Given that the dialects preserved in Appalachia are very close to the English spoken in Elizabethan times, it is no surprise that Bluegrass and country music rely heavily on the lute tradition, as does much of what is considered ‘American’ folk music. I have always felt the key element of all of these is they were written for the vocal range of the average person, unlike music like our national anthem, a tune taken from a drinking song intended to embarrass the singer.

It is certainly more familiar than Russian folk songs that tend to change tempo for the refrain. ‘Those were the days’ is a translated Russian folk song and typical of the genre.

If you haven’t seen the recorder video at Fallenmonk, check it out, rather amazing work.

Not all that different, Bryan. Elizabethan music, especially the lute songs, carried the most forward-looking tonal harmonies of any secular music of the day, more so than any other nation’s songs and more so than (always somewhat retrograde) church music of the era. In the rest of Europe, England’s 16th- and 17th-century songs were considered odd, but to our ears today, they sound strongly tonal, almost as if written a century or more later than they were.

Agreed about Joplin, Zombies and Hendrix… and that “love gone wrong” or “s/he done him/her wrong” songs are a timeless tradition in the solo song literature, then and now.

For your own pleasure, yes. Elizabethan lute songs… the kind in which the singer usually accompanied himself… are a world apart. Some are cerebral, but most are passionate… about love, or lost love, or the apparent primary manifestation of human love in Elizabethan times as in our own times. 😈 Whether the singer is declaring the tragedy of unrequited love as in John Dowland’s “If my complaints could passions move,” or exclaiming on much earthier matters in Robert Jones’s “What I will do with a dildo,” no more enjoyable songs were ever written!