CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
Benny Thomasson and the Texas Fiddling Tradition — JEMF Quarterly
- Key
- mendelson1974-benny-thomasson
- Authors
- Mendelson, Michael
- Issued
- 1974
- Type
- article-journal
- Container
- JEMF Quarterly
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 3 (no. 35)
Raw CSL JSON
{
"URL": "https://www.slidingscalemusic.com/articles/Benny%20Thomasson/Benny%20Thomasson%20Texas%20trad.pdf",
"note": "Consulted via reprint.",
"type": "article-journal",
"issue": "3 (no. 35)",
"title": "Benny Thomasson and the Texas Fiddling Tradition",
"author": [
{
"given": "Michael",
"family": "Mendelson"
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
1974
]
]
},
"volume": "10",
"container-title": "JEMF Quarterly"
}
Claims
-
In Texas, frequent and sometimes lucrative fiddle contests bred competition that led fiddlers to develop ever more elaborate versions of tunes as contest show pieces, and stressed the fiddle as a solo instrument; deliberate variation, already present in Eck Robertson's 1922 'Sally Gooden' with 13 strains, became a defining feature of Texas style.
"This in turn led to the deliberate practice of developing more and more elaborate versions of tunes to present as show pieces at the contest. The contest also stressed the importance of the fiddle as a solo instrument"
-
Mendelson describes Benny Thomasson's playing as an instrumental analogue of an 'oral formulaic' process: comparing many performances of the same tune shows that his variant strains are similar from performance to performance, but details are added during playing.
"From a comparison of many of Benny's performances of the same tune, it is apparent that he holds a basic idea of what he is going to do before he plays, for the variant strains are usually similar from performance to performance, but the details are added during the actual playing."
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