Nancy Murphy, associate professor of music theory, has recently published a research article in Theory and Practice, the journal of the Music Theory Society of New York State. Titled “The Performed-Out Fermata from the 1920s to Bob Dylan,” the article explores the technique of long-held melody notes over continued guitar strumming as a thread between folk revival and American popular songwriting in the 20th century.
The abstract states:
In his writing on Woody Guthrie’s music, Pete Seeger encourages an awareness of early American folk songs – particularly the tracks included on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Seeger also points to a particular type of “irregularity” in Guthrie’s performances, in which a melody note is unexpectedly held over continued guitar strumming. These long-held melody notes demonstrate the rhetorical technique I explore in this article, the performed-out fermata, which I theorize in connection with the concept of “composed-out fermatas” as they are observed in Classical-period orchestral music. Using Woody Guthrie songs alongside tracks from Smith’s Anthology, I propose two types of performed-out fermatas (mid-phrase and anacrusis-type) and the related technique of elongated harmonic zones as ways that artists added interest and aliveness to their strophic song performances. I then explore how this important metric rhetoric of the folk revival was transmitted to and kept alive by Bob Dylan in the 1960s, demonstrating a thread of lasting influence between early twentieth-century song recordings and the future of American popular songwriting.
Murphy’s 2025 article “The Performed-Out Fermata from the 1920s to Bob Dylan” is open access and is available online.