Bertrand Harris Bronson:
The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads
Bronson's The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads is a single-volume, abridged edition of his four volume Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads in 576 pages in a large 7" x 12" format. To create this edition, Bronson selected those tunes and texts which had the strongest representation in the oral tradition, excluding those from the original collection which only existed in print. So here are the tunes and texts of over 160 ballads collected from oral tradition, many in multiple versions - e.g. Barbara Allen 20 texts & tunes, Elfin Knight 9 texts & tunes, The Jolly Beggar 6 texts and tunes. The volume has an excellent new introduction where Bronson analyses the essential unity of a ballad text and tune and he shows how ballad tunes have evolved to produce tune families. His introduction to the modal structure of tunes in the Anglo-American tradition is essential reading for singers and students of the ballad tradition. Many Scottish (and North American) variants of ballads appropriate to the first two volumes of Bronson's Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads were later included in the addendum to volume four and the most important of these are also included in this abridged edition. The edition was first published by Princeton University Press in 1976 in both paperback and hardback editions. Both are now quite difficult to obtain and the first edition hardback is not only rare but has been fetching over £400.The Singing Tradition POST FREE to UK, Ireland, USA & Canada.| Paperback £26.00 |
Hardback £30.00 |
| Paperback £86.00 |
Hardback £90.00 |
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