be a specific text version of a variant, but in the interpretation it must be with a view to the structure and action elements of the entire range of variation of the corresponding folk ballad type. In relation to the wording, the sense of the text is in the foreground (compare girl murderer ). While the interpretation of high literature can usually make use of a fixed text, as intended by the poet, in the case of texts from folk tradition, the differences between the type constructed by science as a synopsis of different versions and the actual wording of the many different variants from the tradition must be be considered.

Origin and tradition

Many of the narrative materials of the folk ballads are linked to medieval literature (knight themes, crusades, nobility). The genre is probably already alive in the late Middle Ages, although the tradition has generally only been documented since the 16th century, for example in song pamphlets (see leaflet ) or in handwritten song books (in Spain and Scandinavia there are older sources of this European genre of folk poetry ).

Highly literary material is also creatively transformed and adapted to the conditions of oral tradition (for example by familiarization with a minimum of acting persons; dehistoricization by adapting to one's own world of experience and to the milieu of the current singers). This transformative power of folk poetry remained alive into the first half of the 20th century; the songs offer entertainment and instruction in a society that is largely poor in writing. Folk ballads mostly convey a conservative morality and pass on more adapted, fateful mentalities.

With the term “ Bänkelsang ” the way in which the song is performed is in the foreground; Folk ballads were also often performed. The bailiff made money by singing the crouched song pamphlets that contain these texts and that he offered on the street and in the market square. Some folk ballads began accordingly with a request to be quiet and listen (for example, "Now I want to start ... to sing about ..." as with the "Tannhauser"), and they ended with a formulaic writer's verse (such as " Who is who sang this little song for us ... “like at the castle in Austria ).

Subjects of folk ballads

Topics of folk ballads are historical events such as the Bernauerin (folk ballad) , the clarification of the social contrast between rich and poor and between the classes such as count and nun and castle in Austria , processing of highly literary material since antiquity as with the "royal children" ( There were two royal children ), fictional horror stories like in the case of the murderer of girls and materials with a religious background (sub-genre: legendary ballads) like in the case of Tannhauser . The topics mentioned represent characteristic but very different examples.

The folk ballad does not have an “exciting plot” in the conventional sense like high literature, although its ballad-like means of representation are dramatic (compare epic formula ). The folk ballad is not a poetic individual performance aimed at "surprising" a reader, but an established collective tradition, the plot of which is familiar to the listener and fellow singer and which is particularly recognizable in the local singing community; this "community" has practically no longer existed since the 1950s]. It is not the action that counts, but the topic, such as the class difference (compare count and nun ). The social conditions of the topics are [were] practiced with the song lyrics as a social "norm" and conveyed to the next generation. In this sense, the folk ballad is traditional, prejudice-laden empirical knowledge.

Many folk ballads have medieval material as their content and have handed down mentalities ( mentality ) that are strongly traditional, sometimes even seem archaic. A number of these songs have international distribution (compare for example in English “folk ballad”, in Danish “folkevise” and similar terms). - The narrative folk song with historical themes is to be slightly differentiated from the folk ballad, the treatment of which, however, deliberately remains historical, such as in the "Bavarian Hiasl". This text, which can be assigned to a genre of our modern times, does not want to be a fiction, but a factual report, albeit subjectively from the mouth of the poacher (compare Bavarian Hiasl ).

Editions and Collections

The German folk ballads were among the first genres of (German-language) folk song in which the beginning scientific research became interested in the 1840s and 1850s. One suggestion that was practically inconsequential in its time was the experience of young Goethe , who got to know some folk ballads in Alsace in 1771 and wrote them down (two manuscripts have been preserved). Pioneers of the recording from oral tradition ( oral tradition ) were among others the Freiherr von Ditfurth (* 1801, † 1880) ( Franz Wilhelm von Ditfurth ) in Franconia before 1850, who later became particularly interested in historical folk songs. Most editions began with examples of folk ballads (children's songs, on the other hand, were often banned at the end). A pioneer of scientific research, Hoffmann von Fallersleben (* 1798, † 1874), not only recorded critically from oral tradition, but also tried to notate the melodies. The "Erk-Böhme" (1893-1894) ( Deutscher Liederhort ), in which the first volume with the song numbers 1 to 220 (mostly) documented folk ballads (followed by historical songs, among others; the children's songs ), became the standard work (also to determine the type) at the end). Other “classic” editions were based on this order, e.g. B. the records of Pastor Louis Pinck in the (then) German-speaking part of Lorraine since the 1920s. Another edition, which also gave special weight to the folk ballads, was created under the shadow of National Socialist rule in South Tyrol; three volumes from this extensive collection (also based on tape recordings) were published after the war from 1968 to 1976. The processing of historical collections such as B. that of Ludolf Parisius (* 1827, † 1900) in the Altmark in northern Saxony-Anhalt. Newer collections also made use of the possibility of documenting the folk ballads as a sound record and making them audible. Newer editions are usually limited to a selection of folk ballads, which they traditionally place at the beginning, but want to see integrated into the overall tradition, also to illustrate the relativizing connection with the other genres of the folk song. Although research mostly focuses on one region, it sees the genre of folk ballads in a larger (European) context.

Literature (selection)

  • Rolf Wilhelm Brednich : People's ballad. In: Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Volume 4. 2nd edition. de Gruyter, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-11-010085-1 , pp. 723-734.
  • John Meier : Ballads , Volume 1–2, Reclam, Stuttgart 1935–1936 (German literature ... in development series). Reprint Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1964 (anthology of folk ballad texts with short comments; good introduction, which, despite the choice of words, seems highly 'modern', see also: John Meier).
  • German folk song archive and sole editor: German folk songs with their melodies. Ballads [DVldr], Volume 1 ff., Berlin 1935 ff. - Otto Holzapfel u. a .: German folk songs with their melodies. Ballads , Volume 10, Peter Lang, Bern 1996 (with folk ballad index, complete list of all German-language folk ballad types).
  • Wolfgang Braungart : The folk ballad as a popular song. Some interpretation perspectives. In: Otto Holzapfel u. a .: German folk songs with their melodies. Balladen , Volume 8, 1988, pp. 254-271. Online = www.goethezeitportal.de/db/wiss/epoche/braungart_volksballade.pdf
  • Otto Holzapfel : The great German folk ballad book , Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2000.
  • Otto Holzapfel: Liedverzeichnis , Volume 1–2, Olms, Hildesheim 2006 (with further information; ISBN 3-487-13100-5 ).
  • Erich Seemann : The European folk ballad. In: Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Lutz Röhrich, Wolfgang Suppan (eds.): Handbuch des Volksliedes. Volume 1: The genres of the folk song. Fink, Munich 1973, pp. 37-56.
  • Marcello Sorce Keller : Sul castel di mirabel: Life of a Ballad in Oral Tradition and Choral Practice , Ethnomusicology , XXX (1986), no. 3, 449-469.
  • Otto Holzapfel : List of songs: The older German-language popular song tradition . Online version since January 2018 on the homepage of the Volksmusikarchiv des Bezirks Oberbayern (in PDF format; further updates planned), see lexicon file “Volksballade” and own files Volksballadenindex and Volksballadentexte .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Louis Pinck: Folksongs collected by Goethe in Alsace [...], Metz 1932; Hermann Strobach: Folksongs collected by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Weimarer Handschrift [...], Weimar 1982. Some of it reappeared, romantically alienated, in the Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection , 1806–1808, but we cannot speak of scientific documentation here.
  2. ^ Franz Wilhelm Freiherr von Ditfurth: Franconian folk songs , Volume 1–2, Leipzig 1855. Volume 1 shares "Spiritual Songs" with Volume 2 "Secular Songs", beginning with 73 song numbers "Ballads".
  3. ↑ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben / Ernst Richter: Schlesische Volkslieder mit Melodien , Leipzig 1842. At the same time, Hoffmann von Fallersleben looked critically at equating the recording landscape and the alleged origin of a song from this landscape; as he later said, he should have better called his edition “Folksongs from Silesia”.
  4. ↑ Louis Pinck: Fading Wise Men. Lorraine folk songs . Vol. 1-4, Metz 1926-1939; Volume 5 ed. by Angelika Merkelbach-Pinck, Kassel 1962.
  5. ^ Alfred Quellmalz : Südtiroler Volkslieder , Vol. 1–3, Kassel 1968–1976.
  6. ^ Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann : Ludolf Parisius and his folk songs from the Altmark market , Berlin 1957.
  7. ↑ Johannes Künzig / Waltraut Werner [-Künzig]: Folk ballads and narrative songs - a repertory of our sound recordings , Freiburg i. Br. 1975 (with reference to many publications on records).
  8. ^ Lutz Röhrich / Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (eds.): Deutsche Volkslieder , Vol. 1–2, Düsseldorf 1965–1967. - Up on that mountain / Gretlein dress up . German folk songs , Volume 1–2, ed. by Hermann Strobach , Rostock 1984/1987 .
  9. ^ Gert Glaser: The Carinthian People's Ballad. Studies on the epic Carinthian folk song , Klagenfurt 1975. - Further references in the literature (selection).