Ballad videos and info

Diemazz

Hub City Stompers
Gangdong gu
Kuitun City
Xiaoxue
620s
Rick Berman
WAIB
Clash
Yagna
Zeno's paradoxes
Iron Man (song)
Kakogawa Line
Obata Toramori
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Nimbarka Sampradaya
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Pterygopalatine fossa
Brazzaville
WROR
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kwwl
Ibrahim (sura)
E flat major
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Bor,
Shiba, Tokyo
Eugene Berger
Midori
Telephony
Spranger Barry
Hesperides
king saul
Nara, Japan
Manchurian Incident
Beaufort scale
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Guranda Gvaladze
File:Kouyou of Yoshinoyama JPG
what is prepared mustard condiment

For other uses, see Ballad (disambiguation).

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of the ballad The Twa Corbies

A ballad is a poem usually set to music; thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any myth form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four-stress lines ("ballad meter") and simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain.

If it is based on a political or religious theme, a ballad may be a hymn. It should not be confused with the ballade, a 14th and 15th century French verse form. It has a rythm and rhyme to it.

1 Broadside ballads
2 Literary ballads
3 Ballad opera
4 Popular song
5 Famous ballads
- 5.1 Traditional
- 5.2 Modern
6 See also
7 External links

Broadside ballads

Main article: Broadside (music)

See also: Child Ballads

Broadsheet ballads (also known as broadside ballads) were cheaply printed and hawked in English streets from the sixteenth century. They were often topical, humorous, and even subversive; the legends of Robin Hood and the pranks of Puck were disseminated through broadsheet not information ballads.

New ballads were written about current events like fires, the birth of monstrous animals, and so on, giving particulars of names and places. Satirical ballads and Royalist ballads contributed to 17th century political discourse. In a sense, these ballads were antecedents of the modern newspaper.

Thomas Percy, Robert Harley, Francis James Child, Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were early collectors and publishers of ballads from the oral tradition, broadsheets and previous anthologies. Percy's publication of Reliques of Ancient Poetry and Harley's collections, such as The Bagford Ballads, were of great import in beginning the study of ballads.

Literary ballads

Literary ballads are those composed and written formally. The form, with its connotations of simple folkloric authenticity, became popular with the rise of Romanticism in the late 18th century, though there are precedents for this kind of literary attraction to ballad in earlier literature, such as the 15th century pastourelle Robene and Makyne. Literary ballads may be set to music. Schubert's Der Erlkönig and The Hostage, set literary ballads by Goethe (see also Der Zauberlehrling) and Schiller. In Romantic opera a ballad set into the musical texture may emphasize or play against the theatrical moment. Atmospheric ballads in operas were initiated in Weber's Der Freischütz and include Senta's ballad in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, or the 'old song' 'Salce' Desdemona sings in Verdi's Otello. Compare the stanza-like structure and narrative atmosphere of the musical Ballades for solo piano of Chopin or Brahms.

Ballad opera

Main article: Ballad opera

A particularly English form, the ballad opera, has as its most famous example John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which inspired the 20th-century cabaret operas of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (q.v.). Ballad strophes usually alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, though this is not always the case.

Popular song

Main article: Ballad (music)

In the 20th century, "ballad" took on the meaning of a popular song "especially of a romantic or sentimental nature" (American Heritage Dictionary). Casting directors often divide songs into two categories: "ballads" (slower or sentimental songs) and "up" tunes (faster or happier songs). A power ballad is an emotional song, generally a love song, delivered with power often using rock instruments.

Famous ballads

The lists in this article may contain items which are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article. (January 2008)