Once
medieval ballads (=oral compositions passed on
from generation to generation) became popular, they began to borrow
freely from the carols (=religious
folk songs or popular hymns, especially associated with Christmas),
riddle songs, popular stories and romances of the time. Ballads were popular
throughout (=in every part of) Europe and the English-language ballad also
borrowed from other countries and cultures. Read here.
There
are examples of the ballad form from the Middle Ages right up to the
present day. The 16th century saw the gradual disappearance of the
old-style romances, along with the minstrels who used to recite and sing
them.
The
ballad form remained popular through the 17th and the 18th centuries,
which saw a revival especially of magic and supernatural themes.
In the 19th century
the poetry of the Romantics drew widely for inspiration on the materials of
folk narrative ballads and lyrical folk songs: Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner owes its
intense supernaturalism and its archaisms to traditional ballads;
Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad about an encounter that involves both pleasure
and pain.
In
the 20th century an oral ballad
tradition still survived in England and the United States and the
term "ballad" was applied to a short song with a slow rhythm and
romantic or sentimental content.
In
the 1960s popular music in general became a space for cultural and
political conflict and dialogue. Bob Dylan started to use the form of the
ballad to protest against the Vietnam War when, in 1962, he used the
mixture of dialogue and narration of Lord Randal in his
song A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Among his most famous
anti-war songs are Blowin’ in the Wind and Masters of
War.
The
ballad is still used in modern pop and folk music. Read here.
from Performer Heritage 1, Zanichelli, p. 63
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