With a bit of inspiration from Haydn of all people, William Dart looks at a number of traditional ballad performances and new releases from Irish group Lankum and the American supergroup Bonny Light Horseman, both of which draw on the rich heritage of folk balladry.
Bonny Light Horseman Photo: Nolan Knight/Spacebomb, used with permission
One of my most enjoyable and energizing concert hall experiences of 2019 was of young German cellist Julian Steckel with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra swinging their way through Haydn.
Steckel’s first few bars [at 1:15], with slashed chords and crunchy syncopations, say it all. This is music that could be classifiable as eighteenth-century funky.
Haydn might seem like a venerable opening act for today’s programme.
Not so, I feel. This man may have worn a powdered wig but, isolated in the Austrian countryside, far from cappuccino-swilling Vienna, he would have had first-hand access to folk music at its most raw – truly the music of the people and the fields in which they worked. Hence the gusto of his minuets, not to mention those runaway gypsy finales.
Looking through a stack of 18 CDs containing Haydn’s arrangements of Scottish and Welsh folksongs, I’m reminded of a composer who was a man of the soil. A man so taken with a recipe for keeping milk fresh, given to him by an old sailor, that he committed it to paper.
In other words, Haydn had a respect for the world outside cities and palaces, an attitude that would be a prime influence on the revolutionary Beethoven, who also did a lot of folksong arrangements.
And when Haydn dresses up a familiar tune like ‘Greensleeves’ for the piano trio and singer of his rustic drawing room, it’s a far cry from the lyrical romanticism of the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on the same tune.
This Haydn arrangement of ‘Greensleeves’, sung by Jamie MacDougall, highlights for me the almost elemental power of folk music and the way in which rich storehouses of traditional ballads remain forever fresh through a living performance tradition – performances by musicians and singer with just the right balance of love and scholarship.
And sometimes with a mind-blasting range of tactics, from the utmost fidelity to utter outrageousness.
I was brought up with the British folksong arrangements that Benjamin Britten fashioned for his partner Peter Pears. These can come across as a little twee, so much so that they were hilariously spoofed by Dudley Moore in the show Beyond the Fringe.
Here is the rather self-conscious artification that Moore was responding to, with Britten and Pears taking on the old Scottish folksong ‘O Waly Waly’,
I’ll turn now to the Scottish singer Momus, who, just a few years ago, used the same tune, or the first few phrases of it, to nefarious and satirical ends. Here’s his saga of Finnegan, the unsung hero of the computer world.
The simplest of folksongs can provide inspirational material for an inventive singer or composer.
Take the case of ‘Katy Cruel’, a ballad that I first discovered as a student in Alan Lomax’s collection of American Folksongs, published by Penguin Books at a time when that imprint was responsible for some major cultural democratisation.
It came with the bonus of Lomax’s liner notes and nicely chiselled piano accompaniments from Elizabeth Poston – these at a time when folksongs were usually presented with just guitar chords.
But it was with guitar that I first heard this ballad sung by the unruffled Peggy Seeger on her Folkways album, Folk Songs of Courting and Complaint.
Over the years I’d hear many singers relate the sad tale of Katy (or Katie) Cruel, from Nick Cave and Jerry Garcia to a powerful a cappella rendition by Elisabeth Null that had been collected by Alan Lomax. And who could forget the New Christy Minstrels, reshuffling it into some sort of coy Hootenanny.
But one stood out. This was by the American Karen Dalton in 1971, one of her last recordings before she somehow lost her grip on both career and life.
It’s a tough but immensely moving listen, with the searing desperation of Dalton’s singing set against gnarly banjo and the lively fiddle of Bobby Notkoff, who’d turn up a few years later in the line-up of Neil Young’s band Crazy Horse.
That resolute final thrust of Bobby Notkoff’s bow still chills after all these years and re-visitings.
This brings me up to date, with the same song turning up on the latest album from the Irish band, Lankum.
This third album, titled The Livelong Day, makes some pretty substantial meals out of its chosen ballads, with musical performances that certainly stir up the dark, raucous poetry that a recent headline promised.
These highly politicised musicians — the group was originally named Lynched as a tribute to the Afro-Americans so cruelly murdered in the States — they give both weight, substance and length to ‘Katie Cruel’, which runs at over nine minutes.
And while I suspect that Haydn would have enjoyed the primal sound mesh that comes forth from the combination of pipes, fiddle, harmonium and accordion, I suspect that he might have preferred the effect to be achieved within a more modest, two to four minute time frame.
Lankum’s ‘Katie Cruel’ had been a project dating back a few years, intended as a soundtrack for a film that presented the vision of an Irish Apocalypse, which explains its resolutely dark, and dirge-like power, with the not inconsiderable voice of Radie Peat picked up by not one, but three encircling microphones.
And the song’s 80 seconds of introduction are a compelling overture in their own right.
The American trio of Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D Johnson and Josh Kaufman tills the same musical fields as Lankum, but with a more forgiving palette. And you can hear this on their debut album released under their collective name of Bonny Light Horseman.
They are described as a folkie supergroup – Mitchell is best known for her recent Hadestown triumph on Broadway, Johnson as one of the Fruit Bats and Kaufman as the ultimo simpatico of producers and session man who’s worked on the sidelines of groups such as The National.
Their very name, Bonny Light Horseman, is taken from the album’s opening song, and before that from an early nineteenth century Broadside ballad relating the pain and losses suffered during the Napoleonic wars, a scenario that the band will tell you is not uniquely nineteenth century. We could be talking of the Middle East in 2020.
Anaïs Mitchell handles most of the singing and having released her own album of folk ballads from the Child collection she’s eminently qualified.
Yet behind her, the sonic quilt unfurled by the band offers unexpected blends and timbres that will have you pressing the repeat button on your player once, twice and maybe more. And the best place to hear them is in the 50 ear-wooing seconds of the song’s introduction.
For me, one of the pleasures of Bonny Light Horseman’s new album is the meeting again of old friends — by which I mean ballads that I’ve enjoyed over the years from the likes of Bert Jansch, Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny.
All three of which recorded ‘Blackwaterside’, one of the many folksongs dealing with the subject of a young woman duped into sex with false promises, another subject that has sinister echoes in our own times.
In Bert Jansch’s hands ‘Blackwaterside’ was a bleak tale, ending with the callous young man telling his victim to go home to her father’s garden and contemplate her foolishness.
Bonny Light Horseman has it rounded off by Mitchell with remorse to be sure, but also with a great sadness as the young woman realises the hopelessness of the resolution that she was hoping for. It’s set against a swooning chorus of backing vocals that offer their own consolation and spiritual support.
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'Cello Concerto No 1 in C' (Haydn) – Julian Steckel, APO/Giordano Bellincampi
RNZ Concert live recording
(RNZ)
'Piano Concerto In D, Hob.XVIII:11' (Haydn) – Jolanda Violante, L'Arte dell'Arco /Federico Guglielmo
Haydn Edition – Keyboard Concertos
(Brilliant Classics)
'Greensleeves' (Trad arr Haydn) – Jamie MacDougall
Haydn Edition – Scottish Songs for George Thomson III
(Brilliant Classics)
'O Waly, Waly' (Trad arr Britten) – Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten
Britten: Folksongs
(Decca)
'Finnegan the Folk Hero' (Currie) – Momus
Folktronic
(Le Grand Magistery)
'Katy Cruel' (Trad) – Peggy Seeger
Folk Songs of Courting & Complaint
(Folkways)
'Katie Cruel' (Trad) – Karen Dalton
In My Own Time
(Light in the Attic)
'Katie Cruel' (Trad) – Lankum
The Livelong Day
(Folkways)
'Bonny Light Horseman' (Trad) – Bonny Light Horseman
Bonny Light Horseman
(37d03d)
'Blackwaterside' (Trad) – Bonny Light Horseman
Bonny Light Horseman
(37d03d)
