Ballad

This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Ballad is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:

Related Sponsors

BM Pharmacy Generic pharmaceuticals at unbeatable prices. Insomnia, men's health, hair health, pain control. bmpharmacy.com
Online Pharmacy Carisoprodol, tadalafil, sildenafil, vardenafil and more... xlpharmacy.com
MedBasket.com Discreet. Inexpensive. Fast shipping. Great selection. What more can we say? medbasket.com
Frugalmed 2000 reasons to shop with us first. frugalmed.com
Ads by Tiva

 This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)
For other uses, see Ballad (disambiguation).
Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies
Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies

A ballad is a poem usually set to music; thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any myth form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four-stress lines ("ballad meter") and simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain.

If it is based on a political or religious theme, a ballad may be a hymn. It should not be confused with the ballade, a 14th and 15th century French verse form.

Contents

Broadside ballads

Main article: Broadside (music)
See also: Child Ballads

Broadsheet ballads (also known as broadside ballads) were cheaply printed and hawked in English streets from the sixteenth century. They were often topical, humorous, and even subversive; the legends of Robin Hood and the pranks of Puck were disseminated through broadsheet ballads.

New ballads were written about current events like fires, the birth of monstrous animals, and so forth, giving particulars of names and places. Satirical ballads and Royalist ballads contributed to 17th century political discourse. In a sense, these ballads were antecedents of the modern newspaper.

Thomas Percy, Robert Harley, Francis James Child, Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were early collectors and publishers of ballads from the oral tradition, broadsheets and previous anthologies. Percy's publication of Reliques of Ancient Poetry and Harley's collections, such as The Bagford Ballads, were of great import in beginning the study of ballads.

Literary ballads

Literary ballads are those composed and written formally. The form, with its connotations of simple folkloric authenticity, became popular with the rise of Romanticism in the late 18th century, though there are precedents for this kind of literary attraction to ballad in earlier literature, such as the 15th century pastourelle Robene and Makyne. Literary ballads may be set to music. Schubert's Der Erlkönig and The Hostage, set literary ballads by Goethe (see also Der Zauberlehrling) and Schiller. In Romantic opera a ballad set into the musical texture may emphasize or play against the theatrical moment. Atmospheric ballads in operas were initiated in Weber's Der Freischütz and include Senta's ballad in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, or the 'old song' 'Salce' Desdemona sings in Verdi's Otello. Compare the stanza-like structure and narrative atmosphere of the musical Ballades for solo piano of Chopin or Brahms.

Ballad opera

Main article: Ballad opera

A particularly English form, the ballad opera, has as its most famous example John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which inspired the 20th-century cabaret operas of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (q.v.). Ballad strophes usually alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, though this is not always the case.

Popular song

Main article: Ballad (music)

In the 20th Century, "ballad" took on the meaning of a popular song "especially of a romantic or sentimental nature" (American Heritage Dictionary). Casting directors often divide songs into two categories: "ballads" (slower or sentimental songs) and "up" tunes (faster or happier songs). A power ballad is a love song delivered with power often using rock instruments.

Famous ballads

 This article or section seems to contain embedded lists that may require cleanup.
To meet Wikipedia's style guidelines, please help improve this article by: removing items which are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful from the list(s); incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article; and discussing this issue on the talk page. (January 2008)

Traditional

Illustration by Arthur Rackham to Young Bekie.
Illustration by Arthur Rackham to Young Bekie.

Modern

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

External links

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 6 September 2008, at 19:54.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Ballad".

The URL for this specific entry is:

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.