Category Archives: Always a Folklorist

Topics primarily tied to the field of folklore study and my background as a folklorist.

Why Would a Folklorist Write a Book about Handel?

Always a Folklorist, ,

    ~Handel ≠ Folklore~

In the “Preface” to The Handel Letters, I cited the field of folklore research for its role in guiding my way of living a life of learning, teaching, and writing. But why exactly would a folklorist choose to study Handel and write a ‘biographical conversation” based on his life? I suspect that those who have studied folklore will be less mystified by this question than those who have not. The great appeal of the field of folklore study is that you really can study just about anything you want and consider it a part of the discipline. But even more than this, the field of folklore study teaches a line of questioning, an approach, a variety of methodologies, a history of research, and a set of tools that can enliven and bring a satisfying relevance to the exploration of any topic. So, the life and music of George Frideric Handel is just another of the many topics a folklorist might choose to study. I feel lucky to have learned early on about this field of study and the people and materials that are its focus.

Still, I agree that the reasons why a folklorist might choose to study Handel may not be immediately apparent. And, in fact, the question might more logically be: What in this book about Handel can be traced in some clear way to the author’s background in the discipline of folklore studies? Yes, that would be a harder question to answer, but let me take a stab at it.

First let me say a little about what popular notions of “folklore” as a topic do not really interfere with writing a book about Handel. Folklorists are not concerned only with a group of people called “the folk.” Folklorists do indeed often study individuals rather than groups of people. Folklorists are not prohibited from studying anything to do with classical rather than folk music. Folklorists must not work only with people who are now living. And folklorists do not necessarily have to do fieldwork, although it is generally a great asset if they can. So, while Handel may not be recognized as a typical subject for a folklorist to take on, the field is in no way so restrictive as to discourage one from writing a book on Handel.

Other folklorists would very likely choose to write about Handel in quite a different way than I have in The Handel Letters—if at all.   Nevertheless, most folklorists will easily see the influences of the field in the book. So, let me point out some of these influences for those not so familiar with the field. Writing a kind of historical fiction is not a typical form of folklore study, but I doubt that any folklorists would consider it a radical departure, more likely simply a rarely invoked mode of writing in the discipline. But, it is this mode of writing that has, in fact, allowed me to include many issues that are typically highlighted by the field of folklore study. By moving back and forth from Handel and his era to some fictional characters and the current time period, I have, I would argue, been able to explore at least seven typical and important themes of folklore research.

Primary among these, for me at least, is the folklorist’s attention to the creative process. Handel, after all, was creating music within a tradition, but even more telling, I think, was his conscious use of earlier musical material that he adapted, reused, and expanded in new musical compositions. While some music critics faulted him for this practice, my folklorist’s antennae were excited to see this “creative use of traditional resources.” In any case, it was a fair point for discussion by people looking back at Handel’s many compositions and considering his creative process.

A second common theme in folklore studies is conflict between differing culture groups—basically us versus them. This theme comes up many times, both in Handel’s day and in ours. A third theme is worldview. Handel was alive during the Age of Reason, the beginnings of the Enlightenment, and yet, of course, Christianity was the dominant belief in his world. Religion and secular belief were at odds then and are yet today. Another very common topic in folklore research is folk medicine, even today with modern medicine making such strides. And yet both then and now, issues tied to health, belief, and behavior abound in daily life. I was surprised to see how prominently the issue of health arose in Handel’s biography.

A fifth topic that is increasingly a part of folklore studies is that of social activism or applied folklore. In Handel’s day, notions of acting against poverty and especially against childhood suffering were just emerging. Handel’s early performances of Messiah were offered as a kind of applied service in support of prisoners. Today, performances of Messiah are often still used to gather food and money for those in need. A sixth topic that might seem surprising is the folklorist’s attention to perceptions of gender. It definitely does show up as a topic in Handel’s life and in his music, and of course it is still an issue for us today.

Finally the abiding question of how an individual—even a famous individual like Handel—learns what he knows, how he came to have the identity he had, what influences were at work in his life—that question arises throughout the book just as it intrigues folklore scholars in every realm yet today. These and many more topics characteristic of the field of folklore study show up in this book on Handel. As a folklorist, I could not escape being drawn to such themes. And that is why this folklorist chose to write a book about Handel.

Thanks for your interest and for dropping by.

The Norwegian Tales: My Inspiration for Including Illustrations

Always a Folklorist, , , ,

The Norwegian Tales: My Inspiration for Including Illustrations

Last time I shared the fact that I had asked my daughter to create the illustrations that grace the chapter heads and the cover of The Handel Letters. Here I would like to say a little more about what prompted me to have illustrations in the book. The reason flashes back to my childhood. I was lucky enough to live right next door to my grandmother, Gertrude Dolby. I spent countless hours just messing around with whatever she found for me to do—sitting on her porch swing as she shelled peas or pitted cherries, reading old letters from my Aunt Mary, or listening as she read the poems of James Whitcomb Riley or from other books. Among her books was one I came to love above all others. It had belonged to my older cousins, Ruth and Rosemary Hull, but for some reason, it stayed in Indiana with my grandmother when my cousins moved to California. The book was a collection of fairy tales, East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon. Even then, it showed extreme signs of heedless handling by children, but I still have it, I’m happy to say. Here is a photo:

The book was the Third Edition of the title, published by Albert Whitman & Company of Chicago, and copyrighted in 1924. Though clearly based on the collection of Norwegian tales, Norske Folkeeventyr, published in 1843-1844 by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, the book does not reference this source. Instead, the stories are noted to be “retold from the original” by Inger Margrete Rasmussen, though it isn’t clear whether the “original” refers to the Norwegian or English text. Such disregard for sources was fairly common in children’s books. The earliest English translation of the tales, by George Webbe Dasent in 1859, did acknowledge the Norwegian source, but Dasent’s translation was intended as a scholarly work, inspired by translations of the Grimms’ folktale collection. My beloved but battered version was meant for children.

As you can see, the illustrator was a woman named Violet Moore Higgins. She was an American artist working in the early 1900s, primarily in children’s book illustration, but she also produced a comic book character, Drowsy Dick. You can find out a little more about Moore at the following website:

www.lambiek.net/artists/m/moore-higgins_violet.html

I have always liked the pictures in the Rasmussen/Higgins book. And I can’t help noticing that both the translator and the illustrator of that book were women. Though we don’t know whether the 19th-century oral storytellers were men or women, we do know that the better-known Dover edition of the Norwegian tales was clearly the work of men: two Norwegian collectors, one British translator, and several well-known Norwegian artists. Primary among those 19th-century Norwegian artists were Theodor Kittelsen, Erik Werenskiold, and Per Krohg. These artists are still revered as national treasures in Norway. I was impressed to find, during my year in Norway, that some of the illustrations from the tales were found on such common products as shampoo packets in hotel rooms. Norwegians love their stories (and their artists).

Though Violet Moore Higgins’s illustrations hold a special place in my heart, I do very much appreciate the selection of seventy-seven illustrations reproduced in the 1970 Dover edition of the Norwegian tales. Consider two Illustrations by Theodor Kittelsen drawn to illustrate the story titled “The Twelve Wild Ducks,” a version of ATU type 451. (See www.atlasobscura.com/articles/aarne-thompson-uther-tale-type-index-fables-fairy-tales for a discussion of Types of International Folktales.) Usually the type involves seven brothers transformed into ravens, but here it is twelve brothers transformed into ducks. Many of Kittelsen’s works are available at this address: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Theodor_Kittelsen.

Both drawings convey some cultural data along with representing aspects of the plot. You see some material culture of the time—the girl’s dress, the log house with sod roof), some sense of place (the wet meadow with thistles, the hilly landscape). Generally the illustrations from the original Norwegian collection were of this sort—realistic and skillfully executed representations of plot elements. Imagine how wonderful it was to have such visual accompaniments to the stories before the days of photography, video, and film. Including illustrations in children’s books is still a wonderful endeavor—thus the coveted Caldecott Award. But for my own book—a book for adults rather than children—I wanted something more like a reference or allusion to something in each chapter.

When I talked with my daughter about this idea, she suggested that what I really wanted was something more like an icon that recalls some motif in the text. As a folklorist, my association with the word icon was the pictures or three-dimensional figures of saints often used in religious ritual. Two colleagues recently published a study of people who create such pictures and sculptures in Brazil. See:

www.amazon.com/Sacred-Art-Catholic-SaintsCandomble/dp/0253032059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518362380&sr=11&keywords=Sacred+Art%3A+Catholic+Saints+and+Candomblé+Gods+in+Modern+Brazil

But Alexis said that she meant something more like the emoji or icons so often used online these days. The images are more sketchy and symbolic rather than realistic and culture-specific. I realized that there were in fact a few drawings of that sort in the Rasmussen-Higgins collection of my childhood. As Alexis said, these were simply easy reminders of some part of the story, not really the weightier kind of imagery conveyed through an illustration. One example from Violet Moore Higgins was this one recalling for the reader a motif in the story of “The Lad Who Fooled the Troll and Won the Princess,” or ATU 328. The lad used a nail, at twig, and a candle to fool the troll into thinking he was cutting the lad’s finger.

So, we decided to have such evocative icons as pictures heading up each chapter. More about a few specific drawings later. Thanks for stopping by.