The name is absent

32

have four measure lines and the third song has two measure lines.

Irène Whitfield, from whose book Larsen most likely chose her folksongs,
describes the composers and performers of this music as “simple folks who live close to
the earth, who are rather elemental in their passions and feelings, and yet who have
inherited all the romantic tendencies of the 19th century.”⁵⁶ The subjects of the songs
Whitfield collected in the 1930’s are purely secular, although the Cajun culture on a
whole is predominately Catholic. In reviewing her collection, Whitfield remarks: “There
is in many of these folk songs no semblance of scientific rules of composition, nor of
development according to a plan of preconceived ideas... [this music] grew from
spontaneous outbursts of emotions and varies with them. Even the same song may be
quite different before and after a dance.”⁵⁷ Larsen’s adaptation of these songs is quite
similar. She does not follow any specific formal plan, but rather uses a modified Strophic
song form adding her own harmonies and variations to each movement.

First Movement: Gringalet

Judge Félix Voorhies of St. Martinvelle is credited as the composer of the song
used in the first movement of Cajun Set. Gringalet, also called Grand Galère, dates from
1894, when it was “used with others of his own composition in comedies which he wrote
and presented.”⁵⁸ Whitfield’s source for her transcription was a man named Arthur

56

Whitfield, 73.

57

Ibid., 69.

58

Ibid., 124.

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