The scholar A. L. Lloyd (famous for his magnificent compilations of songs from the whaling ships) notes that “there is no essential difference between folk music and art music; they are varied blossoms from the same stock, grown to serve a similar purpose, if destined for different tables”. This perception, which was probably normal during the Elizabethan epoch, was lost in later periods and was initially recovered by folklorists and later by “art” musicians during the 1960s. Among the former were the British vocalists Martin Carthy, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, John Kirkpatrick, Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Nic Jones, June Tabor, Maddy Prior and Martin Simpson. All frequently included folksongs and traditional ballads in their repertoire as solo artists and they subsequently went on to become members of groups such as The Pentagle, Fairpot Convention, Steeleye Span, Brass Monkey, Albion Country Band, and Silly Sisters. But perhaps the first signs of this revival date as far back as the 1940s, when the English tenor Richard Dyer-Bennet had no hesitation in appearing at the Village Vanguard in New York along side the folksinger Burl Ives. Accompanying themselves on the lute and guitar respectively, one performed Elizabethan songs and British ballads while the other offered the American folk versions derived from the same themes. The concert was such a success that CBS aired it during a special program, transmitting it with such surprising results that a few days later both musicians, this time accompanied by the black folksinger Leadbelly, appeared at Carnegie Hall.
The Human Voice
There are probably few things sadder than the voice of man condemned to singing in falsetto. It is a tradition beginning in school choirs, something also very English, and stretching to the end of the twentieth century in rock music. Jon Anderson (lead singer of the group Yes), Robert Plant (from Led Zeppelin) and Ian Gillan (from Deep Purple) are nothing short of popular countertenors who exploit their fans’ fascination with their high notes and especially their prodigious and anti-natural voices. Andreas Scholl takes this quality of estrangement, alienation, of “having someone else’s voice” and expressing oneself in falsetto, with a “false” voice, to its most extreme consequences. Lord Rendall concludes one of his most interesting recordings whose title reflects the relationship between English folksongs and lute songs. Like Alfred and Mark Deller before him, Scholl converts ambiguity into one of the fine arts. The velvety darkness of his voice (or the voice he fabricates) matches the ambiguity of the dialogue in which, with the same dispassion, mother and son, performed by the one person, discuss the poisoning one of them has been subject to. And in this strange and slowly announced death, sung to the same rhythm as the drops of poison that run through his blood, there is immense wisdom. The wisdom of those who know there is no greater joy for an artist than to be able to provoke infinite sorrow with his art.
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