Folk song
An orally transmitted song.
What it means
A folk song is a song that is transmitted orally, whose author is mostly unknown, and which circulates in different versions. Characteristic are simple, singable melodies with a narrow range, strophic construction, and texts from the sphere of everyday experience — work, love, farewell, the course of the year. The term itself only arose in the late eighteenth century; the thing is older, while the idea of the folk song is an interpretation of its own time.
Musical use
For music history, folk songs are significant in two respects. First, as a repertoire of their own with their own melody types and regional traditions. Second, as material: composers take up melodies, harmonize and arrange them, or use them in instrumental works. It must be kept in mind here that every transcription fixes a version that was previously fluid, and that many nineteenth-century collections smoothed the songs in the sense of their editors. What counts today as an old folk song is often an arranged version.
Performance practice
Sing folk songs plainly and without applied artistic devices; the effect arises from melody and text. Choose a comfortable register, since the songs are made for untrained voices. Shape the stanzas according to their content and plan an arc over the sequence. With arrangements, check which version underlies them, and name the source. With songs from other regions or languages, it is worth asking experts about pronunciation and manner of delivery, rather than adapting them yourself.
Bear in mind that many printed versions are arranged: nineteenth-century collectors smoothed melodies, changed texts, and selected stanzas. Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn from 1805 to 1808. Check the source and name it. The German Folk Song Archive, founded in 1914 in Freiburg, today part of the Centre for Popular Culture and Music, documents the tradition. Choose a comfortable register and shape the stanzas according to their content. Many folk songs were arranged in the nineteenth century by composers such as Silcher.
Check whether a melody circulates in several variants, and decide with good reason which one you use.