Page "Folk music" Paragraph 33

A literary interest in the popular ballad was not new ; it dates back to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth.

English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes, the classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances and Joseph Haydn's use of folk melodies is noted.

But the emergence of the term " folk " coincided with an " outburst of national feeling all over Europe " that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted.

Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain: the music of Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Liszt, de Falla, Wagner, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Bartók and many others drew upon folk melodies.