Ballads and Performance: The Multimodal Stage in Early Modern EnglandMain MenuIntroduction: Multimedia and Multimodal TheatricalityShakespeare in Snippets: Ballads, Plays, and the Performance of Remediation"Hear for your love, and buy for your money": Ballads and Theater as Experiential Commodities"She’s Crafty, She Gets Around: Women’s Craft and Commodification in Ballads"Dangerous Conjectures": Ophelia’s Ballad PerformanceBallads on the Brain: A Neurobiological HypothesisThe True Form and Shape of Caliban: Monstrous Birth at the Edge of the Human"Greensickness carrion": Re-reading Capulet through Broadside BalladsBallads+: The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and its After-piece JigAfterwordContributorsAcknowledgmentsPatricia Fumerton3016f95733e67d772eccfb1c6dfb5ea8694eb4bbEMC Imprint
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12018-01-16T08:23:20-08:00Francisco Millan221fbc82d2a783571cc8cb0353a2d50ec882ba8e775654plain2018-01-22T08:31:22-08:00Francisco Millan221fbc82d2a783571cc8cb0353a2d50ec882ba8eAt one time, popularballads1 were known and sung by ordinary people for entertainment as well asedification. This is evidenced by the flourishing of the broadside ballad trade in England from the 1600s through 1800s, as well as the oral transmission of traditional ballads within the British Isles and among emigrants to America and elsewhere during this same time period. In this article, I will analyze the function such ballad singing played not from the perspective of a literary or cultural critic but from that of a scientist. Specifically, I will summarize current theories in the neuroscience of emotion which suggest that the singing of ballads may have conferred neurophysiological benefits to the singers, listeners, and communities that sang together. Recent research in clinical psychology has demonstrated the effectiveness of somatic therapies for treatment of mental illnesses. Controlled deep breathing is common to many of these therapies, and a neural pathway has been identified whereby controlled breathing could bring about physiological calming responses. Singing ballads involves sustained, controlled deep breathing and therefore may have (and historically had) similar therapeutic benefits. Moreover, recent studies have identified a specialized neural pathway in mammals that links somatic calming signals to social communication mechanisms. By combining a somatic calming stimulus (controlled deep breathing) with soothing social communication signals (specific vocal tones and speech patterns), singing may efficiently stimulate calm states within singers, generate calming effects in listeners, and promote emotional connections among participants. This hypothesis is now directly testable with neurophysiological measurements and emerging computational methods. The possible significance of tunes and narrative content is a matter of pure speculation, but such speculations are also empirically testable.
Description
Recording of the author singing the ballad “Barbara Allen.” Notice that the overall tempo is relatively slow and that a long phrase of text is sung in a single breath.12