ABSTRACT
Europe has a wide variety of song genres in oral tradition. These genres and their structures are often difficult to separate from the singing styles and contexts that give rise to them. Wedding songs, especially in Eastern Europe, are deeply embedded in ritual, even when they are drawn from a source external to the wedding. Polyphonic types of song in Europe range from the highly developed Russian forms to the heterophonic singing of Gaelic psalms in the Hebrides. The ballad as a song form came to dominate from about 1350, spreading from France and the Low Countries to the rest of Western Europe. Some ballads are historical in content; others deal with the supernatural, or with tragic situations of rivalry in love. The most remarkable aspect of ballad performance is the objective stance of the singer, who, though emotionally involved in the events of the ballad plot, avoids injecting subjective opinion.
