Hi all,
I am getting more interested in Breton folk (Ridees, etc) and want to learn more about it.
Any beginner level introduction texts, etc. that you know of? Basic things such as what type of tunes, structure, etc. would be a great start, for eg.
Thanks!
You could probably find some of what you’re looking for on Balfolk websites. They play quite a few of those tunes for their dances
There’s an old discussion here that might be of help:
https://thesession.org/discussions/4405
it has a link to this site: http://www.partitions.bzh/ which seems to still be running 16 years later.
I got this e-book not long ago. I don’t know if it’s good or bad as my knowledge of Breton music is quite limited but I like it 🙂
https://www.melbay.com/Products/22192/traditional-breton-dance-tunes--fest-breizh.aspx
This might be of interest - several on eBay, but priced around £30.
“Call to the Dance - An Experience of the Socio-Cultural World of Traditional Breton Music and Dance”
by Desi Wilkinson
Overview
Over the course of the 40 years between 1970 and 2010 Britany has experienced an intense revival of activity in the area of vernacular traditional music performance and social dancing. Circle dancing there is arguably the most popularly enjoyed community based dance form in Western Europe. In its most traditional form the music and singing which drive the dance are immediate and arresting in their raw appeal. Addressing both scholarly and musical constituencies, Irish musician and academic Desi Wilkinson opens a nuanced window, informed by his own experience, into this vibrant socio-musical reality. The book deals with issues of local identity as expressed through the aesthetic medium of music and dance and includes access to field recordings of selected singers and musicians. Directly related to these recordings are basic transcriptions of both text and music that, taken together, give readers a good template from which to develop some understanding of its aesthetic features. The Pan-Breton selection to be found here is the cohort of round dance music forms that are most representative of the Breton tradition in the 2010s. A description of what has emerged as the most iconic dance form, the suite gavotte montagne, is included. The notional world of contemporary popular Celticism (Celtitude) is tied to folk music performance and Wilkinson examines the particularity of its Breton and francophone construction. Desi Wilkinson is a leading exponent of the traditional Irish flute and a fine traditional singer. He has recorded five albums with the internationally renowned group Cran, two solo albums--the Three Piece Flute and Shady Woods --and a host of other recording collaborations that reflect his eclectic musical interests. He is currently traditional musician in residence at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, where he continues to combine music-making with academic pursuits.
You could drop hints as a Christmas present 🙂
These two volumes are very good - they have a nice representative selection of music, in UK/Ireland trad-friendly keys, and some useful information in French and English which is enough to start making sense of the Breton musical world:
https://www.sonerien.com/partition-musique-bretonne/685-airs-a-danser.html
John Skelton has put out a small book entitles “Some Breton Tunes” with some 30 examples of various Breton dance forms. There’s also a CD of the tunes as played on either flute or whistle.
There is also “Traditional Breton Dance Tunes ‘Fest Breizh’ ” by David Surette, 50 traditional dance tunes from Brittany, published by Mel Bay.
The basic and most important source for Breton folk music is Barzaz-Breiz: chants populaires de la Bretagne by Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué 6th ed. Paris 1867. I think that is the most recent edition, but there may be others I haven’t seen. This is in French, with lyrics in Breton translated into French, and simple monadic scores of many songs.
Ballads and songs of Brittany, by T. Taylor, tr. from the ‘Barsaz Breiz’ of vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué (MacMillan and Company 1865) is actually not a translation of the above book but more based on it. It gives lyrics in English with a selection of melodies harmonized for voice and piano, lyrics to these mostly given in Breton and English.
These books, especially de La Villemarqué, give lots of background material on Breton music.
Full texts of both these books are available in Google Books and archive.org, at least from the US; varying copyright laws sometimes result in books on those sites not being available from all countries.
There are some basic monadic scores of a number of Breton melodies included in my Celtic Melody Library at:
https://sites.google.com/site/jcorelisceltic/
This site should be freely accessible by anyone, but I’ve been having some problems with access settings to my Google sites recently, so if anyone can’t access it, please let me know.
Some of my arrangements of Breton melodies, in software-generated audio files since I haven’t got any of them performed yet, are available on SoundCloud at:
https://soundcloud.com/jon-corelis/sets/breton-songs
Missed the irritating edit deadline so I have to add as another comment that the audio files on the Celtic Melody Library don’t work with the current version of Google Sites. I’ll try to fix it eventually. But the scores may still be of use.
Thanks for the suggestions. These look very good to get me started 🙂