Mac'nClassicalCheese - Oct 25, 2023

Today's show is going to feature folk music influences. Folk music is any music that is native to a culture or country that likely doesn't have its origins in any written music. Most folk music, regardless of where it is from, is based on pentatonic scales. The scale most of us are used to is a 7 note scale whereas a pentatonic scale is a 5 note scale. Whats more, our scale (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do) has semitones or half steps between the notes. Think of that sound like a musical staircase when something or someone is ascending into the clouds in a cartoon. How all those notes sound squished together? It's half steps. The pentatonic scale has no half steps; what you see (or hear) is what you get. 5 simple notes. Because of this, when classical composers created pieces around folk themes, the entire style of the piece was changed and took on a very unique, and distinctly non-classical sound. This is because the whole scale that the piece is built on (all of its harmonies and key changes) are built on a less complicated scale. So in short: the unique sounds of these pieces can be traced back to scales! What's more, folk music was not really acceptable or "serious" enough to be used in classical music for many years. Classical music is built around very specific forms and a heavy amount of rules, but in the 1800s (during what's known as the Romantic period of classical music), many of those rules and forms were breaking down. And with this change in thinking, many composers started incorporating pieces from their home countries or places they traveled to into their music. Dvořák in particular popularized the use of folk music in classical music.