Ruth Crawford Seeger 
The Music of American Folk Song [PDF ebook] 
and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music

This is the first complete publication of the late composer and scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger’s major work on American folksongs. It preserves them as well as demonstrates how they should be played so that they remain a living partof the American musical tradition.


This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the noted composer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally written as a foreword for the 1940 book
Our Singing Country, it was considered too long andwas replaced by a much shorter version. According to her stepson, Pete Seeger, when the original was not included ‘Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the last ten years of her life. It just killed her . . . She was trying to analyze the whole style and problem of performing this music.’ Along with her children Mike and Peggy Seeger, he has long desired to see this work in print as it was meant to be read.

The manuscript has been edited from several varying sources by Larry Polansky, with the assistance of Seeger’s biographer Judith Tick. It is divided into two sections: I. ‘A Note on Transcription’ and II. ‘Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing.’ Seeger examines all aspects of the relationship between singer, song, notation, the eventual performer, and the transcriber.

In Section I, Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive [transcription as cultural preservation] and prescriptive [she intended that others would be able to perform these songs]. In Section II, she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music, and suggests how performers might make the songs ‘their own’ through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of her own ideas on the topic.


Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and a well-known composer and theorist on American music.

Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University and author ofthe first major biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Table des matières

Editor’s Introduction: Larry Polansky

Prefaces: Mike Seeger, Peggy Seeger, Pete Seeger

Historical Introduction: Judith Tick

Music of American Folk Song

Pre-School Children and American Folk Music

Keep the Song Going

Review of John N. Work’s
American Negro Songs for Mixed Voices

Amazing Grace and
Pisgah transcriptions