Hungarian Heritage 7. [antikvár]

Hungarian Heritage, Volume 7 (2006) by Béla Bartók' Professor at the Ferenc Liszt Royal Academy of Music in Budapest From the perspective of musical folklore, pre-war Hungary was one of the most interesting and varied territories. Although it was in territories inhabited by Hungarians that our musical folklorists began research on this genre of folklore, the scope of their undertaking was soon extended to embrace regions populated by other nationalities as well. This fact alone is of paramount importance, as this was the only way to accumulate the materials necessary for comparative research on musical folklore. In the course of this undertaking, our folklorists found stalwart support in the management of the Ethnographic Collection of the National Museum, which for the most part covered the costs of collecting the material. In return for its support, the resulting phonograph recordings passed into the possession of the Collection. The immense project started with the research work of Béla Vikár in the last years of the previous century. In about 1905, the composers Zoltán Kodály, Antal Molnár, and László Lajtha, together with the author of the present report, also set themselves to this task, which they pursued with inexhaustible energy until the autumn of 1918. Recent disastrous events, however, made it impossible for us to continue our work on the same scale. Prior to the autumn of 1918, we collected about 8,000 Hungarian, 2,800 Slovak, and 3,500 Romanian melodies, as well as 150 melodies of other narionalitíes. Much of this material is preserved on phonograph recordings, the bulk of which is now in the possession of the Ethnographic Collection of the National Museum. Hungarian songs are recorded on 1,132 phonograph cylinders, Romanian songs on 794, and Slovak songs on 161. An additional 1,000 cylinders, containing 340 Hungarian, 250 Slovak and 400 Romanian melodies, are owned privately. Having systematically processed and evaluated the material collected, we are now in a position to prove that the products of Hungarian peasant music can be divided into three major groups: 1. ancient melodies in a consistent style, 2. modern melodies in a consistent style and 3. melodies in varied styles that do not belong to either of the rwo aforementioned groups. Melodies of the ancient style are characterized by an anhemitonic-pentatonic scale and a non-architectonic strophe-structure composed of four isometric verses. These melodies may be regarded as exclusive products of the Hungarian people and originate in the distant past; although they had only a minor influence on the folk music of the Slovaks, some categories of this type had a profound influence on the melodies of branches of the Romanian people living in the Máramaros region and in the areas bordering the Székely (a Hungarian ethnic group in eastern Transylvania) lands to the west. Melodies of the modern style are characterized by a 'pointed' rhythm, which adjusts to the pace of the lyrics, as well as by an architectonic strophe-structure composed of four verses. Melodies in this group may also be regarded as characteristically Hungarian: they came into existence during the last six or eight decades; their influence on the new Slovak and Ruthenian peasant music has been enormous, reaching well beyond the borders of historical Hungary, as far as Moravia and Galicia. For place names and regwns, see the maps and the Gazetteer