Selected Writings on Music [antikvár]

SINGING INSTRUMENTS "Whoever wishes to fully understand our music to its very roots must approach it with a Glareanus-like esteem for single-voice melody." (Zoltán Kodály: Hungarianness in music) Through all of Zoltán Kodály's pedagogical work, through his entire life's work as well, runs one leading thread: Make music by singing! Specifically: only through singing, from the songs of the people, may we learn our Hungarian musical mother-tongue—a broadly based musical culture may only be built upon a broadly based vocal culture—one who cannot sing is no musician—a musician may not merely strike keys nor draw a bow upon his instrument, but should rather sing through his instrument, and so forth. Let us make music by singing! In Kodály's compositions this principle is realized in two ways. Firstly: a substantially greater and, from the point of view of the nation's music education, more significant proportion of his works is comprised of vocal music. Secondly: his purely instrumental music is developed from the seeds of enduring vocal melodies. This is naturally accepted as a fact and widely recognized as such from those of his works which are based on folk melodies. In this regard, how do matters stand with the great instrumental masters of earlier periods? The natural parent of more highly structured, multivoiced instrumental works is the choral music of the Renaissance. The organ ricercars of Pa-lestrina would make acceptable motets, only a text need be set under the lines. In the subsequent course of development, would we perhaps have lost all trace of this? Do the later descendants no longer bear any resemblance to the physiognomy of their ancestors? To explore this matter in detail would be a delightful but very long assignment. Here, just a few random examples which come to mind will serve to illustrate that probably much more remains, and at a much deeper level, of the ancient vocal vocabulary in the language of instrumental works than we generally think. We offer a few examples.