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Essentially, folk music is a music genre that includes both traditional folk music (many of it dating back centuries) and contemporary folk music, which evolved during what was called the \u2018folk revival\u2019 of the mid 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n There are some key factors that define a piece as \u2018folk music\u2019.<\/p>\n Traditionally, a piece of folk music should have some or all of these characteristics:<\/p>\n Many folk songs have been around for centuries, or for as long as humans have been working the land together. However, the development of\u00a0 a folk music canon essentially started in the 19th century, when academics and amateur scholars started to preserve popular songs, as they feared that these musical traditions would otherwise soon be lost.One major collector was Francis James Child<\/strong><\/a>, who collected the words of more than 300 English and Scots ballads, some of them pre-Tudor, in the late 19th century. A little later, Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) was an important figure in the English folk song revival of the early 20th century, gathering thousands of tunes from rural England (and also from the Southern Appalachians region of the United States).<\/p>\n Starting in the mid-20th century, folk music enjoyed another revival, which resulted in the creation of a whole new subgenre of music. This \u2018second\u2019 folk revival reached its peak in the 1960s. The music from this time is often called \u2018contemporary folk\u2019 or \u2018folk revival\u2019, to distinguish it from the earlier forms.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Folk music has had a huge influence on classical music, and many composers have assimilated folk tunes into their music. This cross-fertilisation peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time, alongside growing nationalist movements across Europe, composers including Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, Bart\u00f3k, Sibelius and Vaughan Williams used the indigenous folk music of their native countries to inspire their music.<\/p>\n Anton\u00edn\u00a0Dvo\u0159\u00e1k<\/strong><\/a>, for example, was able to seamlessly intertwine some of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia (now both part of the Czech Republic) into his chamber and symphonic music. Of all composers, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k might be said to be best manage this synthesis of a national music with the symphonic tradition, using folk influences effectively within a classical framework.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k<\/strong><\/a> drew heavily on the folk music of his native Hungary. Famously, Bart\u00f3k and his fellow Hungarian composer Zolt\u00e1n Kod\u00e1ly<\/strong><\/a> travelled around the land, collecting and recording hundreds of indigenous folk tunes.<\/p>\n Among Bart\u00f3k\u2019s most popular works based on his folk tune collection are the Romanian Folk Dances<\/em>. These were originally composed for piano in 1915, and then transcribed for full orchestra two years later. Similarly, the first movement of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Sonata for Solo Violin is full of Hungarian folk harmonies and intervals.<\/p>\n Back home, Ralph Vaughan Williams<\/a><\/strong> was a key figure in what\u2019s known as the First English Folk Song Revival. From 1903 onwards, the great English composer collected more than 800 songs, in particular during a ten-year stint when he travelled to 21 English counties.<\/p>\n Vaughan Williams used a phonograph to record\u00a0 some of these songs \u2013 but most were painstakingly notated by hand. Works of Vaughan Williams in which folk music play a prominent role include the Norfolk Rhapsody\u00a0No 1<\/em>,\u00a0the English Folk Song Suite<\/em>,\u00a0Fantasia on Greensleeves\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus<\/em><\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Vaughan Williams wasn\u2019t the only British or Irish composer to draw on folk music, though. Hubert Parry<\/strong><\/a>, Charles Villiers Stanford<\/a><\/strong>, Gerald Finzi, Arthur Butterworth<\/a><\/strong> and Malcolm Arnold<\/a><\/strong> all assimilated folk song and dances into\u00a0 their music.<\/p>\nHow did folk music evolve?<\/h3>\n
How has folk music influenced classical music?<\/h3>\n
How did folk music influence British and Irish composers?<\/h3>\n