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Scarborough Fair, Op.5 No.1
SM-000613384
| Alternative title |
Two English Songs |
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| Composer | folklore |
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Arranger
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Richard Willmer |
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| Publisher | Richard Willmer |
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| Genre |
Classical / Arrangement |
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| Instrumentation |
Piano |
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| Scored for | Solo |
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| Type of score | Piano score |
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| Key |
G minor |
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| Movement(s) |
1 to 1 from 1 |
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| Duration |
4'30" |
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| Difficulty |
Advanced |
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| Year of composition |
2018 |
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| Description |
This English folk ballad has become famous thanks to a recording by a couple of popular musicians in the 1960s. Because of that, some people tend to believe it was written by them, which is not quite true. They did combine another, original melody to it, therefore creating a new, albeit derivative, work, but Scarborough Fair is much older than this and, in any case, I do not use this other melody.
Cecil J. Sharp, in 1916, published a version of this song in his collection, One Hundred English Folk Songs, as No. 74. The melody, however, is different. Another variant of this Ballad is The Lover's Tasks. This, too, was collected by Sharp and Charles L. Marson in their Folk Songs of Somerset (1906) as No 64, though, again, the melody differs.
The melody I use seems to derive from Ewan MacColl, who apparently claimed to have collected it in the 1940s in Teesdale. We should, however, bear in mind he was neither a scholar nor someone who would have been exposed to folk songs at such a late day. After all, Cecil Sharp, collecting in the first years or the XX century, when folk songs were already being forgotten, very often could not come across a complete version of many songs and had to travel to the Appalachians, in the US, to collect what was missing.
Notwithstanding its merits, I believe it to be no authentic folk song but a mid-XX century hoax.
I myself took it from a piano book where the arrangements left something to be desired, but I have considerably embellished the melody, adding variety to its repeats, and have added a cadenza that imitates a harp as a B section. |
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| Upload date |
03 Mar 2025 |
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