Vaughan Williams and National Music

I really enjoyed this week's discussion about Vaughan Williams' revival or maybe even the discovery of a national sound or music in England. I did find myself in his reading trying to think of many different ways I could argue against his view of folk song but I found it very hard to disagree with his opinion. I thought to myself about all of the other nations that have a well established "sound" and it seemed that these sounds are rooted in folk tradition. For example in Germany we see the folk song tradition directly influencing the strong establishment of the Lied in society. It was through these straightforward rhythms, "singable" tunes, importance of the message and the word that we have a genre that then can speak to many different people. I did like though that Vaughan Williams took the time to discover a uniquely "English" sound. Unlike the folk tradition of Germany, Vaughan Williams used the use of mode to inform the use of folk song and thus it became a sound that we could associate with the revival of this genre and the establishment of this sound in England. I also thought it was interesting that he claimed that the use of modes in the church also grew out of this folk tradition. On page 24 of his book he states, "Because a folk-song can be referred to one of these 'ecclesiastical' modes it is often imagined that folk-song derives from church music. I believe that it is just the other way round, namely, that church music derives from folk-music." I'm not sure if i necessarily agree with this or not, but I did find it interesting that in the Stanford article we see the same issue come up but he seems to argue the opposite viewpoint and using the example of Martin Luther and Germany said, "He explained how Martin Luther had affected the whole trend of culture, and had directed all the forces of artistic aspiration into one channel, music; thereby ensuring the ascendancy of the art in Germany for a doubly long period of time." Whatever came first, the chicken or the egg, what is true is the establishment of folk song sentiments in the culture's music can completely revive and aid in the establishment of a national music in a country.