Talk:Cumulative song

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Classical music

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Someone needs to add info from a music theory perspective. E.g. how the dominant is sustained, etc. 68.106.16.98 (talk) 14:24, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In defence

As it stands, the article has almost nothing to do with Classical Music, and would certainly be of little interest to users exploring the idiom. The genre of cumulative song is typically found in traditional folk songs sung chorally. Most of the examples given fall into this category and the others are, on the whole, very similar. Even Gilbert and Sullivan's I Have a Song to Sing-O is more like a folk song than standard light opera.

The article is concerned with text because so far nobody with an interest in melody has contributed. There's an obvious point to be made about the repetitions repeating the tune, but one would need documented evidence before making it. The suggestion that the repetition is always on the dominant is either wrong or an over-generalisation — either that, or I misunderstood the point. The Twelve Days of Christmas is an obvious counter-example.

The value of an article like this lies in the future. If sufficient contributors continue to add cumulative songs that are referred to elsewhere in Wikipedia, then the list will serve as an index to anyone wishing to explore cumulative song.DavidCrosbie (talk) 13:24, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New definition

The previous definition was, I thought, too abstract and too narrow. The term 'verse' was problematic. I use three examples to cover common variant structures. I use the terms 'stanza', 'line', 'refrain' and 'chorus' because they are defined in Wikipedia. I've mentioned the tune, but not in terms of music theory.DavidCrosbie (talk) 17:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Having slept on it, I decided to keep the approach of examples but to recast the definition and the presentation. It is, I hope, clearer and better integrated with the terminology's defined in Wikipedia. I'm afraid I haven't located any citable sources. DavidCrosbie (talk) 11:43, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at "The Twelve Days of Christmas" song article

A few days ago, an editor added a loosely related song to The Twelve Days of Christmas (song). It's clearly a cumulative song and it shares a partridge, a few birds, and apparently the bride in the song is similar to the true love of the other song (although, I have always assumed that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was from a woman's perspective). I removed the entry and this caused a brief edit war. I started a discussion: Talk:The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)#Italian wedding song is in the same tradition or not. The editor has added a great deal of information there but I can't seem to get an editor to see that the inclusion of that material is better-suited to this article than that. Would an editor or more please offer their opinions there? --Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source?

There's no indication that this descriptive phrase has any status in folkloristics. Not that it doesn't have such status, but that's what the article now needs.