Jeannie Robertson's My Son David: A Conceptual Performance Model
by James Porter
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 89, No. 351 (Jan. - Mar., 1976), pp. 7-26
[Listen Jeannie Robertson- My Son David] [I've also added her lyrics directly below. Footnotes were moved to the end. The first sections of the article are theoretical and don't directly relate to the song]
MY SON DAVID (Jeannie Robertson, learned c. 1919 from her mother)
1. Oh what's the blood that's on your sword?
My son David, Ho son David,
What's the blood 'at's on your sword?
come promise tell me true.
2. Oh that's the blood of my grey meir;
Hey lady mother, Ho lady mother,
That's the blood of my grey meir
Because it wouldna rule by me.
3. O that blood it is ower clear;
My son David, etc.
That blood it is ower clear,
Come promise tell me true.
4. O that's the blood of my grey hound
Hey lady mother, etc.
That's the blood of my grey hound
Because it wouldna rule by me.
5. O that blood it is ower clear;
My son David, etc.
That blood it is ower clear,
Come promise tell me true.
6. O that's the blood of my brother John,
Hey lady mother, etc.
That's the blood of my brother John
Because he wouldna rule by me.
7. O when will you come back again,
My son David, etc.
When will you come back again
Come promise tell me true.
8. When the sun and moon meets in yon glen,
Hey lady mother, etc.
When the sun and moon meets in yon glen,
Will I return again.
Jeannie Robertson's My Son David: A Conceptual Performance Model *
Introduction
IT HAS BECOME SOMETHING OF AN AXIOM among ethnomusicologists and students of folk music that the central problem of their discipline is one of description.[1] How are the complex, multiple dimensions of the music to be described, not to mention the relationship of these dimensions to their producer and to the social context in which they are being observed?
The problem is not only, of course, to describe such phenomena, but also to determine exactly what is to be described and, moreover, what the ultimate purpose of such description must be. By setting out to utilize various descriptive techniques in ethnomusicology one tends to assume that description is necessary to, or at least desirable for, an understanding of the phenomena being observed. In other fields of inquiry concerned with man and culture there is by no means general agreement as to the value or meaning of the concept description. Within current theories in the social sciences and the humanities, for example, description is often contrasted with explanation: telling one not just what, but why; descriptions, nevertheless, may themselves be explanatory in that the how may provide a why and not just a what.[2]
Similarly, in terms of methodology, description is frequently opposed to analysis; the former is taken simply to report phenomena, the latter to articulate or make manifest percepts and concepts surrounding or underlying certain aspects of culture and cultural dynamics. Descriptions, however, may also be kinds of analyses on various perceptual and conceptual levels, while in practice, in fact, there is both good and bad analysis just as there is good and bad description. The semantic difficulty may be alleviated in two ways: first, by not opposing the concepts of description and analysis but by regarding them as points on an investigatory continuum, and second, by reference to teleological aspects.
Clearly, it is the purpose of investigatory techniques which must largely determine their meaning and value. Wittgenstein has asserted that "What we call 'descriptions' are instruments for particular uses. Think of a machine-drawing, a cross-section, an elevationw ith measurements, which an engineer has before him. Thinking of a description as a word-picture of the facts has something misleading about it: one tends to think only of such pictures as hang on our walls: which seem simply to portray how a thing looks, what it is like. (These pictures are as it were idle.)"[3]
In looking at the problem this way, it may be possible to conceive or evolve a descriptive technique which, by means of original or novel methodology, becomes the generalization or theory concerning the phenomena. Gilbert Ryle's notion of thick description i n ethnography, for instance, represents a technique for sorting out the "structures of signification," or established codes in a given culture, and for determining their social ground and import.[4] The problem of opposing description and explanation on the one hand, and description and analysis on the other, arises from the use of language as a medium in communicating these percepts and concepts of cultural dynamics, especially when the data are non-verbal, or predominantly so. When an attempt is made to reveal certain aspects of musical ideation and behavior, the problem becomes acute. Language, still the most flexible tool in communicating conceptual thinking a nd denotative m eaning, tends to structuralize the functional a nd processual aspects of music which itself, even, is an expressive medium before it is a communicative one.[5]
Charles Seeger has spent a great deal of time formulating the predicament which he feels all musicology encounters in making the object of its study intelligible, namely, the necessity of using speech to convey not-speech or, to put it another way, the use of language to describe or analyze musical phenomena. One of his major theses has been that deliberate emphasis upon the functional or processual aspects of music will offset this weakness of language by representing it as temporal, with changing rather than stable components, as dynamic rather than static.[6] What he is implying, as I understand it, is that graphic representation or visual demonstration may be descriptive or analytical techniques which are open to, and promising for, the musicologist faced by what he calls "the musicological juncture."[7] Further, graphic or visual representation might be able to convey or express complex mechanisms such as the inward formative apparatus of the music, perhap sultimately in the form of a four-dimensional model.[8]
The relevance of, and utilization of, models for the description or analysis of certain styles, repertoires, types, forms, or genera of music need no fresh justification here. Previous models used by theorists have been built upon connotative o r associative linguistic description a s well as upon notation and notational analyses of varying sorts, and these were efforts to describe or analyze what appeared to be happening within the sound structure of the music. Such models have been designed around organic, mathematical, mechanical, and other concepts, first with regard to the music sound, then later with greater awareness of the milieu in which it was being produced. There is, within many of these later models, a proliferation of analytical detail, such as in the listing of traits involved in the music, its performance, and the specific social setting. More recent models have attempted to apply concepts of structure in linguistics to musical phenomena in postulating universal laws underlying competence and performance in music.[9]
The kinds of models which have been utilized in most investigators' conception of the musical phenomena and their social significance have, however, been almost exclusively concerned with trait analysis or the atomistic description of these rather than with the morphology of forms perceived holistically. The purpose of musical analysis is, certainly, to isolate or identify meaningful elements in the music, its performance, and its social significance. But to do this with any degree of success means understanding the musical process in formation, from the inside as well as from the outside. A central, pressing concern of the ethnomusicologist must clearly be how the performer conceives of the music which he or she performs, whether it is practised on his or her own or in the presence of, and for others (musical performance involves a psychological and therapeutic function for the practitioner in isolation as well as for social usage). It is performance, viewed holistically as from the standpoint of the practitioner, which remains the most important act, the one upon which all descriptive, analytical, representational, or demonstrative techniques must focus.[10] It is in performance that the standards of taste, the aesthetic values of the performer and the community can be seen to be reflected; in addition, the performer's own attitudes can be observed, his or her manner and purpose perceived and assessed.[11] Multi-levelled analyses directed toward the participants' as well as the investigators' typologies and classificatory systems or concepts must be entirely or largely dependent on deductions made from the study of performance. The deductive-analytic method, however, is inadequate if it only indicates the componential or factorial aspects of the performance as separate and isolatable traits, such as pitch, tempo, rhythm, accent, tonality, modality, interval frequency, and so on. We need to know more; we need to know how the performer conceives the music every time he or she performs it, what it is he or she sets out to perform, before we can adjust, refocus, or transform the description or analysis so that it becomes a synthesis.[12] This can only be achieved, it seems to me, by means of a holistic view of the interdependent conceptual functions of the music process in the mind of the performer.
Every culture, however we define it or distinguish its configuration, will raise what appear to be distinctive questions in the effort to evolve a synthetic representation or demonstration of performance and the conception of the performer, how he or she conceives of it, at the center of such activity. Some questions appear to be culturally relative, others dependent on universal human attitudes or behavior. That piece of music, that song, performed or sung on that occasion, may seem to be, when taken as a totality, a unique event or occurrence, and to a certain extent it is. If, however, we look too closely at the mechanics of the performance process or events, the patterns of behavior formed by culture can obscure the inward formative apparatus of musical composition, creation, or recreation (noting that these are not exclusive categories of creativity).[13]
What may be the case, for example, in technique and manner for one performer may seem to be quite the opposite for another within the same culture, group, or community. These are problems which are intelligible and obvious to all students of man and his expressive activities. When an investigator sets out to study the individual piece of music in performance, there are different methods he can adopt depending on the quality and amount of data available to him. He may wish, for instance, to construct a model of performance modes by scrutinizing a number of performers' "realizations" of the same piece. Seeger has done this, indeed, with Barbara Allen as sung in traditional styles in the United States, drawing for his data upon field recordings from the Folk Song Archive of the Library of Congress. As he noted at the time, it is in the relationships of the resemblances and the differences in the singings that the identity of the song must be sought.[14] Our knowledge about the identity of a song, then, must be dependent not only on structural analyses of the components of the music sound, but also on performance modes as these relate to a specific sociocultural context and, more precisely, to specific performances by specific singers. It has been suggested that we do not simply want to know what a singer sang on one occasion, or how he or she sang it, but what it is he or she sets out to sing on each occasion.[15]
Whatever "the song" is, its identity cannot be demonstrated, nor other features such as its existence through time fully delineated, until we are able to trace that identity in the mind of the singer or a number of singers. By discovering and revealing those aspects which are stable and those which are variable from a close study of multiple performance, we shall undoubtedly be nearer a more complete realization of the song's identity on various levels: in terms of both its structural and functional parameters, and in both diachronic and synchronic dimensions. At this stage synthesis becomes possible, by isolating the functional, interdependent wholes which emerge as significant each time the song is sung (in terms of music sound and also how that is affected by the sociocultural processes with which it interacts, rather than by simply listing perceived traits).
Formulation of the Model
It is in an attempt to isolate this concept of the identity of a single song sung under a variety of conditions and over a period of time by the same singer that I have evolved the formation of what I call a conceptual performance model. The culture which has provided the material for the study is the British folksong tradition, little of which has received intensive treatment from ethnomusicologists as opposed to students of song texts or of song or tune histories and relationships. The song is one which has been described as migrating in various forms to North America, and it has been recorded in different forms in parts of the United States: the ballad known to scholars as Edward, No. 13 in the collection of Professor Child. The singer, Jeannie Robertson, became well known in the 1950's as a notable tradition bearer, born and reared in Aberdeenshire in the Northeast of Scotland among the social group known as tinkers, or travellers as they themselves prefer to be known.[16] With "discovery" in 1953, her version of Edward came to light, and this was considered significant because it had previously been thought by scholars to have disappeared from native British tradition.[17]
The song, then, was understandably one which she was frequently asked to sing by a new audience outside her own community, and to my knowledge at least twelve recordings exist, some of them on commercial discs, the majority on tape in the Archives of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. [18] From a systematic study of these recordings, my supposition was that one might be able to make significant deductions about the identity of the song as it changed and crystallized in her singing of it over the years from 1953 to 1960, and further that such an examination might permit the construction of a conceptual performance model based not simply upon structural change but also upon the meaningful shift in her relationship with a new and wider audience. To this end I analyzed nine recordings of Edward, or My Son David as she called it. Distinctive features became apparent at once, features which seemed on rehearings to recur as major interdependent wholes. The nine recordings could be grouped into a three-stage diachronic model: the first stage comprised those performances recorded between 1953 and 1955, the second was represented by a single, highly significant performance in 1958, and a third included performances from 1959 through 1960 and later; for convenience these groups are referred to
as Stages 1, 2, and 3.
Stage 1 conveys the earliest mode of performance as it was recorded from the singer between the ages of 44 and 47. The individual situations at this time do not appear to have affected the structure of her performance to any appreciable degree, even though the immediate context varies from her own modest house to one involving a larger audience in a hall. The structural element which does emerge as fluid during this period is the textual one."' A notable shift in her performance of the song occurred in 1958, when she sang at the inaugural meeting of the Edinburgh University Folksong Society; this is Stage 2. In
effect, this is a transitional stage constructed from a key single performance rather than from a series or group of performances. The actual recording took place in a hall where the audience was composed mainly of enthusiastic students, and it represents a major change in her conception of how the song should be performed, and of her own ability to project it.[20] An incident which may have some bearing on the structural changes caused by particular circumstances was described by her when talking about her appearance on television in 1957:
There wis three heid young men and they wis all ranging aboot the same age and the one 'at wis on television with us, he came in aboot and he said, "Now, Jeannie, ye'll have tae cut out three verses of My Son David, see, cut it down to six." "Bless us, it's a bittie sudden," I says, "jeest at the minute 'at-at this minute, ye know. Here we'll be on television," I says, "in nae time," and I'd tae cut oot three verses, ye see. "Yes," he says, "cut out three verses." And then, it wis funny, I 'n't ken, it wis maybe the way I lookit or whit I did, it... he put his hand on my shoulder, ye know, he says "We're very sorry, Jeannie, but we've got tae do this. In fact," he says, "it's a shame to cut out the three verses," he says, "of such a lovely song and it must hurt you to do this," he says, "too." But then he says, "We've got to do it for time. Could you do it," he says, "you know the best places tae cut out a verse, here and there, ye know." An' I says, "O well," I says. "But ye'll still have a wee whilie," he says, "for to rehearse it over without the three verses." Well, it wis funny. I cut out the three verses which I knew widnae be missed the same ... and then I sung it over, a matter o' twice. And I had it, the six verses, ye know. So ... they were awful well pleased.[21]
This must refer to the last three stanzas of the nine-stanza version which she finally adopted as the crystallization of the song in her mind, i.e., from the bottomless boat stanza on. Thereafter, until 1968, when she stopped singing altogether because of ill-health, the song had grown more expansive, she herself had become more aware of an audience outside the traveller circle, and her sense of spatial projection was more acute (Stage 3). Not only did she seem to be externalizing aspects of her personality which had remained hidden or under restraint before she was discovered, she began to see herself as a "folk singer," a "performer," and was partially conforming to her idea of what a "folk singer" should be like. The performance model, then, is a three-stage diachronic model incorporating what I have termed Stages 1, 2 (transitional), and 3.
Stage 1 (1953-1955) could be characterized as memorial and presentational, in that her concept of the song was still largely the one she had formed in learning it from her mother at around the age of nine (performances of the song by her were confined, before 1953, to the traveller community, where musical talent was recognized and valued, but also where modesty
of personality was held a virtue and a woman's role was clearly defined).[22] By presentational is meant that there is no attempt to "perform" the song. Impersonality of manner is a paramount feature of her performance: her ego does not intrude in the sense of aiming at a personal expressiveness. The tempo is fairly brisk (average duration: 3'32"), the melodic formulas moderately decorated, but the text is fluid, varying from an initial eight stanzas to an expanded eleven stanzas. Tonality and mode are both stable, as they are through each recording made, and the pitch level of these three recordings from which
Stage 1 is constructed is E-flat, D, and F. It is worth noting that the stanzas containing the huntin' haak manifest themselves only in the third of these three versions, and were subsequently dropped as the duration of the song increased. This expansion at the cost of reduction on another plane may be a function of what has been termed the folk artist's spatial mode of apprehension, which works together with a simpler linear mode of apprehension. It may also be an apt illustration of Axel Olrik's Gesetz der Dreizahl, or Law of Three.[23]
Stage 2, the single performance in 1958 which forms the transition between the singer's earlier and later mode of performance, might be termed interactional and projective, where her concept of the song, of herself, and of her changing relationship with an audience outside her own circle has patently affected the structure of the song in performance. The atmosphere in which the song was recorded is perceptibly alive and responsive to the point where the movement of the singer's body in relation to the microphone is palpable. The tempo is markedly slower (duration: 5'03"), she begins to breathe not only at the end of whole lines but also in the middle of the second and fourth lines to accommodate the expanding phrases. The decoration of the melodic formulas becomes more prolonged, and it is in this performance that we have the first concept of "stable" text, namely nine stanzas.
Stage 3 represents her latest performance manner, from 1959 through 1960 and later, and could be characterized as projective and stylized. The tempo has slowed considerably (average duration 5'57"), she breaks the phrase by breathing in the middle of the second and fourth lines, while the melodic formulas have become very prolonged. The difference in duration, in fact, between her first recorded version, which lasted 3'02", and the last one studied, 5'49", is indicative of the expansion; the seventh performance timed was even longer: 6'34".
Construction of the Model
The construction of the Model as a representational or descriptive entity presented problems. The dynamic process by which the singer's conception of the song changed was a crucial factor, one which the Model was bound to incorporate. After experimenting with an overlapping circular model in which the major formal and textial features were embedded, I realized that such a model was certainly on the one hand demonstrating a linear notion of development through time, but as if these entities were different pieces of music with some formal, textual, or stylistic features in common whereas it was really, of course, the same song to the singer. Its character was changing in performance, in relationship to the social circumstances as she herself, I am sure, began to recognize even though she did not ever, to my knowledge, express the reasons for change.
It was evident, then, that some kind of symbol had to be devised which would convey this idea, an idea which was stable in the singer's mind (the song My Son David) yet changing in certain distinctive ways through time and in certain well-defined structural patterns: specific parameters remained constant, such as tonality and mode, but not initial pitch level, which was a variable. What seemed important to describe visually were the elements which made these changes manifest, the elements which arose or resulted from a changing conception of the song in performance. Accordingly, besides the obvious change in the manner of performance, there had to be some indication of both structural and substantial transformation, and the best way to effect this was through a visual entity, a totality which could be viewed as a holistic concept reflecting the singer's own view of the song, but within which change could be seen to be taking place. This is demonstrated in Stages 1-3, the lower half of the
circular Model, by the outward expansion of the musical performance lines in notation.
The idea of the song in the singer's mind (the song My Son David) had to be interpreted as central to any conceptual performance model and this, therefore (the "deep structure," as it were, from which the performance structures were derived), had to occupy the pivotal position in a visual or graphicr epresentation.[24]
Conceptual Performance Mode
In terms of this deep structure of the song, however, fundamental questions began to arise. What, first of all, is this deep structure in the mind of the singer, and how is it to be described? What is the relationship of the deep structure to the performance structures? If the Model is to incorporate not only performanced ata but also the total concept of the song as it is known and present in the mind of the singer, what is that concept, and how is it to be characterized?
It has been argued that traditional singers manipulate their ideas and their materials through the utilization and grouping of morphological units. These unitary c oncepts of musico-verbal material are akin to what A. B. Lord has designated as formulas in his consideration of Yugoslav epic singing; the formula, according to Lord in his modification of Parry's wholly verbal conception of the formula, is "the offspring of the marriage of thought and sung verse," and "only in performance can the formula exist and have clear definition."[25] Although such unitary concepts as Lord's f ormulas can be separated into their musical and textual aspects for analytical purposes, they represent a synthesis of these aspects by the singer in performance and must ultimately be comprehended at that level.
Performance, indeed, is the act which not only unites verbal and musical concepts, but also blurs the rigid distinction between improvisation and memorization which literary scholars of both epic and ballad have maintained.[26] While it is clear that ballad singers memorize rather than improvise their material, nevertheless the performance situation, the audience, or lack of one, and the disposition and response of the singer can modify recall of words and music so that the singing of a ballad cannot be viewed simply as an act in which a text (understood to mean a "story") is set in motion by a singer with a tune, but as a complex, existential process in which units of both cognitive and affective experience are embedded.
In the act of analysis the musical formulas appear easier to describe than the textual or linguistic ones since they are highly repetitive on a structural level; their emotional, expressive, and aesthetic properties, on the other hand, are more elusive. Discursive thought is unable to assign a precise semantics to music, and consequently there can be a proliferation
of "meanings" within any given piece of music. Again, the words do not necessarily throw light on the possible limitation of musical meaning within a ballad; it is frequently the case that certain familiar tunes do not seem appropriate to the sense of the narrative: Lord Lovel is a prominent example. A comparable and taxing problem is posed by the levels at which the units of text operate. Are these morphological concepts to be identified at the level of semantics, theme, or plot? at the level of narrative, poetics, and imagery? at the level of stanza line, and phrase? All of these levels, whether structural or substantial in character, must form a hierarchy of significance within the process of ballad re-creation.[27]
What, then, is the deep structure of the story-song My Son David in the mind of the singer? At any descriptive level it can only be deduced from the evidence of the performance structures in Stages, 1, 2, and 3. The abstract idea of the song as she conceived it, however, is not simply analogous to the deep structures which a grammarian derives from a set of surface structures, for here we are dealing not just with language, or even with speaking, but with singing; and further, we are dealing with the creative use of musico-verbal material. If this abstract idea is somehow to be characterized in terms of "story," what is the story of My Son David?
On a fairly obvious yet profound level, it is a drama experienced in the imagination of the singer and, through her, by her community, and must ultimately be related to her and its sense of values. A model which could be devised to show this significant relationship of the song to the values of, or world-view of, the community would clearly be the next step in charting the wider "meaning" of the song. If one understands the term "deep structure" to signify, in this instance, the complex relationship between the meaning and the linguistic and musical ideas which generate the performance structures, then these three factors should be incorporated into any model which purports to describe the song. The main point, nevertheless, is that the story of My Son David cannot be understood or characterized solely or adequately by reference to the text, but only in terms of the three aspects of meaning, musical and linguistic ideas as they are unified in the performance and in the mind of the singer.
From what available evidence can this complex interrelationship which forms the deep structure (Jeannie Robertson's concept of My Son David) be deduced, and possibly described? Apart from the recorded versions of the song there is also the singer's explanation of certain actions and characters in the plot, as revealed in an interview. Whether this explanation was a traditional one within her family, or whether it was one believed by the singer alone to be true, is not entirely clear, but the inference from her final sentence must be that it was, in fact, traditional.
The relevant section of the interview is worth quoting in full, for it sheds some light on awkward problems in the formation of the Model:
HG There's another ballad-"My Son David"-that you are often asked to sing, and in your version David says:
O I'm gang awa' in a bottomless boat
And I'll never return again....
Now what exactly do you think he meant when he told his mother that?
JR Well, it's very plain to be seen what he meant. If he was gang awa' in a bottomless boat-well, he was gang to droon himsel'. He wad never come back. He was gang to destroy his ain sel'.
HG And what do you think the two brothers fell out about?
JR The thing was that David was oldest and he was heir to everything, and the other brother was a very selfish, jealous brother. He wanted for nothin', he had everything too. But he didnae want that. He wanted to be the master, you see, o' the castle or fat ever it was. And he wanted to kill his brother and become master. So his mother likit David even better than fat she likit the other one. So when he tried to kill his brother, well, of course, it was a natural thing for David to fight to defend his sel'. So he killed his brother.
HG So this is a story of killing instead of being killed?
JR But David fought him in a fair fight and killed him.
HG That explains your version.
JR We hadnae enough o' the ballad, actually, to tell the whole story.[28]
This explanation accounts for events thought by the singer to have taken place both before and after the action of the ballad itself. In this respect, the interpretation of the theme is radically different from the interpretations offered by scholars of the ballad.[29] The assumption in these interpretations has been that the theme of fratricide (S 73.1) involves willful murder, but here this is not the case; the killing is done in self-defense. Moreover, the motive for the killing is not the quarrel over a young girl, nor a quarrel over her because of an incestuous relationship, but over the matter of inheritance, which seems to suggest a link with the tradition of the testament ending even though the singer's own version belongs to the "paraphrase for never" tradition. The son here is not a murderer, but a favored elder son defending his hereditary rights against the ambitious claims of a younger, jealous brother. He has acquired a moral character in the singer's mind, a rectitude which appears to be
unknown in the interpretations of other recorded variants, and the thematic import of this shift is of some consequence in determining the meaning of the ballad in its specific cultural context.
A study of the text alone would not have yielded this information about the moral status of the central character in the eyes of the singer; all one knows from the song is that a killing has taken place and that the killer is to pay a penalty, in this case death by drowning. The singer's modification of the moral imperatives behind the killing and the suicide is important for the semantics of the ballad, and the problem here, in fact, is now: can the Model incorporate not only the facts of performance and the structural conceptions from which these are derived, but also the singer's mental picture of the song, including what is extrinsic to performance? In other words, is the Model able to convey not only her realization of the song under different circumstances and over a period of time, but also her whole concept of what My Son David is, and is about? If the deep structure ought to describe her total conception of what the drama is about, then surely information which is part of her attitude to, and knowledge about, the song must be part of that deep structure since it is part of the meaning of the song. The significance of this latter emphasis, namely the inclusion of information about her knowledge and attitudes outside of performance, is that the Model is not only a performance model, but a cognitive and affective one as well.
To the extent that her knowledge about the song and her attitude to it are based on, and conditioned by, such factors as learning, perception, experience, and affective response, it may be instructive to examine the situation in which she first learned not only My Son David, but most of her ballads:
I learned My Son David from my mother. It was at night, as I learned all my big ballads at night. My mother couldn't sleep, as her two sons and 'er husband, wis out in the First World War. An' she couldn't sleep because she was worryit, and . .. she used
to sit up till about two in the mornin', an' I always sat with my mother. And her and her brother used to sing the song together, an' I used to listen, an' I grew very interested in the ballads, and the folksongs. And . . I startit tae learn them at that time.[30]
The situation of strain and anxiety at that time, it could be argued, created an atmosphere in which heightened awareness and emotional responsiveness facilitated the learning of songs. How exactly were these songs assimilated by her?
JR So... I listened to this songs, getten sung. I come tae like them. Ye see, they appealed t' me. So when I wis nine years of age, I listened very strongly tae the songs and, I learned bits o' them. I wis quick at learnin' ... I learned bits o' the songs first. An' the air o' the song-an' whenever I got the air, I was no bother to get the words. I always got the words o' the song. So I . . . made her sing the songs, until I hud them. An' by ten year aul', nearly every one the big ballads 'at I sing, ma mother sung them. An' i' fact more's.., .more than ever I'll learn-because I couldnae min' them-for t' learn them . . .tae learn them all
from ma mother. Because ... she hud a lot o' songs that I couldnae remember.
JP Would she sometimes repeat the words for you, just to speak them-to learn you the words?
JR Yes... after I'd picked up the air she would sing a few words-a bit that I wis stuck in, whit she would correct me, whit-she kent, whit wey, she kent the sang... an' she used t' learn me that bittie an' then I learned an' learned an' learned till I got it right.
JP Would you then go off yourself and sing it over, to get it right?
JR Aye, if I wis washing the dishes or sweepin' the floor or cleanin' the hoose or onything, I wid sing it when the' were naebody in... an' I sung it till I got it right... .[31]
The singer's response to the air, first of all, is significant since it not only supposes the potency of music in her scale of aesthetic values, it posits crucial questions about the relative weight of the verbal and musical elements in her idea of the song:
HG Do you have any opinion about this-which is more important, the tune of a song or the text of a song?
JR Do you mean the words or the tune? Well, to tell the God's truth, I like them baith. If the words are good, I like the words. When I was a bairn, I wadnae learn a sang off my mither-she'd plenty of sangs-if the air wisnae bonnie. I didnae like it, though the words wis guid. When I was a bairn the air caught my fancy first. I learned the air first, and I think if you get the air o' a sang, the words are nae ill to learn. The words or the idea would come second. That's my opinion. And once you get the air in yer heid, then ye can easily learn the words, it doesnae matter who has the ballad. You know how lang it took me to learn
"Lord Donald"? It's the longest sang I've got. I learned it from a young chap in one night's time. But it wisnae only because o' the air wi' it. It appealed to me as a good story.
HG Why do you think so many people ask for "Lord Donald"? Is it because of the air or because of the story?
JR Because it's a fine air and a good story.
HG The question that I'm really trying to get at is what do you think makes some songs more popular than others-the story or the music?
JR Well, the words, I suppose, appeal tae people, and I suppose if it's a bonnie air it appeals tae people. Both o' them.[32]
Her reluctance to admit to the primacy of "the story" or "the words," and her refusal to place one before the other in terms of a performance aesthetic, is of some import, not only for the construction of the present Model, but also for all attempts to characterize the nature of ballads, ballad singers, and ballad performance. Studies of other singers in the English-speaking tradition have on occasion implied a similar aesthetic stance, though it can be the case that different singers have different
notions about the relative importance of words and music, and can even be indifferent toward the tune in relation to the text.[33]
Here, however, the inference must be that her knowledge of, and attitude to, this and other songs are colored by her earlier learning experiences, particularly her emotional response when she first listened to and absorbed them at night, from her mother, during the period of World War I when her stepfather and her brothers were drafted to the Front.
At the semantic level the attitude of the performer toward the characters and their actions exerts a qualifying influence. To her, My Son David is a song about killing in self-defense and with moral right behind it ("But David fought him in a fair fight and killed him"), and about the voluntary penalty for fratricide, namely self-destruction by drowning ("He was gang to destroy his ain sel' "). The concepts of killing and self-destruction should, therefore, be prominent in the Model since they are specifically commented upon by the singer, and the same is true for the jealousy which provides the motive for the fight and killing. It can be added that the idea of killing does not refer only to the slaying of John but also to the suicide of David; it follows that these ideas should be linked both to themselvesa nd to the charactersw ithin the Model. Implicit in these concepts of jealousy and killing is the notion of conflict. This is apparent in the fight between the brothers and, to a certain extent, lies behind the question-and-answer framework of the narrative. It is not just dialogue here, but dialectic in that contradictory statements finally, by means of the ballad device of incremental repetition, establish the truth about the killing.
On a similar level of conceptualization the idea of returnn eeds to be accounted for, since not only is there a return after the killing implied in the mother-son dialogue, but the element of return is also part of David's penance even though it is expressed in negative form: "And I'll never return again.... " The protagonist, then, is associated with the ideas of conflict, killing, return, a nd self-destruction, ideas which, along with the jealousy which supplies the motive for the conflict, constitute the thematic essence of the story. It is the jealousy of John which leads to the conflict with David and his own killing; this sequence is placed along the central vertical axis in the Model as a way of uniting the basic concepts with the characters who act them out. In particular, killing is given a prominent position, since it refers on the one hand to the notion of self-destruction at the close of the plot, and on the other to the idea of return before the action begins. Return and self-destruction consequently lie outside the inner circle and along the horizontal axis which provides a link with the temporal sequence of the plot.
At the level of plot the ballad unfolds its progression of causally connected incidents in a tripartite scheme: interrogation, confession, and prediction. The confession is in response to an insistent interrogation on the part of the mother, and the prediction of David (prediction used in both the literal and prophetic senses) at the end is a result of his confession to the killing. There is a subsequent and strong conceptual tie between his future and the notion of self-destruction which is one specific aspect of the idea of killing. As in the case of the moral status of the central character, though, it is not clear from the text alone that David has the power to undertake voluntary penance for his deed; it is the comment of the singer which makes it clear that he is acting voluntarily.
Furthermore, the notions of legal punishment by exposure in a bottomless boat, and of exile (though these may have been a fact at one time in history) cannot be taken literally but must be interpreted ironically, as Archer Taylor suggested.[34] The threefold scheme of the plot ought to show significant links with the ideas of conflict, killing, return, and self-destruction, occupying a different plane, however, in order to fulfill the temporal sequence of events. Interrogation, confession, and prediction are therefore placed from left to right around the upper perimeter of the deep structure with confession (the dramatic turning point) in the salient position. In this way the events which constitute the plot can be seen to lie outside, but nevertheless hinge upon, the thematic ideas of the central axes.
Both these conceptual planes, operating as they do at the levels of theme and plot, are necessarily tied to the actions of the characters: David, the mother, and John. David, the protagonist, has to occupy the central position in the triangle of actors since he illustrates the ideas of conflict and killing within the thematic core. The mother, who dominates the emotional climate of the story as well as the narrative thrust, is the figure through whom David, in following the chain of ideas and characters
along the vertical axis, makes his dramatic confession; she is also associated with the surrounding ideas of the plot sequence. John, who lies outside the action but is the underlying cause of David's predicament through his jealous ambition, can be placed at the root of the central theme which links his jealousy to David and his own killing.
The Model is thus able to show the interaction of ideas at the levels of theme, plot, and character. The semantic aspects of the ballad, however, can only partially be satisfied, since the morality of David's actions, and the relationship he is supposed to have with his mother, are ultimately ambiguous. There is no trace here of the mother's guilt which makes itself felt in Motherwell's text, the closest variant recorded previous to this My Son David, nor does the gloss of the singer suggest such an Aeschylean cast to the ballad. What she does suggest is that David embodies the good forces in the story, John the evil ones. The moral attitude of the singer toward the brothers is indicated by the arrangement of these in the Model.
The qualities which she assigns to David and John (the rectitude which can be inferred from her explanation, and the explicit jealousy mentioned in the same interview) are laid out on either side of the central notion of conflict, in conjunction with the characters and along the vertical axis which leads to the killing and the outer plot structure with which the mother is associated. The position of the mother, both in the song and in the commentary, is a morally neutral one and is therefore left ambiguous in
terms of characterization. Nevertheless, a psychological dimension of some significance may well be present here in the singer's unconscious identification of herself with the mother; the loss of her own male child earlier in life may account for her attachment to this song and her feelings toward the persons in it.
The next problem in the construction of the Model involved the relationship between the deep structure of semantics, theme, plot, and character as they appear to the performer, and the surface structures of stanzaic pattern, line, and phrase. The linking factor in the singer's mind, one must infer, is the succession of images which colors the passage of events in the ballad. Because of its unique structural characteristics, namely its exemplifying in arrested state the substitution of commonplace
for refrain and, in addition, demonstrating the development of the "ballad stanza" from the couplet with refrain, My Son David reinforces the theory that the ballad form evolved from a purely dramatic performance.[35] If this is so, one can postulate the importance of the images bluid/sword, meer, hound, haak, brother John, bottomless boat, and sun/munelglen as meaningful dramatic markers for a singer reliant upon memorizing principles for the sequence of events. These images function within the
plot structure of interrogation, confession, and prediction, and are therefore linked with these features around the perimeter of the deep structure in order to provide a transition to the stanzaic pattern and to the details of the surface structures.[36]
The deep structure of the song, therefore, is portrayed as the central aspect of the Model, with semantic, thematic, plot, and character levels linked to the outer performance structures of text by the images which concatenate the dramatic structure in the singer's mind. The deep structure of the music, which occupies the lower part of the center, is viewed on two levels: that of melodic contour in the outer level, with white notes indicating the stressed quantities, black ones the unstressed, and bracketed notes indicating where repetition takes place; and that of the basic tonal idea from which the rhythm and melody are generated.
These analytical concepts are somewhat similar to Heinrich Schenker's notion of the Urlinie, the fundamental melodic structure, and the Ursatz, the basic tonal idea." The melodic structure is transposed to G to symbolize the placement of the song in the singer's middle voice: the basic tonal idea is constructed on a three-line staff to suggest the absence of "gaps" in the pentatonic structure.
The more complex features of rhythm are conveyed in the three performance structures by the amount of visual space which follows a particular note. The notation of the performance structures, more importantly, is a display of the relationship between tempo and the melodic formulas. It represents statistical norms made from three complete transcriptions of the song, transcribed first on graph paper with the aid of a time-signal device, then checked by the use of one-tenth of a second printouts made from the same recordings as processed by machine which measures pitch and amplitude (Mona) at the University of Uppsala.[38] The transcriptions are notated with E as the tonal center for comparison, since E is also the median pitch of the recordings. The three concentric circles of the music generated by the deep structures illustrate Stages 1, 2, and 3, and this device, essentially, attempts to describe the way in which the song expanded in duration and in melodic treatment over a period of years under the influence of the singer'sattitude to it and to her audience.
Just as tempo and melodic structure seemed, on empirical examination, to yield an interlocking relationship as meaningful conceptual values in the singer's view of the song, so also did the narrative and stanzaic structures appear to show a comparable relationship. The analogy proved significant in terms of a corresponding or correlative morphology, namely that as unified performance factors, tempo and narrative seemed to reveal a concept in the singer's mind which saw them as reflexive antinomies or differentials, while the micro-structures of melodic formula and stanza formation acted as the inner fabric, and coefficients, of this temponarrative relationship. The outer part of the Model, then, is depicted as a two-fold structure which, at the level of musical performance, describes the distension of the song through time (the diachronic aspect), and at the level of textual performance the patterning of the verbal formulas in the mind of the singer (the synchronic aspect). The upper and lower halves are laid out from left to right in terms of the four lines of the sung stanzas and can, in this way, describe the significance the musico-verbal formulas had for the singer as conceptual wholes unified in and through performance.
The text is not characterized in the linear fashion of the music, word for word as it were, and syllable by syllable. The important issue was the isolation of the repetitive elements and the patterning of the formulas, particularly the incremental repetition and the use of commonplaces.
Accordingly, the narrative sequence contained in the first and third lines is mapped in one direction reading outward from the deep structure, with arrows indicating the repetition in the thirds egment o f the Model, and the commonplaces of the second and fourth lines in another direction. The incremental repetition of meer, hound, haak, and brother John extends outward in a ladder-like formation with the repetitionf ormingt he rungs; the temporals equencel ikewise reads outward. The commonplaces of the intercalation, which represent a contrasting, static conception in the singer's mind, are laid out fanwise rather than sequentially. The lines relating to David's return belong to the emergence of rhyme rather than to the architectonic function of the commonplaces, and thus are charted sequentially in the final segment. The brackets of huntin' haak and bottomless boat signify that the stanzas in which these appear are variable or optional ones.
Conclusion
The completed M odel is then, finally, a n empirical one which has grown out of contemplaion of the data; it is a specific Model relating to a specific singer and a specific song operating within a particular tradition. It is diachronic in that it demonstrates change in the singer's concept of the song over a period of time through contact with new audiences; it is synchronic in that it describes the complex of factors and conceptual levels within the song as the singer viewed i t. It is processual in that it does
not try to portray structure frozen or isolated from the dynamics of mental and culturalc hange. I t is generative in the sense that it attempts to indicate the operational procedures by which the performance structures of the song are derived from a complex, deep structural level in the singer's mind. In general, it presents a synthesis of significant entities within the song by workingf rom all available evidence, t reating problems both of structurea nd semantics,a nd interpretingp erformanced ata as the primary source of our knowledge about the song.
University of California
Los Angeles, California
_________________
Footnotes:
*This is an expanded version of a paper read to the American Folklore Society, Portland, Oregon, October 31, 1974, and is dedicated to the memory of Jeannie Robertson, who died March 14, 1975. I am grateful to Herschel Gower and Kenneth Ketner for criticisms of the final draft, and to Richard Keeling, who not only drew the Model with skill, but also made valuable suggestions on layout and design. The ultimate form of the Model, however, as well as the complete text, are my own responsibility.
1. A recent statement of the problem is by John Blacking, "Deep and Surface Structures in Venda Music," Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 3, 1971 (Ontario, 1972), 91-108.
2. See, for example, Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco, 1964), p. 329; Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (New York, 1972), pp. 14-15; Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects, An Introduction to Aesthetics (New York and Evanston, 1971), p. 78.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1958), p. 99. The original text reads: "Was wir 'Beschreibungen' nennen, sind Instrumente ffir besondere Verwendungen. Denke dabei an eine Maschinenzeichnung, einen Schnitt, einen Aufriss mit den Massen, den der Mechaniker vor sich hat. Wenn man an eine Beschreibung als ein Wortbild der Tatsachen denkt, so hat das etwas Irrefiihrendes; man denkt etwa nur an Bilder, wie sie an unsern Wanden hangen; die schlechtweg abzubilden scheinen, wie ein Ding aussieht, wie es beschaffen ist. (Diese Bilder sind gleichsam miissig)."
4. This notion is discussed by Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, Selected Essays (New York, 1973), pp. 7-9.
5. Recent work in ethnomusicology has tended to stress, and perhaps overemphasize, music's
communicative and social functions and properties as against its expressive functions and
properties and individualistic practice. For the former point of view see, for instance, Alan Lomax,
"Special Features of the Sung Communication," American Ethnological Society, Proceedings of
the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting, ed. June Helm (Seattle, 1967), and John Blacking, "The Value of
Music in Human Experience," Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council, 1, 1969 (Urbana,
Chicago, London, 1971), 38-42.
6. Charles Seeger, "The Music Process as a Function in a Context of Functions," Inter-
American Institute for Musical Resarch, Yearbook, 2 (New Orleans, 1966), 5.
7. Charles Seeger, "Preface to the Description of a Music," Proceedings of the Fifth Congress of
the International Musicological Society, 1952 (The Hague, 1953), 363.
8. Seeger, "The Music Process," p. 29.
9. These directions are exemplified in such publications as Charles Boiles, "Tepehua
Thought-Song: A Case of Semantic Signalling," Ethnomusicology, 11 (1967), 267-292; Bj6rn Lindblom and Johan Sundberg, "Towards a Generative Theory of Melody," Svensk Tidskrift fior
Musikforskning, 52 (1970), 71-88; John Blacking, "Towards a Theory of Musical Competence," in
E. J. DeJager, ed., Man: Anthropological Essays Presented to O. F. Raum (Cape Town, 1971), pp.
19-34.
10See Robert A. Georges, "The Relevance of Models for Analyses of Traditional Play
Activities," Southern Folklore Quarterly, 33 (1969), 22; Roger D. Abrahams, "Personal Power and
Social Restraint in the Definition of Folklore," Journal of American Folklore, 84 (1971), 28;
Roger D. Abrahams, "Folklore and Literature as Performance," Journal of the Folklore Institute, 9
(1972), 75-81.
11William Hugh Jansen, "Classifying Performance in the Study of Verbal Folklore," in W.
Edson Richmond, ed., Studies in Folklore, In Honor of Distinguished Service Professor Stith
Thompson (Bloomington, 1957), pp. 110-118; D. K. Wilgus, "The Future of American Folksong
Scholarship," Southern Folklore Quarterly, 37 (1973), 327. See also H. Gower, "Wanted: The
Singer's Autobiography and Critical Reflections," Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, 39, 1
(1973), pp. 1-7.
12Charles Seeger, "On the Formational Apparatus of the Music Compositional Process,"
Ethnomusicology, 12 (1969), 236: "Analysis is, first of all, a dividing into parts, a distinguishing of
one thing from another, a recognition of differences. From the viewpoint of the compositional
process, most parts are already in the repertory of the tradition and available for synthesis. Once
under way, every synthesis is an analysis and every analysis, a synthesis. It is the interplay of the
two that is the essence of the formational apparatus."
13. Two important discussions of re-creation in balladry are Phillips Barry, "Communal
Re-creation," Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, 5 (1933), 4-6, and B. H.
Bronson, "Mrs. Brown and the Ballad," California Folklore Quarterly, 4 (1945), 129-140; a recent
work treating the subject from a literary point of view is David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk
(Boston, 1972); see further John Quincy Wolf, "Folksingers and the Re-Creation of Folksong,"
Western Folklore, 26 (1967), 101-111; Roger Abrahams, "Creativity, Individuality, and the
Traditional Singer," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 3 (1970), 5-34; Edward D. Ives, "A Man
and His Song: Joe Scott and 'The Plain Golden Band,' " in Ray B. Browne, ed., Folksongs and
Their Makers (Bowling Green, 1970), pp. 72-73.
14Charles Seeger, "Versions and Variants of the Tunes of 'Barbara Allen,' " Selected Reports,
UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology, I, 1 (1966), 122-123.
15. John Blacking, Venda Children's Songs (Johannesburg, 1967), p. 27. Also A. M. Jones,
Studies in African Music, Vol. I (London and New York, 1959), 234 ff.
16. Hugh Gentleman and Susan Swift, Scotland's Travelling People: Problems and Solutions
(Edinburgh, 1971), is the latest Government study of this minority group.
17. B. H. Bronson, " 'Edward, Edward,' A Scottish Ballad," Southern Folklore Quarterly, 4
(1940), 11. An emendation by the author is included in the reprinting of the article in The Ballad
as Song (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), p. 12.
18. I am indebted to the Director, Professor John MacQueen, for permission to work with the
relevant material; all of the School's recordings were made by, or under the supervision of, Hamish
Henderson, Senior Lecturer in Scottish Studies, who also discovered the singer. Published
transcriptions of different recordings have appeared in Journal of the English Folk Dance and
Song Society, 7 (1955), 253; Scottish Studies, 14 (1970), 41; The Traditional Tunes of the Child
Ballads, Vol. 4 (Princeton, N.J., 1972), p. 452.
19. For observations o n textual stability in epic and ballad, see A. B. Lord, T he Singer o f Tales (New York, 1960), pp. 137-138; Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk, pp. 271-277; Kenneth A. Thigpen, Jr., "A Reconsideration of the Commonplace Phrase and Commonplace Theme in the Child Ballads," Southern Folklore Quarterly, 37 (1973), 407-408; D. K. Wilgus, "The Future of
AmericanF olksong Scholarship,"S outhernF olklore Quarterly,3 7 (1973), 326-328; for remarks on the present singer's texts, see D. K. Wilgus, "The Oldest (?) Text of 'Edward,"' Western Folklore, 25 (1966), 80; Hamish Henderson, "The Oral Tradition," Scottish International, 6 (1973), 27-32. Text is used here to mean the verbal matter of a song; for a recent wider semantic
application of the term, see D. K. Wilgus, " 'The Text is the Thing,' " Journal of American Folklore, 86 (1973), 241-252.
20. The event is described by Hamish Henderson," Edinburgh University Folk-song Society," Scottish Studies, 2 (1958), 213-214.
21. Interview with Hamish Henderson, Jeannie Robertson's house, June 21, 1960. School of Scottish Studies Archive S A 1960/12; transcribed by James Porter.
22. See Farnham Rehfisch, "Marriage and the Elementary Family among the Scottish Tinkers," Scottish Studies, 5 (1961), 121-148; Gentleman and Swift, 56-66.
23. The original article by Olrik, "Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung," Zeitschrift fiir Deutsches Altertum, 51 (1909), pp 1-12, is translated in Alan Dundes, ed., The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), pp. 131-141.
24. The terminology developed by Chomsky is used here with some diffidence, since it may seem to imply that musical patterns are generated in exactly the same way as language patterns are generated; this has not been demonstrated, nor is it likely that it will ever be, given the discrete natures of language and music. But it does not mean that there are not analogous generative processes involved. See recent comment in John Blacking, How Musical is Man? (Seattle and London, 1973), pp. 21-23.
25. Lord, pp. 31, 33. Subsequently, however, Lord seems to revert to Parry's notion of the formula as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea." For a musicological view of formulas in balladry, see Samuel P. Bayard, "Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of Folk Song," Journal of
American Folklore, 63 (1950), 1-44.
26. James H. Jones, "Commonplace and Memorization in the Oral Tradition of the English and Scottish Ballads," Journal of American Folklore, 74 (1961), 97-112, and A. B. Friedman, "The Formulaic Improvisation Theory of Ballad Tradition-A Counterstatement," ibid., 113-115; these views have been modified by Buchan, pp. 58-59, Henderson, "The Oral Tradition," pp. 28-29, and Thigpen, pp. 407-408.
27. Some of these basic problems concerning the nature of balladry were suggested by Edgar M. Slotkin in a paper presented to the American Folklore Society, Portland, Oregon, Nov. 2, 1974; I am grateful to Professor Slotkin for allowing me to study a copy of his paper.
28. Herschel Gower, "Jeannie Robertson: Portrait of a Traditional Singer," Scottish Studies, 12 (1968), 125.
29. See Archer Taylor, Edward and Sven i Rosengdrd (Chicago, 1931); Phillips Barry's review of Taylor in Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, 5 (1933), 19-20; Bronson," 'Edward, Edward' "; Tristram P. Coffin, "The Murder Motive in 'Edward,' " Western Folklore, 8 (1949), 314-319; D. K. Wilgus, "The Oldest (?) Text of 'Edward,' " 84. Barry attacks Taylor for ignoring the evidence of the musical traditions in studying the popular ballad.
30. BBC Interview, Schools Program, Nov. 28, 1960; transcribed by James Porter. Permission to
use the quotation is acknowledged.
31. Interview with Hamish Henderson and James Porter, Oct. 19, 1972; transcribed by James Porter.
32. Gower, p. 121.
33. Tristram P. Coffin, "Remarks Preliminary to a Study of Ballad Meter and Ballad Singing,"
Journal of American Folklore, 78 (1965), 151. The importance of singing, and of the air, to traditional performers, nevertheless, is apparent in the autobiographical remarks of such singers as Almeda Riddle and John Maguire. For extended studies of these two traditional singers, see Roger D. Abrahams, ed., A Singer and Her Songs (Baton Rouge, 1970), and Robin Morton, ed., Come Day, Go Day, God Send Sunday (London, 1973).
34. Taylor, p. 27. Barry objects in his review of Taylor (see note 29) to a mistranslation of a passage in the Vitae Offae Secundi, and points out the incidence of penance-voyages in Middle Irish stories such as the Imram Curaig Maelduin and the Imram Hui Corra. He also notes that it occurs in disguised form in balladry, in, for example, Jon Remordssgns Dgd paa Haavet ("John Remordsson's Death at Sea"), Herr Peders Sjoresa ("Sir Peter's Sea-Voyage"), and Brown Robin's Confession.
35. Wilgus, "The Oldest (?) Text," 83.
36. Whether these images are not just dramatic markers but also potent symbols to the singer is open to speculation. A Jungian analysis, for instance, of the characters and the images would undoubtedly interpret them as symbols of transformation, particularly in terms of the hero archetype. See C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Vol. 5 of The Collected Works of C. G.
Jung (New York, 1956).
37. Among Schenker's major works are Der Tonwille (Wien, 1921-24), Fiinf Urlinie-Tafeln (Wien, 1932), and Derfreie Satz (Wien, 1935; 2nd ed., 1956).
38. I am grateful to Dr. Dan Malmstrom, Institutionen foir Musikvetenskap, Uppsala University, for processing the graphs. A description of Mona is available in Ingmar Bengtsson, "On Melody-Registration and Mona," Elektronische Datenverarbeitung in der Musikwissenschaft (Regensburg, 1967), pp. 136-174.