Rumanian Folk Music

NUMBEI~ 2 IN THE BARTOK ARCHIVES

STUDIES IN MUSICOLOGY

VICTOR BATOR, Founder-Director

BENJAMIN SUCH OFF, Curator

Rumanian Folk Music VOLUME ONE

RUMANIAN FOLK MUSIC

, , by BELA BAR TOK

Volume One

Instrumental Melodies

Edited by

BENJAMIN SUCHOFF

with a Foreword by

VICTOR BATOR

THE HAGUE

MARTIN US NIJHOFF

1967

Copyright I967 by Martinus Nijhojj, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to

reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form

ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3501-9 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-3499-9

e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-3499-9

Foreword

I n several of his writings on folk music Bela Bart6k recalls an incident that happened to him in 1904 during a visit to a small village in Tran­syl vania.1 Quite by chance he heard there an eighteen-year-old Hun­

garian peasant girl singing Hungarian folk songs whose construction was significantly different from the songs he had known until then. 2 This experience appealed to his imagination far deeper than chance oc­currences usually do. It sparked in him a creative fire that was there­after to impart to his music certain characteristics that are recognizable today as indigenous to the Bart6kian style of composition.

The inspirational value of the incident was rekindled by return trips to Transylvania. During these trips he was not merely listening. He began notating, melodies, building them into a coordinated collection.

Soon Bart6k's itinerary took him into villages populated in checkered proximity by both Hungarians and Rumanians, thence into little communities where the population was exclusively Rumanian. There he discovered that their songs were much less, if at all, influenced by the urban civilization of Western Europe than those he had collected in Hungarian villages.

In an interview he gave to a Transylvanian newspaper in 1922, Bart6k described the difference between the available Hungarian and Rumanian songs.

"In the Hungarian villages," he said, "only old women know and sing the old songs. The yourig folk may not even know them or have distorted

1 It was at that time the south·eastern part of Hungary. The Treaty of Trianon ending World War I ceded it to Rumania.

2 See mus. ex. No. 313 in Bartok's Hungarian Folk Music (London, Oxford University Press, 1931).

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them by the rhythm of 'new music'. What they mostly sing are art songs recently composed. The Rumanians know no other songs but those (that are) centuries old. They have remained unaffected by the cultural changes since then."

From 1904 to 1908, the collection of these Rumanian songs was only a kind of hobby with Bartok. Yet, from 1908 until World War I shut the door on private travels in that area, there was never an extended period, not a year, when Bartok did not return to his friends and folk singers in the Rumanian villages to continue his folk music collecting.

Bartok's correspondence and writing from that period reveal already an advanced scholarly knowledge of ethnography and folk music. Even so, it was only a secondary concern of his at that time. Until 1913 his writings included only six articles, all devoted to Hungarian music, which does not represent a major activity for a period of five to six years. Moreover, none of these articles can be considered profound or mature works.

1.

The change in emphasis and approach began in 1910. Bartok had offered his collection of Rumanian songs from the county of Bihar, Hungary, as a gift on deposit to the Rumanian Academy of Science. They were ill the form of wax cylinder records of the old Edison type, but contained no explanatory annotations. In his correspondence with the Rumanian Academy, however, he mentioned that "perhaps it might be possible to have them printed." The favorable response of the Academy achieved something: it changed Bela Bartok, a mere "col­lector of folk songs", into a scholar of ethnography and folk music. He began to write a study in which he used the collection's raw material, the songs, for building out of them a Bartokian creation in which the form, the system, its structure became a unified whole with the song­content. He made some use of the method of presentation by Ilmari Krohn, the Finn ethnomusicologist, but it was only the base of de­parture: Bartok's work is his own creation. In May, 1912 the manuscript was ready for the printer, and in December of the following year the book was in the shops for sale.

This book of Rumanian folk songs of the county of Bihar, Hungary, though it had been written before Bartok acquired a thorough knowledge of the general features of Rumanian folk music and, thus, contained

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weaknesses that were remedied in his later works, remained the only one of Bart6k's works on Rumanian folk music which was published during his lifetime without a subsidy from his own funds.

The discovery that the Academy in Bucharest was interested in Rumanian folk music and was willing to publish studies in that field seems to have become a powerful stimulant for Bart6k. It opened a new field for his imaginative power and stirred his mind and soul into creative activity. He immediately began to write another work on a collection of songs from Rumanian villages in Maramure~, a remote region of Hungary. The manuscript was completed in November 1913 and was sent to the Academy of Science in December of that year. Agreement to publish the Maramures collection was promptly reached. If publi­cation had not been interrupted by the "little event" of World War I, it would have been a smooth operation, and a second volume of Bart6k's folk music ethnographies would have appeared without draw­ing on his personal resources. This work, however, did not come into print for almost a decade. World War I broke out before production was under way, and the Rumanian Academy, sensing the dangers of political uncertainty; withdrew its offer. It promised instead that the publication project would be resumed after the war, in which Rumania was not yet a participant.

By that time, however, Bartok had tasted the nectar of the new meadow. He fell in love with it, no longer merely as an inspiration for making music, but as a new field of creative endeavor. He found it as gratifying and pleasurable as composing, and without the agonies that inhabit the world of artistic creation. He had not yet discovered that this field would impose the agonies of its own thorns. He became like a priest of a second cult, devoted to preaching from both pulpits with equal fervor, relying on each creed to inspire the other.

When the outbreak of World War I forced him to interrupt his collecting of folk music, he wrote to a friend on September 27, 1914: "Whatever happens, I shall always remain a devotee of this work. The study and publication of Rumanian folk music generally, and es­pecially that of Transylvania, is my life's passion and ambition."l Bartok learned in 1917 that military operations had destroyed and made un­inhabitable many of the villages where he had planned further work, and that a large number of Rumanians in Transylvania had left their homes and fled to Rumania with the withdrawing Rumanian Army.

1 Post card to Ion Bianu, Bucharest.

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He bitterly lamented these events and wrote that they destroyed some of his life's purpose. After the war he considered emigrating from Hungary and wrote from Berlin that although suitable teaching and concert positions were available in Germany, "the folk songs are mag­nets that pull me toward the Orient."l

Folk music continued to be of primary importance to Bartok during his later life. Among the unceasing testimonies to this devotion is a 1938 letter to a friend in Switzerland, in which Bartok again referred to the idea of emigration. He asserted that if Nazism overran Hungary, he would feel morally obligated to emigrate even though none of the Nazi hate complexes would affect his position. He added, however, that he would not emigrate unless it permitted him to continue collecting and studying folk music, "the all-important work that really makes my life worth living." On October 9, 1938, he wrote: "I lead a com­pletely retired life here (in Hungary). I do not want to meet people who may be Nazis, so I work ten hours a day solely on folk music material. To make good progress I ought to work twenty hours. I live in despair, burning with the desire to complete this study (Rumanian folk music) before the now threatening catastrophy of war affects the world." 2 A similar comment appeared in correspondence to me on August 11, 1944: "You have written in your letter that 'if you are not ill you always work.' That is a major calumny. Whether I am ill or not I always work. Last year in May when I was in the worst condition I wrote and prepared the book on Turkish folk music for an imaginary publisher." Bartok's attachment to this "second cult" is again apparent in a letter to Oxford University Press written on May 20, 1931. "I shall be very glad to see you publish the Christmas Songs for they represent material of the highest value not only for musicologists and musicians but also, in their song texts, for the explorer of ancient Eastern culture and folklore."

During periods of concentration on folk music, Bartok did little or no composing. In 1913, the year of "Bihar," there are no known compo­sitions by him, though between 1901 and 1912 he produced seventeen works, including several major ones. From 1914 to 1922 when his folk music activity was interrupted by the war and the political upheavals following it, he composed twenty works, of which many are important. While working on the Colinde collection from 1923-1925, however, he

1 Letter to Ion Bu~itia, 30 :liarch 1920. • Letter to Frau Oscar Miiller-Widmann.

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produced only two compositions, and this pattern recurs throughout his later years.

This is the history of Bartok's development into a scholar of musi­cological ethnography, searching for folk music that was disintegrating under the superstructure of an urban civilization. As soon as this second Bartok, the musicologist-ethnographer, was born, the desire of authors, artists, and composers to have their creations seen, heard, read, and enjoyed-the spiritual need of a public ccho-also appeared. Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter. Prior to this phase of his life, Bartok was preoccupied with the struggle to have his music printed and per­formed. From 1913 on, he sought the publication of his works on folk music with equal activity and ardor. The pursuit of this ambition also took other forms. When Harvard University appointed him visiting professor for the academic year 1943-1944, he gave a number of lectures on the "scientific approach to folk music."

Bartok's interest in having Rumanian folk music collected, classified, and compiled in a scholarly publication was a completely selfless ambition. Publications and musical performances produce income and bring financial advantages. Out of folk m,Lsic, however, he could hardly expect to achieve more than the preservation of the songs' artistic value and the promotion of science, art, and human knowledge. The quality of Bartok's devotion to creative and folkloristic fields alike is unusual, and among composers of equal stature, almost unique. Vaughan Williams did some folksong collecting, but compared to his composing interest and activity it remained of negligible weight. The Spaniard, Felipe Pedrell, and the Finn, Krohn, in the front rank of ethnomusi­cologists, have not achieved eminence as composers. Zoltin Kodily is, to my knowledge, the only other exception to this general rule. l

II.

The introduction to this Foreword should indicate the importance I attach to Bartok's lifelong struggle to publish his folk music works. My own adventures may shed additional light on those of Bartok and, perhaps, will illustrate the melancholy of scholarly life. This

1 In a biography of Zoltan Kodaly (Ernest Benn, London, 1964, p. 145) by P. M. Young, the author claims that according to Kodaly the combination of folk music scholarship with creative composing harms one or the other, possibly both. Kod:\ly, in a private communication to me, disowned his biographer's statement. What he told to Young was in harmony with my text.

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effort and struggle from 1914 to 1945 consumed a substantial part of Bartok's life, and from 1945, the year I assumed the trusteeship of his estate, to 1963, it filled a considerable part of my life as well. It was a depressing, deeply discouraging experience for Bartok, though it was moderated by his modesty and by his acquiescence in the sacri­fices of scholars.

Spurred on by the depth of his feelings about folk music, Bartok could not agree to the decision of the Rumanian Academy to delay the publication of his Maramure:;; project until ::titer the war. Be­cause the musical portions of the book had to be engraved for the printer, he commissioned one of the leading engraving firms of Europe, Roder of Leipzig, Germany, to do the engraving and paid Roder's fee out of his own pocket. Despite the availability of the engraving, he did not find a publisher for it until a German firm, Drei-Masken Verlag of Munich, accepted the Maramure:;; collection in 1923 as part of a series of musicological publications (Sammelbande fur vergleichende Musik­wissenschaft, Vol. IV). The plates engraved at Bartok's cxpcnse were used for the printing, but his investment in the costly engraving was not reimbursed. This was the first time that Bartok spent part of his own meager resources to secure the pUblication of one of his folk music books, but it was not the last.

Bartok's next writing on Rumanian folk music dealt with their Christmas songs-Colinde. He had already used twenty of them as thematic material for his "Rumanian Christmas Songs," composed for piano in 1915, but he did not begin to write the ethnographic book until 1923. The Rumanian Academy was willing to purchase the raw collection but, because of lack of funds, declined to publish it. In 1925, however, Oxford University Press expressed interest in pUblication, and Bartok went full speed ahead to complete the work on the song texts. He ordered them and their variants according to a newly­devised system of textual organization, and developed their relationship to the previously published Colindii texts. The manuscript, a col­lection of 484 Christmas songs, was ready in September 1926 in two identical autographs. He sent one to the Academy in Bucharest and the other to the Oxford University Press.

The following decade was filled with dashed hopes and interrupted by humiliating graspings at the weakest reeds of support. Constantin Briiiloiu, the Rumanian folk music scholar, knew about the Colinde collection, and suggested in June 1926 that Bartok have it published

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by the Rumanian Society of Composers. This idea remained alive for a number of years, while the Rumanian Academy continued to consider the project and Oxford University Press played a waiting game of "perhaps" and "maybe." In November 1929, Bart6k pressed Oxford to make a decision because he believed that the Rumanian Academy was still considering the collection and might accept it. Then in February 1931, he finally asked Oxford to return the manuscript, commenting sarcastically that if in "five, ten or twenty years" they would want to publish it, it might still be available. This letter produced some results. Oxford proceeded to have the texts translated into English. When the translations were sent to Bart6k, he discovered that two translators had shared the work. The sections numbered 87 to 141 were "adequate," Bart6k wrote to Oxford, but the first 86 were "quite impossible." Much to his surprise, Oxford refused to have the "impossible" trans­lations replaced by better ones. The economic crisis of the 1930's must have played a role in this decision, but whatever the reasons, Bart6k was adamant: the translations were bad; he would not agree to their use. He informed Oxford University Press that he would rather publish the Colinde at his own expense, in German instead of English.

As early as January 11, 1932, Bart6k had corresponded with his music publisher, Universal Edition, A.G. of Vienna, about the costs of paper and printing, and in September 1934, on behalf of the Rumanian Society of Composers, had asked an Austrian printer for bids on the German edition. In January 1935 Bart6k received the sad news that the Rumanians could not finance the publication. By that time, how­ever, nothing could deter him from the task. He decided to pay for the total cost of its printing out of his own funds, and entrusted its distribution to Universal Edition. Five hundred copies were printed in 1935, and in Bart6k's lifetime only about 300 were sold. This was not unexpected in view of the complete lack of advertising and any other sales effort. Financially, the publication could not have been a greater failure.

Bart6k's only achievement was seeing the work in print, and even that was not as he had planned. The Oxford Press edition was to have included seven parts: (1) Introduction to the music; (2) Notes to the melodies; (3) Music examples; (4) Introduction to the song texts; (5) Notes to the texts; (6) Song texts in Rumanian (to be supplied by Brailoiu); (7) English translation of the song texts. The German edition was a truncated version comprising only the first three parts. Bart6k's

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letter to Oxford on July 8, 1936, carried the melancholy explanation: "Of course, I could not afford to publish the complete work; so the publication is complete only from the mztsical point of view." Recalling Bartok's enthusiastic conviction that the texts would be of "highest value" to students of ancient Eastern culture and folklore, the decision to publish the music alone must have been heart-rending.

Ultimately, Bartok had the fifty pages of the introduction, the title page, and the other non-musical parts printed in Hungary, while the printing of the music and the binding was done in Vienna. He personally carried the Hungarian printer's contribution to the Austrian printer. His own German translation of the non-musical sections was double­checked by Mrs. Muller-Widmann, his trusted friend in Basle, Switzer­land. He conducted a long correspondence about the quality of paper to be used, its price, etc. He personally sponsored a private subscription campaign, had twenty copies sent to friends, and had prospectuses printed in Vienna. In short, he spent a decade of time, money, and effort to achieve an incomplete publication of a work that would have been a precious contribution to the knowledge of European cultural inheritance. 'When the fourth volume of this publication series appears, it will contain the COMPLETE Colinde. Thus, after a delay of over thirty years-more than twenty years after Bartok's death-what he so des­perately desired will at last be realized.

III.

Before continuing the history of the publication process of Rumanian folk music, it is worthwhile to touch briefly upon Bartok's experiences with other folk music works. Prior to World War I, he collected almost 3,000 melodies in the northern area of Hungary where the majority of the popUlation was Slovak by origin and language. Because a com­parable Slovak folk music collection had not yet been printed at that time, the one by Bartok represented a unique folkloristic achievement. For publication purposes, he offered the collection with a general study of Slovak folk music to an educational and scientific organization, Slovenskd M atica. In 1921 Slovenskd M atica agreed to publish the work within four years, before the end of 1925, but delays, post­ponements, and changes of Slovak editors continued to thwart the operation. Bartok canceled the agreement in 1932, but it was revalidated within the year. He canceled it again in 1933, only to renew it when he undertook to do the technical, editorial chores himself.

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The financial arrangements underlying these agreements are of inter­est. According to the terms of the 1921 agreement, Bartok was supposed to receive an author's fee corresponding to about five dollars for each sixteen page signature. The Slovak editors, who would have done only the technical and editorial chores, were unwilling to do them for less than ten dollars per signature, twice the amount of Bartok's authorship fee. Slovenskd M atica would not pay that sum and suggested that Bartok do this technical task himself. Bartok, driven by his eagerness to publish the work, agreed to a fee of two and a half dollars per signature. Even Slovenskd Matica found this sum to be so low that they refused to agree to it and promised to pay a substantially higher amount. Bartok was then a well-paid concert pianist, and the work involved in editing the collection for publication would have severely interfered with his presen­tation of concerts and his composing. If the publication had been completed in this fashion, Bartok in essence would have been financing it indirectly. The work, however, remained unpublished. Bartok can­celed the publishing contract for the last time on January 28, 1938. Although Slovenskci 1VI atica agreed to the cancellation on February 23, 1939, it refused to return the manuscript and the wax cylinders on which some of the melodies were recorded unless Bartok agreed to pay 10,000 Czechoslovak Crowns ($400) as indemnity for its past expenses. Because Bartok would not pay that amount for the repurchase of his own manuscript, it has remained in the possession of the organization.1

A more pleasant and, in Bartok's view, entirely satisfactory experi­ence with a folk music study occurred when he emigrated to the lJnited States. Columbia lJniversity gave him an appointment as a research fellow and Bart6k, rather than lecturing, undertook to prepare tor pUblication part of the valuable Parry collection of Serbo-Croatian folk songs held by Harvard University. This unique collection of over 2,600 phonograph records represents the only existing acoustical recording of Serbian folk music and includes a significant number of epic songs. The material had not been used previously either for musical or for ethnographical enlightenment, because Professor Parry, who had done the collecting, died before he could nndertake the task. Bartok could not complete the work during the first year and one-half of his appointment at Columbia, but fortunately, the University extended the appointment

1 The Academia Scicntiarum Slovaca (Bratislava) published Vol. I, in 1959, in an un­authorized version and without license from the Bartok Estate.

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for another half year during which he concluded his important descriptive and analytical study of the collection.

This seems a happy incident among all the recorded frustrations, and Bartok himself considered it a positive experience. Its background, however, is somewhat more cloudy. In June 1942, Columbia University terminated Bartok's appointment because of a lack of available funds. Without Bartok's knowledge, Joseph Szigeti, the famous violinist, and I began a campaign to collect funds for Columbia, on condition that the amount donated would be used to extend Bartok's appointment for another term. This extension made the completion of the Serbo-Croatian folk song book possible. Without the monetary contribution, this book would have joined Bartok's other failures with folk music works. Bartok died before the work was published six years later in 1951, and even during that prolonged waiting period, considerable urging was necessary to expedite the process. The valuable book that was ulti­mately produced made our expenditure of time and effort worthwhile. But the money that I donated to the Columbia fund was given for Bartok's sake rather than for that of the folk music book, and it therefore is no exaggeration to consider this publication as another of those subsidized indirectly by Bartok.

In striking contrast, Bartok's experience with Hungarian folk music was a happy one. His important work, a collection of 320 Hungarian folk tunes and his scholarly exposition of them, was similar to his work on the Rumanian folk music of Transylvania and was published in Hun­garian in 1921 without a financial contribution from his personal re­sources. He even received a royalty on all 4,000 copies that were printed and rapidly sold. The German translation of the book was published in Germany in 1925, and the English translation by an English composer, M. D. Calvocoressi, was published by Oxford University Press in 1931. Both the German and the English pUblications used the engravings of the music produced for the Hungarian publication.

One may wonder why Bartok's Hungarian folk music was published without difficulty, when his Rumanian books could not find a publisher. The differing degrees of success are mainly attributable to the fact that by 1921 Bartok was already a widely known and highly respected figure in Hungarian cultural life. His publishable material must have seemed a secure risk to a Hungarian publisher. In addition, the Hun­garians have behind them a strongly patriotic, self-conscious national existence of more than a thousand years, and they are deeply appre-

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ciative of the traditions, relics, and manifestations of Hungarian culture, art, and history. This is especially true with regard to music. Magyars are extremely proud that great musicians within and outside their homeland use ancient Hungarian folk tunes as the basis and language of their creations. A substantial, modestly-priced volume on this favored subject, therefore, was almost assured of at least 4,000 purchasers.

Once the examples of Hungarian music had been engraved by the Hungarian publisher, it cost a pittance to produce the engraved pages in additional numbers for the German and English editions. The gratis availability of the engravings was a strong incentive for German and English publishers to risk the costs of more than 200 pages of explana­tory material and poetic texts of value to musicologists, scholars, and students of folk art. 1

By comparison, a similar study on Rumanian songs and music had considerable handicaps. A Rumanian state had not existed until the Treaty of Paris of 1856, and even then it remained part of the Turkish Empire until the Treaty of Berlin made it an independent country in 1878. Transylvania, Bihar, and Maramure~, where Bartok did his col­lecting, were all parts of Hungary. Thus, national consciousness, "com­mon pride in a glorious ancestry," and attachment to the art and culture of all Rumanians has only recently become embedded in a community with ancient traditions that are comparable to those of the Hungarians. Studying and honoring these traditions were not parts of a nationally unified culture to the extent that they were in Hungary. In short, the Rumanians were imperfectly grounded in their own culture. In a letter of April 29, 1910, to Demitrie G. Kiriac, who played a substantial role in making his compatriots conscious of their national culture, Bart6k referred to Kiriac as "the only one in Rumania who takes interest in their folk music." With local enthusiasm lacking, a work on Rumanian music could not engender a secondary wave of interest abroad. Curiosity about Hungarian national music, on the other hand, reached wide circles outside Hungary.

Bartok's oeuvre on Rumanian music had his fame and name as its only support. Tn contrast, his writing on Hungarian music had the appeal of his personal fame in Hungary, the support of a nationally

1 All three original editions (Hungarian, German, English) are out of print. A new edition with a large number of corrections and improvements by Bart6k and Kodaly, is in preparation and will be published by the Bart6k Archives, New York.

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conscious Hungarian society, and, finally, world-wide interest In the manifestations of Hungarian art.

IV.

Bartok began writing his most important folk music study, which is embodied in this pUblication of "Rumanian Folk Music," in 1933. When he made a concert tour of the United States in the spring of 1940, he had finished the first-volume manuscript and about two­third of the second, and he delivered them to a commercial printer there. Out of the fees earned from concerts in America, Bartok himself paid for the printing of 500 sets of unfolded sheets. When he returned to the United States in October 1940 to take up permanent residence as a research fellow at Columbia University, he asked the New York Public Library to facilitate the publication of the first two volumes by using the pages that had already been printed. But estimates for the ad­ditional expenses were higher than expected, and the Library withdrew, leaving the partially printed volumes still unpublished.

The manuscript of the third volume was completed during a con­valescence stay in Asheville, North Carolina, in March 1945. It contains 1,335 Rumanian poetic texts to the melodies of the first two volumes, as well as refrains, glossaries, prefaces, and notes. With no prospect for publication, Bartok deposited the entire three-volume manuscript at Columbia University's Special Library, stipulating that the University must put it at the disposal of a publisher if one ever developed an interest in the work.

* * * This concise and all-embracing description of the Rumanian folk

music material in the Bartok estate covers my knowledge of it acquired since 1946. Nineteen years ago when I began to administer the estate as trustee, my acquaintance with Bartok's folk music works was sketchy and incomplete. I knew that the Serbo-Croatian manuscript was ready and in the hands of Columbia Press, but I did not realize that it would require five more years of urging before the publisher would bring out the book. I was not aware that the Colinde book published in Vienna in 1935 was incomplete; that the important song texts were missing from it; that it was printed at Bartok's own expense, though distributed by Universal Edition; and, that in the absence of any sales effort, half

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of the printed copies were dust-covered lame ducks, quietly resting in the stockroom. I knew about the descriptive study of Rumanian folk music, but I did not realize that the study was part of a three-volume work to be added to the two previously published volumes. Essentially, I did not know that the problem of their publication was a costly and technically arduous task toward which financially oriented publishers would turn a cold shoulder. Unaware of the task, I did not give it due attention for a number of years; instead, picking up the reins of manage­ment of the musical works monopolized my cfforts with regard to the Bartok estate.

Friends of Bartok and mine, who were somewhat more familiar with his folk music works than I, occasionally asked about it. This slowly made me aware that somewhere beyond the field of musical composition lay a treasure waiting discovery. Inquiries and a great deal of reading and listening disclosed the facts that were summarized in the first paragraph of this chapter. By the time (1949-1950) I became fully conscious of my responsibility for the publication of the Rumanian folk music collection, I had been trustee of·the Bartok estate for four years.

The study was at that time the most advanced work in the field, and it contained an invaluable storehouse of folklore. If Bart6k had not col­lected and transcribed it fifty years ago, it would no longer be salvage­able. During those fifty years two world wars have plagued that part of Europe, and this linguistic and musical monument to human history would have been trampled over several times on the battlefields of advanc­ing and retreating armies. In a sense, Bartok's solitary collecting of this folk music was a feat comparable to that which powerful governments are now doing jointly to save the ancient buildings of the upper Nile from destruction by the Aswan Dam. There the torrent of new cataracts would bury these historic but lifeless jewels of architecture. In Tran­sylvania during this half-century, the floods of urban music and songs have obliterated large parts of the precious poetry preserved in Bartok's collections. The significance of the Bartok work has been put in eloquent words by an eminent Rumanian composer and musicologist, Zeno Vancea:

Merely from the viewpoint of belles-lettres and purely literary viewpoint Bart6k's oeuvre of Christmas songs has inestimable value. The numerical size of the collection, the songs' beauty make it a unique treasure. The accurate preservation of the melodies and the lyrics rescued them from oblivion. The tradition of

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singing Christmas songs is completely disappearing. Under the influence of standardization and the leveling effect of western civilization, they share the fate of other local traditions and ancient customs, such as the singing of funeral, harvesting, and wedding songs. 1

Inquiries about the location of the manuscripts disclosed that Bar­tok's family had entrusted them to George Herzog, a friend of Bartok and at that time professor of ethnography on the faculty of the Uni­versity of Indiana in Bloomington. He was supposed to prepare the work for pUblication. In 1949, more than three years after Bartok's death, no progress toward publication had been made, and I requested the manuscript's return from Professor Herzog. This did not produce an immediate response because, by coincidence, a group of Bartok's friends had just formed a committee to collect funds to make the editing, printing, and publication by Professor Herzog financially possible. Al­though I did not like the idea of a publication based on charity, I gave the committee a chance. The campaign's only achievement was Yehudi Menuhin's pledge to contribute $2,000. When the failure became obvious to Herzog, he returned the entire collection of publishable texts, music examples, and fragments to Bartok's son, Peter, in March 1951. Peter delivered them to me, and I then began my acquaintance with them. Since I lacked expert knowledge, it took me almost a year before I knew what the estate included and could seek advice on how to proceed from erudite and experienced friends. I consulted Otto Gombosi and Paul Henry Lang, professors of musicology at Harvard and Columbia Uni­versities, respectively, and Eugene Ansermet, the well-known conductor -all three friends of Bartok. Acting on their recommendations, on February 14, 1952, I asked Constantin Briiiloiu, who was at that time living as a political refugee in Paris, to edit the entire publishable Rumanian material and to bring it up to date.

His first answer was enthusiastic but hesitant. It took a year and one half before all his doubts about how to secure the necessary literary and technical sources of information were dispelled. I held two extensive conferences with him in Paris to eliminate these doubts, and in De­cember 1953 he was finally ready to receive and study the manuscripts and to make recommendations about editing and publishing the work. On December 9, 1953, Peter Bartok delivered the available material to Briiiloiu in Europe. It required another eighteen months and a third Paris visit from me in June 1955 to elicit the final commitment from

1 Translated from the German.

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Foreword

him to begin the editing. At the time I did not know the reasons behind the hesitations and doubts causing all this delay. I was soon to learn that this timid, aristocratic, and fragile man was seriously ill during the entire period and that he was unable to work for long spans of time. Nevertheless, more than one hundred letters from him, most of them several pages in length and filled with dozens of questions and doubts to answer and dispel, made it unavoidable for me, a layman, to handle my connection with his work through an expert musicologist. In July 1955, I retained Dr. Benjamin Such off for this task. When Brailoiu died four years later, Dr. Such off was well conversant with the task and took the editing assignment into his expert and efficient hands.

In addition to editing, many other steps had to be taken before the manuscript could be delivered to the printer. Brailoiu, Suchoff, and all other authorities whom I consulted agreed that to make the work a top-quality publication for the American, British, and West European academic world, all prefaces, notes, and song texts must be in English, the general language of publication. Bartok's correspondence with Oxford University Press regarding the Christmas songs left no doubt that this was also his wish. His refusal to permit superficial, non­poetic translations reinforced my decision that they must be more than excellent, that they must harmonize with the original Rumanian texts in poetic meter. I found the man who could do this caliber of translation in Eugene C. Teodorescu, ranking secretary of the Ruma­nian Embassy in Washington until his resignation in 1940, author of novels and free-lance articles, and now an American citizen living in Washington, D.C. The excellence of his translations can be discerned immediately by comparison of a poetic text, selected at random from three translations: the first by Mr. Rothschild, refused by Bart6k as unusable; the second by Miss Lucy Byng, accepted by Bart6k, although certainly deficient in many ways; and the third version by Teodorescu. Annex A (see p. xxiv, below) tabulates the translation and will bring out in high relief the substantial superiority of the one done by Teo­dorescu.

Before I discovered Teodorescu's availability, Bartok's German­language prefatory matter was translated into English by three com­petent musicologists, all on the faculty of Columbia University. Abram Loft translated Bart6k's introduction to the C olinde melodies; Ernest H. Sanders the introduction to their texts; and Alan Kriegsman, the introduc­tion to the M aramure$ book. None of these translators was willing to do

[ xxi]

Foreword

all three. Since good translation requires a great deal of time and effort, it had to be done by musicologists conversant in both languages. This kind of translation cannot possibly receive adequate financial compen­sation. Each of the men undertook the task as homage to the memory of Bartok and for the academic importance of the publication. All four translators must be given credit for the scholarly value and merit of their work, which their modest fees certainly did not compensate sufficiently. They, as well as Brailoiu and Dr. Suchoff, could have gained considerably more financial benefit by engaging in less exacting tasks.

After the translations were completed, a great many other measures were required to make the editing possible. The autographs of the estate had to be compared with autographs on deposit in Basle, Amsterdam, Budapest, and Bucharest. Sketches and correspondence were used to fill out the hiatuses in information. Voluminous correspondence with musicologists of the Institute of Folklore in Bucharest, Rumania, was carried on to make sure that all of Bartok's afterthoughts and corrections were considered. The international political situation did not facilitate these chores, and the language difference slowed down the process considerably.

No publisher makes a final decision to publish an unusual, unsolicited three to five volume work on an academic subject without having the manuscripts in hand. Thus I could not postpone the editorial preparation until assurances of publication could be secured. Had I not found the publication possibility for which I am writing this Foreword, the efforts, time, and expenses might have been wasted. Yet I had no choice. Only coordinated efforts in both directions-toward editorial perfection and a willing publisher-could produce the result. Progress toward this type of scholarly publication cannot be rushed. Competent scholars are not standing idly by, waiting for this kind of job. Teams dividing the task, even if they could be organized, are not suitable for such an assignment. The same man, the same brain must be the spiritual rector, or the work becomes fragmentary with gaps, contradictions, and discrepancies. Al­though the three translations of the introductions were prepared by excellent scholars, Dr. Suchoff had to re-edit and harmonize them. Teodorescu was also in continuous contact with him, and, as general coordinator, I had to make some decisions to bring about a well­rounded, well-ordered product for the printer.

During the entire time that I was engaged in the preparation of

[ xxii ]

Foreword

the entire work for publication, I made attempts to find financial support to subsidize the editorial expenses. I succeeded in obtaining promises of partial contributions from Boosey & Hawkes and Universal Edition, the two publishers of Bartok's musical works, if the publishers in spe would not reimburse the expenses of editorial preparation.

Between 1956 and 1960 I made continual inquiries about possible channels of publication in order to keep myself informed for the time when the manuscript could be shown and definite bids sought from potential publishers. I approached the Rumanian and Hungarian gov­ernments directly, through their Washington envoys, but no answer was ever given to my inquiries. Yet progress toward final success was made when Mrs. Bela Bart6k and Peter Bart6k generously consented to sacrifice a part of the estate's income for the expenses of editorial preparation.

From 1962 on, I had several encouraging negotiations with European publishers who at first were willing to accept three and later, possibly, all five volumes. Then in 1964 we, all of us, eager to see the monument erected, reached the end of an arduous journey: Martinus Nijhoff took up the torch and upon publication completes the magnum opus.

New York

Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere metam l'vIulta tulit, fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.

(Seneca, ep. 8)

He that desires his wished goal to gain Must sweat and freeze before he can attain.

VICTOR BATOR

xxiii

Cohnda Text No. 91a.:

20 Din bura din sus Bura-mi d-abura, Maru-mi clatina, Merele-mi pica Masa sa 'ncarca,

25 Dragul Dumnezey

Byng translation:

20 Through the mist overhead Which swayed softly, The apple trees quivered, The apples fell down, The tables were laden

25 The dear God

ANNEX A

Hothschild translation:

20 When fine, drizzling rain Began to evaporate The rising vapours Shook the apples down A nd loaded the table with them.

25 The good Lord

Teodoreseu translation:

20 By a storm above, \Vafted was a breeze, Shook the apple tree, The apples dropped down, The table was fraught.

25 The beloved Lord

The Rumanian text is comprised of five-syllable lines. Only Teodorescu maintains syllabic structure.

The Rothschild italicized words represent Bartok's additions (in the form of underlined verses in the MS.) to indicate his displeasure with the English ren­dition.

Teodorescu's translation faithfully iterates repeated text lines. The other do not.

Teodorescu adds 250 explanatory footnotes which (a) locate towns, villages and other places mentioned in the texts, (b) identify botanical species (c) discuss legendary figures, religious and pagan holidays and festivities, (d) discuss ety­mology and solve "unintelligible" words so marked by Bartok, (e) reconstruct garbled text lines, and so forth.

[ XXIV

Editor's Preface

N early thirty-seven years were to elapse before Bela Bartok completed his study of Rumanian folk music;l in fact, al­though he had collected Rumanian folk melodies for a nine­

year period beginning in 1908,2 the published studies based on them did not appear until 1913,3, 1923,4 and 1935.5 The present publication, entitled Rumanian Folk Music by the author, consists of three volumes: Instrumental Melodies, Vocal Melodies, and Texts; and it is comprised of the 371 melodies of the 1913 publication, completely revised,2,184 hitherto unpublished melodies,6 and 1,752 poetic texts. As BartOk states in his Preface to Vol. I, the melodies were notated in final form on master sheets before October, 1940. The prefatory material to the first two volumes was finished in December, 1942,7 and the third volume was begun probably towards the end of December, 1943, and completed on March 30, 1945. In fact, the following entry appears on p. 67 of the draft Preface to Vol. III:8

1 More precisely, the folk music of Rumanian-speaking people who lived in Transylvania (a former Hungarian territory ceded to Rumania in 1920).

2 Ending in July, 1917. He did not collect Rumanian folk music in 1915. 3 Chansons populai,es ,oumaines du depa,temen! Bihar (Hong,ie). Bucharest: Academia

Romllna. Referred to in the pUblication itself as A,ii din Bihor, and labelled hereinafter as Biho" the study commenced in 1909 and was completed during the next year.

4 Volksmusik dM Rumiinen von Ma,amure~. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag. Hereinafter referred to as Maramu,e~ [Vol. V]. Commenced in October and completed in December, 1913.

5 Melodien dey ,umanischen Colinde. Vienna: Universal-Edition A.G. According to an unpublished note by Constantin Brailoiu, Bart6k had compiled a complete, first version of melodies and texts in 1924. Hereinafter referred to as Colind. [Vol. IV].

• The total of 2,555 represents 1,115 instrumental and 1,440 vocal melodies. 7 Letter to Wilhelmine Creel, dated December 31,1942. A photocopy of this letter is in the

files of the Beta Bart6k Archives of New York (hereinafter abbreviated BA). • The attention of the reader is called to three rather curious aspects of the inscription:

(a) its epitaphic quality, not to be found elsewhere in Bartok's works, (b) use of the Hungarian language to indicate the month of completion in an English preface, and (c) the village of

[ XXV]

Torock6, I908, nov.

Editor's Preface

New York I945, marc. 30

The voluminous documents which record Bart6k's travails in his attempt to collect, treat, and have published East European folk music in general and Rumanian folk music in particular point to the afore­mentioned thirty-seven year period as a time which included "deplora­ble circumstances ... producing tensions over tensions, which made the work to be accomplished, at least partially, in an unfavorable haste and anxiety ... "9 A description of the almost incredible sequence of events leading up to this posthumous publication is presented in Victor Bator's Foreword (above). It is of some importance, however, to discuss

TABLE 1

1 Field Recordings and K ota tions: 1908-19171

I 1-------1 First Draft: Melodies, Texts

\ Bihor: 1913 (revised 1932) (371 melodies) ----- ----- ------ ----+

1M aramure$: 1923\ 365 melodies

Colinde: 19351 484 melodies

1 1 1 Rumanian Folk Music: 19451 2,555 melodies ~

_T_e_xt_s __ I. 1----1 ~-'---, ~

Vol. I Vol. II Melodies

~-----A-------~ ~ Vol. I Vol. II Vol. III Instrumental Melodies Vocal Melodies Texts

Total published melodies: 3,404

Torock6 as the point of origin of his studies in Rumanian folk music, although the statistical data indicate that the first Rumanian folk melodies he collected were four songs (Vol. II, Nos. 67d., 117, 353, and 411) sung by girls in the village of Podeni in November, 1908. Ac­cording to the author's own pre-World War I Hungarian map of the region, Podeni (Szekely­hidas) is about six kilometers from Torock6 (Toyoczk6).

9 See p. 2 of his Preface to this volume.

[ xxvi]

Editor's Preface

to a certain extent the collection of manuscripts and the other materials from which Bart6k assembled the version deposited at Columbia Uni­versity ostensibly as the final draft of Rumanian Folk Music. Io

A chronological survey of Bart6k's maj or Rumanian folk music studies is offered in schematic form in Table 1 by way of preliminary explanation to the editorial discussion. ll

THE MANUSCRIPTS

The various drafts of Vol. I fall into four basic categories for editing process: music, notes to the melodies, preface, and miscellaneous refer­ence material.l2

M usic.-The first draft, consisting of field recording transcriptions for the most part, and notations made when recording was not possible, was, excepting eight leaves, left behind by Bart6k when he emigrated to the United States in October, 1940.

The second draft, reproduced by photo-offset process except for the two appendices, was made from 590 pages of master sheets before they had been corrected by the author and deposited at Columbia University.13

The third draft is a second set of offset prints.14 On the whole, it is marked with the author's corrections made in pencil and in red, blue, and green crayon. 15

The fourth draft is a third set of offset prints cut up and arranged in order of county and village. A number of the melodies contain pencilled notes indicating scalar structure. Some have red crayon cor­rections which, in certain instances, duplicate those made in the third draft. 16

10 In the Special Collections Section of the University's Butler Library. 11 Minor studies can be found in Scrier'; marunie desp,e muzica popularii romaneascii (Bu­

charest: "Luceafarul" S.A.), a collection of articles, essays, and short extracts compiled and translated into Rumanian by Constantin Brailoiu in 1936.

12 Rumanian manuscripts are contained in envelopes nun1bered by Bart6k from 79 to 104, 106, 107, and 120 to 123. The last group of envelopes pertains to the Colinde. Nos. 82-83, 85-87,89,98-99, and 101 contain the material of Vol. 1. The complete folk music collection is composed of 134 numbered envelopes, corrected and uncorrected publications, and miscel­laneous notations and textual matter gathered in several unnumbered envelopes.

13 The appendices were reproduced by Ozalid process. Uncorrected, the draft was in the form of 8 X 11·inch stapled signatures.

14 Five hundred sets were printed. In this draft, pp. 177-92, 289-304, 529-560, and 591-607 are missing. A considerable part of the ungathered sheets stored at the Oceanside (N.Y.) warehouse of Boosey and Hawkes were destroyed in a fire on August 24, 1954.

15 From this we may assume that he proofread the draft on at least three different occasions. 16 Melodies missing in the third draft can be found in this set. Ko survey was made to

determine whether all the melodies comprising Vol. I are present in this draft.

[ xxvii J

Editor's Preface

The fifth draft is composed of 607 pages of master sheets cor­rected by Bartok after he had proofread the preliminary drafts.l7 Editorially emended, it constitutes the version used in the present publication.

Notes to the melodies.-The jottings on the extant leaves of the field recording transcriptions indicate that this manuscript also may be considered as the first draft.

The second draft is, in the main, a typescript carbon copy with additional entries made in ink and in pencil, all in the Hungarian language,18 There are a few red crayon question marks.

The third draft is also the first English version of the Notes. Other than the first two typescript pages, it is written in pencil with ink and red crayon corrections,19

The fourth and what was intended to be the final draft is made up of sixteen pages of master sheets written in black ink. There are a number of stricken words and sentences, some accompanied by super­scriptions.20

The fifth draft is a set of Ozalid prints of the master sheets. It forms the final pages of the third draft of the Preface. The fourth and fifth versions of the Notes differ only in pagination. 21

The sixth draft consists of microfilm enlargements (Xerox Process) of the master sheets, edited and prepared as the final version for typesetting.

Preface.-The first draft is m Hungarian, written in ink on bond paper.22

17 Prior to the editorial revision, the master sheets were microfilmed by Columbia University and life-size photographic enlargements were made for the BA. The draft was begun probably in 1933 and completed prior to Bartok's brief visit to the United States in the Spring of 1940. Corrective work was nndertaken probably after July 21, 1941, the date marking the delivery of the MS. to Bartok in New York by Boosey and Hawkes.

18 The size and quality of the paper, and the type face used, indicate that this draft was made probably in Hungary.

,. With typical frugality, Bartok wrote on the reverse side of letters and other mailings sent to him. These indicate that he could not have completed this draft prior to June II, 1942. The notes to Nos. 51 through 130b. are not in his handwriting.

20 The general appearance of these pages contrasts markedly with the almost calligraphic quality of the Preface preceding them. They, too, can be found at Columbia University.

21 The entry for No. 493a., made in blue ink (the only correction in this draft), indicates that it was used for proofreading purposes, for it appears also on the respective master sheet as a superscription in black ink. It should be noted, however, that Bartok corrected the master sheets before this copy was made.

22 Probably during the first half of 1942.

[ xxviii

Editor's Preface

The second draft is in English, written in ink and corrected in pencil.23

The third draft is a fair copy of the second, written in ink on bond paper. 24 There are markings in red and green crayon, and a number of superscriptions in black ink are sprinkled here and there.

The fourth draft, written in black ink on bond paper (pp. 1-76), contains a fe\v stricken parts, superscriptions, and insertions, and it approximates the quality of a calligraphic MS.25

The fifth draft is made up of microfilm enlargements of the fourth, as before, edited and prepared as the final version for typesetting.

Miscellaneous reference material.-Regarding statistical data, there arc four drafts concerned with the output of melodies in counties and villages. The first draft is a comprehensive listing in which the single melodies are entered by number according to classification and per­former. 26 The second draft appears as pp. 83-85 in the fair copy (third draft) of the Preface. The third draft is represented by pp. 74-76 of the fourth draft Preface, and the final version of the statistical data is the edited one on microfilm enlargements.

The Errata list, appearing immediately before the melodies in the present volume, was derived from a second (final version) draft, numbered as pp. 69-73 of the fourth draft Preface. The preliminary copy consists of six large sheets of bond paper containing entries in pencil and ink.

Finally, there are record lists,27 notes on the recordings, compendia of dances and dance tempos, diagrams of instruments and dance rou­tines, and jottings about certain melodies.

CORRIGEiVDA AND ADDENDA

At the beginning of the first three drafts of his Preface to Vol. I, Bartok writes:

H abent sua tata libelli. .. I can't help thinking of this melancholic proverb when following the fate of my folklore publications. I would not recall here these

23 The first twelve pages are not in the author's autograph. Certain corrections made by Victor Bator (at the request of Bartok during a visit he made to Nonql1itt in 1943) are in his autograph; others are in Bart6k's handwriting. This draft, written on the reverse side of letters and other mailings sent to the author, was not completed prior to November 17, 1942.

24 Ozalid prints of pp. 12-13 of the master sheets make up pp. 15-16 here. 25 See fn. 20 for the commentary concerning pp. 77-92. 26 Performers are listed by name in alphabetical order of counties and villages; ages,

instrurnents and their scalar ranges, and other data are noted; subgroupings are also indicated. Later versions of this compendiuIIl represent abridged sllIIlInaries.

" These lists, numbered 2., 3. (the whereabouts of 1. l4., etc.?] is unknown) are far from complete.

[ xxix]

Editor's Preface

sometimes only too personal troubles would this not serve a special purpose in connection with the present publication. I have to point to some disturbing but inevitable circumstances which always arose and followed the preparatory work with unwavering consistency. Due to these mostly are the many deficiencies in text and print of the musical part [ ... ]28

It was this statement which was primarily responsible for prompting the editorial survey of materials comprising Rumanian Folk Music, beginning in 1959, and, as a result of the findings, which led to the following comparative study.

TABLE 2

CORRECTIONS OF THE MUSICAL PART

Melody No. I Staff I Measure i Description

58a. 2

I 2 I re to read ra

6 4 cei to read ce-i 135 Data Seceani to read Murani 169a.

I 1 Pitch mark lowered one whole tone

240 1 Pitch mark raised one whole tone 243c. 3 Triplet bracket in place of slur 310 bis Title ** to read * 348a. Title * shifted from numerical desigt"lation 29

405 1 1 Pitch mark lowered one whole tone 505 4 5 3/4 deleted 527 3 3 Single eighth notes beamed 539 1 2-4 Dynamic marking deleted under notation

Title ** to read *30 558 6 7

} Grace-note slur deleted 10 6 560 20 4 Numeral above notes deleted 575 5 1 Ma-z to read M'aj 578 2 3 Grace-note slur deleted 591 12 6 Staccato dot deleted from first beat 648 3 1

I First-beat sinKle eighths beamed 4 8 665 5 1

Beamed to single eighths on second beat 6 2 671 4 2 First beat triplet slur deleted

2B Bartok struck out this paragraph and the remainder of a two page narrative of his past publishing problems. Although he began afresh as his Preface now appears, in none of the drafts preliminary to the master sheet version did he discard the unwanted pages.

2. In the third and fourth drafts, a single asterisk appears above the last measure for which no commentary was included in the Notes to the Melodies. This asterisk was overlooked when Bart6k later added another to the numerical designation, thus compounding the error, for the latter mark has a commentary in the Notes with reference to the title. In fact, he uses an asterisk at the numerical designation solely to signal wrong placement of a melody. See note to No. 348a. * and **.

30 Nos. 539 and 688 form a double piece as indicated (See author's Preface, p. 55). They were

[ xxx]

Editor's Preface

The third and fourth drafts of the Melodies contain pencilled notes which refer to possible corrections. For one reason or another, perhaps because of the missing first draft, the indicated corrections were never made. They are listed here for the edification of the reader:

No. 124 "would have been better in 4(4 time." The pitch mark in No. 164a. is open to question. This melody, one

of twelve played by a young violinist from the county of Torontal, has as its pitch mark an instrumental tuning one whole tone higher than standard. Another, No. 287, is pitched at the usual E A D C. The remainder are tuned one whole tone lower.

The use of the double bar in the fourth staff of Nos. 165 bis c. and 746c. is questioned.

In No. 243d., "Every two bars should be made into one, the notes should be in smaller [half] values, and the M.M. marking should be 80."

Nos. 286 and 323 erroneously bear the same number and subsection of recording (M.F. 1369b). No. 470 may be M.F. 1730, or M.F. 1731 as listed. All appropriate numbers are missing from the extant reference material.

The pitch mark in No. 724b. may be a2 rather than the present e3 i?

TABLE 3

ADDITIONS TO THE MUSICAL PART

Melody)Jo. r Staff I Measure I I I '

Description

36

I 2 ***

59 1,5 * 73d. Title * 80d. 1 I 4

* to read ** 81 4 M.F. 86a. b. Numer. desig. * 95 1 I 5 Triplet bracket to second beat 135 Data VaT. Vol. I, ~o. 193 145b. Data (ca 50) 163 lnstr. desig. Cimpoiu 165 bis g. 2 I 8 * to read ** 186j. lnstr. desig. Violino

notated originally as one melody in which what was to become No. 688 was the upper portion. The marginal notes for this portion, however, were placed in their usual posi tion below the lower· most staff of the part which was to become No. 539. When the melodies were separated, Bart6k neglected to transfer the marginal notes to their proper position in No. 688. Although he corrected his error, after the master sheets had been printed, and the Erratr. and the Notes to the Melodies drafted in their final form, he did not reorganize his material as regards use and number of asterisks and notes.

[ xxxi]

Editor's Preface

(continued)

Melody ~o. I Staff I ~~asure I Description ------ ---------------

193 Data Var. Vol. I, ~o. 135 206 bis b. 4 I 2 * to read ** 207 Data Var. Vol. I, No. 30831

230 Data Var.Vol. r, ~o. 271 32

243g. lnstr. desig. Violino 243i. 1 I 3 * to read ** 271 Data Var. Vol. l, 1\0. 23033

272 Instr. desig. Violino 308 3 I 8 * to read **

Data Var. Vol. I, ~o. 20734

310 bis I 9 * to read ** 320 Instr. desig. Violino 326a. Pitch mark EADG 348a. 8 I 5 ,. to read ** 392d. Instr. desig. Violino 424 1

I

1 ** 429 1 2 n 440 Data anaH. 446 Data Var. Vol. I, No. 541 486b. c. Numer. desig. * 505 5

I 8 Staccato dots to first beat

536 1,2 7 Tenuta marks 543 lnstr. desig. * 559 Data , anaH.) XII, 1913 560 20 4 Numeral and bracket

33 2,4

I Triplet and quintuplet brackets

575 2 1 t to read su-it 5.7 8

I * to read ••

607 6 3 Triplet bracket 3 2 I} Quintuplet bracket 4,6 5

616 4 2 I Tie sign I 2 5 } Triplet bracket 4 2

623 2 6 } Triplet bracket 6 6 625 1 1,7 Triplet bracket 639 Data Cf. Vol. II, No. 509 679 4 I 5 Triplet bracket and numeral 681 Pitch mark Downward-pointing arrow to C

31 The fair copy of the Errata shows No. 271 as the variant. The cross-reference under No. 308, however, refers to No. 207 as its variant. The first draft as well as a comparative study shows that Nos. 207 and 308 interrelate as variants.

32 As listed only in the first draft of the Errata. The fair copy lists No. 230 as the cross­reference variant for No. 27l.

33 See remarks in the preceding footnote. 34 See fn. 31.

[ xxxii

Editor's Preface

(continued)

Melody No. I Staff I Measure I Description

683 688 693 694e. 706 707 715 718 722 743a. 748£. 749 759c. 759f. 760d. 768 769 794 802

805

Appendix 1: No. 251

Data

~ I ~ Data

2 I 5 Data

Pitch mark Data Title Title Title

~ I ~ Instr. desig. 3 3 4 4 3 4 2 4 3 4 2 3 6 1

(1) 2

e to read Nicolaie .. to read ... Tie sign between beamed eighths Tenuta sign e to read Nicolaie Sharp sign e to read Nicolaie Sharp sign e to read Nicolaie ". .. .. to read .* * to read ** .. to read ** Cimpoiu Eighth It! dotted eighth C on beat one .. to read ** Triplet bracket and numeral

l Slurs to first beat J

Slurs to first beat Slur between breve and half note ,.., above 3

The third and fourth drafts of the Melodies point to the following possible additions:

No. 448 "has a variation probably at Il rn B. Not yet in the notes -I haven't ever found it."35

No. 509 is "perhaps a short ~ ~ IT?" No. 531 is "a corrupt form of No. 66."36 In No. 748f., the designation ligan should follow the name of the

performer. On the master sheets, three pencilled notes indicate that No. 6a.

should be titled D'e dan! and should have a parenthetical question mark after un om in the data section, and No. 802 may require a parenthetical sixteenth rest as an entry in the first measure of the second staff.

35 The variant can be found beginning on the second staff of No. 251 b. 36 It may be of interest to note that No. 66 is related thematically to symphonic work

of several Romantic composers, particularly Smetana's The Moldau.

[ xxxiii]

Editor's Preface

TABLE 4

:.'.'lISSING DESIGNATIONS

(Melody Kos. III italics Indicate that an Explanation Is in the Kotes to the Melodies)

Title

6a., 15b.--d., h.-i., k., X., z., 18b.-d., 19, 23, 28a., 46, 57, 92, 100-02, 109, 137-38, 148b., 174, 200b., d., 201, 205g., 214, 224, 235-36, 241, 243e., h.-o., 252, 255-56, 263-64, 272-73, 301b., 305, 310, 321d., 332, 333a., 342, 349, 354a., 359, 363, 369, 374b., 383b.-c., 389, 392a.-d., 406-07, 410, 413, 415, 424, 427, 429, 432, 442, 504, 514-16, 520-21, 522a.-b., 523-31,535,632-33,634-39, 640a. -b., 641-50,652, 653a.-b., 654-81, 685a.-b., 686-87, 689a.-b., 690, 692a.-b., 699a.-b., 700-01a.-b., 703-05, 708a., 711, 714-15, 719, 723a.-b., 726 -27a.-c., g.-h., 728-31, 732a.-b., 733, 736, 74I-42, 743e., 764-72, 780-8I, 784-90, 799-802, 803-06, 808-09

M.lVT.

4, 15f., i., X.,

z., 18b.-c., 29b., 64, 72a., 81, 101, 166, 179, 214, 230, 235, 243g., 2431., v., 284 bis, 305, 373, 392, 394a., 396, 402, 664, 694f.

I Record Number and Pitch Mark

4, 15f., i., r., x., z., 18b.-c., 39, 44-6, 60b., 64, 101, 167, 179,214, 230, 235, 243g., 293b., 373, 392d., 394a., 396, 402, 502, 664

--------------------------------~----------~--------------

Kos. 159a., 326a., and 395a. have no pitch mark. Ko. 305 is without a record number. Nos. 39 and 419c., both vocalized pieces, have no instrumental designation.

TABLE 5 DIACRITICAL ADDITIONS TO DATA SECTIONS

----------------------------------------- ----------.----------

Inverted Breve Cedilla I Circumflex Breve

3, 34a.-b., 35, 42, 47, 49, 50a., e., 53, 62a., 72a., 73d., 75, 79, 99, 107, 108, 114, 116, 163, 166, 192, 205b., 297a., 375, 433b., 440, 443, 447, 456, 491, 494, 508, 584, 698a.-b., 713, 739, 760d.

41, 128b., 159a., 251a., 326b., 434, 448, 748c., 759a.

349, 510

16

Melody Nos. 15aa., 58a., and 81 required corrections in punctuation, and stems were removed from note heads serving as pitch marks in Nos. 32b.-c., 100, 132, 148b., 261,264, 277a., 370c., 392c., 409, 442, 521, 526, and 531.

[ xxxiv]

Editor's Preface

On a separate, prefixal leaf containing instructions to the printer (Preface, fourth draft), Bart6k gives these directions:

Printed in 500 copies (unfolded sheets) are: Vol. 1, pp. 1-590, Vol. II, pp. 1-304 [ ••. J (Should the aforementioned printed material not be available,37 then, of course, all the master sheets must be used for print. In this case, the "Errata" pages of both Introductions will go out, except those few items marked in red, because all the other Errata are already corrected on the master sheets 1-576 of Vol. I, and \-304 of Vol. II).

In the editorial attempt to follow Bart6k's instructions, it was noted that certain discrepancies exist in the preliminary and in the fair copy of the Errata. In fact, of the 300-odd entries, sixteen are faulty.3s Nevertheless, the author corrected twelve of the sixteen, without error, on the master sheets of the Melodies.39 Nos. 148f. and IS0a. belong to the Errata list for Vol. II. Details concerning Nos. 207, 539, and 688 can be found in footnotes 28 and 29 (above). As regards No. 310 bis, the order of asterisks given in the respective note should have been followed.

Turning now to the "few items marked in red," most of them refer to changes in the numerical order of melodies as compiled by Bart6k in the musical part. Others are concerned with deletion of reference figures 40 or notational changes. In some cases, the Notes alone list changes in numerical order. This information, therefore, has been ex­tracted and placed in the Errata,41 To understand the instruction for No. 243d., the following partial notation may prove helpful:

37 Sec fn. 14. 38 For example, the Errata contains this listing for Ko. 520: Its correct place is after No.

520. The number, of course, should have been 657 (as listed in the note to No. 520). 39 Nos. 4, 22, 73c., 137, 322, 326b., 330a., 346(a.), 520, and 589. He did not revise the

Errata section after the corrections were made, nor did he enter therein a pencilled instruction on the master sheet of "0. 94 to delete a reference figure in that melody.

40 For those melodies without pertinent marginal notes. These figures were not erased in the editorially-revised draft in view of the possibility that the marginal notes may be in existence on the first draft (hitherto unavailable) of the Melodies.

41 Nos. 125, 212, 439-40, 455, 462, 464, 466-68, 474, and 486a.-c. In its present, revised form, the Errata list is approximately one-tenth its former length.

[ XXXV]

Editor's Preface

TABLE 6

ERRATA IN THE NOTES TO THE MELODIES42

(Single Asterisks Except as Otherwise Marked)

Editorial Additions Missing43

36,66b.,68b.****,73d., 117, 117**, 118, 119b., 130a., 130a.**, 13Ib., 131c., 13Ic.**, 131e., 159b., 164a., 165 bis g.**, 169c., 178, 186 i.*>!<, 200c., 206 bis b.**, 207, 211, 240, 240**, 243 i.**, 299, 307, 326b., 326b.**, 328a., 333b., 348a.**, 370c., 376b., 383c., 424**, 443, 450, 460,473,521, 542b., 547, 568, 595 bis, 595 bis** 609, 613, 629, 719, 722**, 759i. **, 769**, Ap­pendix I: No. 316

Derived44

165 bis b.-g., 165 bis i.", 166, 184b. *** 355,424, 475**, 543, 567, 688**, 705, 761**, 774

Other45

130b., 219**, 418

A number of additions were called for in the Notes to the Melodies as a result of inadvertent authorial omissions. Single asterisks were added to the notes to Nos. 326a., 335, 343, 583, 718, and 759i. Variant letters were added to the following notes: c. to No. 32, a. to Nos. 200 and 653, and a., b. to No. 807. A 4/4 time signature was inserted in the last measure of the "skeletonized"46 music example in the note to No. 441, and the Errata instruction concerning the correct placement of No. 498 was added to the note to that melody.47

Deletions were necessitated by a number of typographical errors in the Notes. The letter a. was removed from the notes to Nos. 308 and 456 for the obvious reason that no variants are in the music part for these melodies. The breve accent over the last letter in Ardeleana was erased, in conformity with the title in the respective melody, in the notes to Nos. 170,337, and 610. And the note to No. 505, containing corrections in the form of a music example, was removed in view of the author's subsequent revision of the melody in the master sheets of the music part.

42 As determined by the presence of asterisks in the musical part for which there are no explanatory notes in the author's final draft.

43 There are a number of instances in which asterisks appearing at the end of a melody probably could be assumed to refer either to repetitions not requiring notation in view of their iterative nature, or to the indication that the performance was not recorded farther (usually because of lack of space on the cylinders).

44 That is, taken from listings which appear only in preliminary drafts. 45 There is a question here as to whether a note was intended by the author. See the re­

specti ve note to each piece. 46 That is, stripped of all ornamental tones. 47 In accordance with the author's procedure of including such information here.

[ xxxvi]

Editor's Preface

A rather peculiar lapse was found in the final draft of the note to No. 212**, in which the reader is asked to correct the melody by placing bar lines in measures four to eight "as follows: 3/8, 4/4, 3/8, 4/4, 4/4."

Digressing momentarily by way of preliminary explanation, if we examine the notation of No. 212, we find a bracketed quarter rest as the last beat of the first staff. The Hungarian and first English drafts of the Notes show that the asterisk-indication at this place refers to a subsequently-discarded note which reads "perhaps missing by mis­take" [in transcription J. That is, the second section apparently should contain gl instead of the bracketed rest, in agreement with the some­what-imitative melodic structure of the last section in the third staff (the second staff-note the brackets-is an addition from the struc­tural point of view and is not considered in the determination of melodic structure). The third draft of the music examples shows that Bartok, evidently not satisfied with the aforementioned entry, re-examined the melody and altered it, in pencil, by inserting five bar lines, two indica­tions as to the location of the newly-formed 3/8 measures, and a pa­renthesis enclosing the 2/4 time signature, all on the first staff.

If we were to follow his instructions, the only way to establish the indicated 4/4 bars would be to alter the notation by doubling note values. There are cogent reasons against such a procedure: (a) there is no indication to do so in any of the drafts, nor has Bartok given us the then-necessary change in M.M. mark (d. his instructions to No. 243d. in the Notes and in the Errata), (b) the piece is a dance melody essentially in 2/4 time, and (c) its proper place is immediately after No. 196, whose first variant is similarly heterometric and whose 7/16 time varies only with 2/4.

In view of the reasons presented above, the time signs in the author's note to No. 212** have been changed to read 3/812/413/812/412/41, and the reader is advised to make the necessary corrections in ac­cordance with the following example:

Regarding erroneous listings in Bartok's fair copy of the Notes to the Melodies, the note to No. IS9a.** should have read 160**,274** should have read 275*, and 694a., b., e., and f. should have had one asterisk,

[ xxxvii]

Editor's Preface

not two. Finally, the listing of No. 493a. in the note to No. 357 should have been changed to read No. 498.48 All these errors have been cor­rected in the present publication.49

"DANCE-WORD" TRANSLATIONS

As the author points out in his Preface (p. 53), certain instrumental pieces are "spiced" with "dance-words"-text lines usually recited in the rhythm of the music. There are fifteen such dance-word melodies of which eleven are listed in the Preface (p. 53), one in the Notes to the Melodies (p. 677), and three in Vol. III (Texts).50 The extracted text lines of Nos. 16, 20a., 58a.-b., 80c., 93, 130b., 219, 243d., 334a., 335 bis II, 575 and 628 appear below with their English translation. 51

No. 16 a) Catu-j52 fata de micuta,

Carrd i~j vede dragutu, Sare 'n sus ca jedutu.

b) Pusal ~a\!a pa tri cal, Ma dusaj parra la rai, Ma ujtaj pe oblocele

~i vazul nanele mele

5 Stand dracij pa dupa ele. Facul cruce cu dreapta, Prinsara a sa 'mpro~ca. Numai unu maj ramase, Cu nanuta53 cea frumoasa

10 Facuj cruce cu stanga, ~i-aceala 19j prinse cale.

Though the lass be ne'er so tiny, When she sees the lad she loves, She leaps up just like a kid.

I set saddle on three nags, Up to heaven I made my way. I looked (downward) through the

windows, And caught sight (of all) my sweet­

hearts 5 With the devils (close) behind them.

Crossed myself with my right hand, They began to scatter (then); Only one (of them) sti11lingered With the prettiest of the lasses.

10 Crossed myself with my left hand, That one, too, ran off as well.

48 No. 498 is the first of a pair of Hora pieces, whereas No. 493a. is the second of a group of five such pieces.

49 The reader probably will note that the letters q. and w. do not appear as part of the alphabetical listing of variants for Nos. 15 and 243. This undoubtedly is accounted for by the absence of those letters, other than their use in proper and foreign names, and in certain neologisms, in the Rumanian and Hungarian alphabets.

50 Page LXXII in the master sheet draft. The editor is unable to account for Bart6k's failure to list Nos. 16, 20a., 93, and 376a. in the Preface and, excepting No. 16, to refer to them in the Notes.

51 According to the note to No. 636, the dance-words for this melody were unintelligible from the record. Apropos of the English translations, they were made by E. C. Teodorescu, who was also commissioned to translate the complete poetic texts for Vol. III (Texts), Vol. IV (Carols and Christmas Songs [ColindeJ), and Vol. V (Maramure* County).

52 The inverted breve, used by Bart6k to indicate a semivowel (that is, "almost no sound at all"), appears in the text which forms part of the note to No. 16 (Vol. I), but not in Vol. III where the text is listed as No. 872b.

53 Written erroneously as Cununufa (little wreath) in the note to No. 16 (Vol. I).

[ xxxviii]

Editor's Preface

No.20a.54

a) Nu te-aseunde dupa lant, Ca te-oi fute ea un Neamt; Nu te-aseunde dupa bute, Ca m'oi scapa !}i te-oi fute.

b) Fa-te 'neolo eu hada, ~i 'nehep !}i io eu mandra.

No.5Sa. 55

a) Pe d'in sus de ee-j grad'ina Merge-o tinera eopila Cu dragutul ej d'e mana, D'e mana tiindu-sa,

5 D'in gura mustrandu-sa.

-Lasa ma, bad'e, de mana, Sa rna tip in ce-j grad'ina, Sa rump doua-trei snadita, (?), Sa-mi fae verde eununita.

b) -Cununita de trifoi, Nu da gura la slugoi, Ci 0 da la eel eu boi. -De cat eu boi ~i mueos,

5 Mai bine sluga frumos. C'om trai eu buze dulci, Ca !}i eel eu patru boi; ~i-om trai eu buze dulci,

No.5Sb. D'e-ar da Dumneze~ sa deie, Omu naeajit sa pt'eie, Sa trajasea eui-j bine, Sa sa sature d'e lume.

S Ca !Ii jo m'am saturat, Focu d'e ar ~i maneat.

No. SOe. 56

a) Drag mi-j !liru de fet'e Dumineca la highed'e.

b) Cand fusej vojil.ig d'un any, Furaj ealu din pojvany; Cand fusei voinic fe doH, Ma 'nvataj a fura boH.

Do not hide behind the chain, For I'll .... you like a German; Do not hide behind the barrel, For I will let loose and .... you.

Step back with that ugly lass, Pretty lass and I need room.

Higher up, beside that garden, There's a youthful maiden walking; By the hand her lad she's holding. (They are walking) hand in hand,

S (They are) scolding with their mouths:

Lover, let my hand loose (lover), Let me go into that garden, To break off two or three twigs, (And) to make me a green wreath.

Little wreath (that's made) of clover, Do not kiss a hired man, But the one who owns the oxen. Better than a snot-nosed owner,

S Is a hired man. With soft lips we'll live as weI! As the one who owns four oxen; With sweet lips we'l! live as weI!

If the Lord were to allow Worried people (all) to perish, Only happy folks would live Till they're sated with the world.

S For I, too, am (quite) fed up: Had the fire but consumed (me).

How I love the row of lasses, On a Sunday, by the fiddle.

When I was a one-year-old lad, I stole horses from their tether; When I was a lad of two, I got used to stealing oxen.

54 The text to this melody appears in Vol. III (L. Kryptadia) as Nos. I034a. and 1012. Dots are substituted for unprintable words, each dot standing for a letter.

55 The last two text lines of part a) appear only in Vol. III (No. 233) as does the entire verse of part b) (No. 168a.) .

• 8 In Vol. III, part a) represents text No. 987, part b), No. I060b.

[ xxxix]

Editor's Preface

No. 93. 57

A~a joaca batranii, Cand infloresc calinii; Calinii s'o scuturat, Batranii s'o saturat.

No. 130b.58

a) Haj sa jucam dupa la1)ta, Dupa la1)ta cumparata; Hai sa jucam la ospeti, C'a~a joaca oamenl toti!

b) Hajda frate, la jucare, Pune fata in picioare!

c) Tata lumea rna hule~te, Ca jo ged langa neveste.

d) Lotru mi-s dar cum rna chjama, Lotru mi-s da buna sarna; De cu sara la furaty, ----la barbaty.59

e) :;>i asara pan'sara-re Fata d'intra maica-saare (?).

No. 219. -Mandro, pentru 1)ot'ij teji,

Ma 'nvataj cu paru - _,60

Ma 'nvatai 9i rna tipaju :;>i jut'e te sarutaju.

5 Saruta-ma, bad'e, bine, Ca el) nu te bag in vina.

No. 243d.

Copilita trup cina9' Langa tine culca m'a9 mai, :;>i-a9 durmi pan ail peri, :;>i nimnica nu mni-ar fi, maj.

No. 334a.

D'e-a!? st'i c'a9 peri d'e dor, maj, Pan la toamna nu rna 'nsor. 10 d'e dor ca n'oj peri, Ca-s in sat cu oamenij;

5 :;>i oamenij al) fomei (sic) :;>i nu m'or lasa sa pcei.

57 Text No. 1,000.

That's how the old people dance, When the cranberry's in bloom; \\Then the cranberry blossoms drop, The old folks have had their fill.

Come, let's dance after the fiddle, (Let's dance) to the paid-for fiddle. At the feasting let us dance, For that's how all people dance.

Come on to the dancing, brother, Set the lass up on her feet (lad).

Everybody's swearing at me Because by the wives I'm sitting.

I'm a robber, as they call me; To be sure, I am a robber. Off to robbery by nightfall, - - - - to the husband.

Last night, also, toward sunset, (Stole) the lass from her mother.

For the sake of your eyes, sweet-heart,

I got used to hair (that's) --, I got used (to it), came rushing, And began to kiss you quickly.

5 (Only) kiss me rightly, lover, For I'll not hold it against you.

Handsome body, little lass, I would like to lie beside you And I'd sleep until I die, And I wouldn't have a worry.

If I knew I'd die of yearning, I'd not marry till the fall. (But) of yearning I'll not die, In the village I'm with men, And the men have wives (as well), And they will not let me die.

58 In order, the texts are Nos. 984-85, 1013-014, and 1120. 5. According to the note to 130b.* (Vol. I), the dashes represent four unintelligible syllables. 60 Two unintelligible syllables (see note to No. 219, Vol. I).

[ xl ]

Editor's Preface

No. 335 bis II.61

Nana, curte 'n poal'e,

No. 376a. 62

Doica Fira tesatoare

Baga c1lta prin cuptoare.

No. 575. Avusei !Ii jo dragu!a, o suit dracu 'n caruta ; 10 zisej sa maj mj-o lasa, EI zise c'o du~e acasa.

5 I: N'avut dracu ce lucra:1 Da rna puna a j uca. A juca63 ~i nu ~tju bine,

M'aaj lasa ~i mi-i rUl/ine. Dulcej gura64 la fomej, Nu rna, nu rna pot el} duci',

No. 628. Bata-te focu, ce boare (?), Ral} ma str1nge la picioare.

Dust your lap off, sweetheart!

(It's) Nurse Fira, (who's) the spin­ning woman,

(Who) puts the tow into the ovens.

Once I also had a sweetheart, In the cart the devil put her; I asked him to leave with me; He would take her home, he an-

wered. Devil had no work to do, So he set me dancing (then). I would dance, but I don't dance

well; I would stop, but I'm ashamed to. How sweet is a woman's mouth: I cannot, I cannot leave (it).

May that breeze be struck by fire, (For) my feet it's sorely hurting!

In the various drafts of the Preface, the number of melodies listed by Bartok as being the sum total in Rumanian Folk Music varies from "about 3000 songs" (first, Hungarian draft) to "2556 melodies" (final version). Other totals are "about 2500 songs" and "2535 melodies." In his book Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs,65 the figure 2,546 is. found (p. 93) for the Rumanian collection in manuscript. Careful checking of the statistical data in each volume of the present publication disclosed rather surprising errors in computation for Vol. 1. Discounting the inadvertent omission of a Class C II-IV listing (No. 753) for the village of Moi~a in the county of Mure~,66 or the miscount of 149 instead of 156 as the subtotal for county of Torontal melodies, Bart6k nevertheless

61 This one· line text is not listed in Vol. III. 62 Text No. 990. See also the author's Preface to Vol. I, pp. 37-38. 63 [Translator's note] Should read A~ juca. 64 [Translator's note] gura (mouth) could also mean "kiss" in this context. 6. With Albert B. Lord. Published by Columbia University Press, New York, 1951. The

first draft of this publication shows the figure 2545, the second and third (typed) copies have this figure changed (by Bart6k) to 2546.

66 In the first draft, listed for the village of Idicel, but not computed as part of its subtotal. The oversight has been corrected by adding the figure 1 to the proper column of the statistical data table in the edited version.

[ xli ]

Editor's Preface

managed to arrive at the erroneous total of 1,117.67 The correct figure for Instrumental Melodies is I,! 15; for Vocal Melodies, 1,440; for both volumes, 2,555.

In his discussion of the Class B motifs in Appendix I, the author fails to mention and describe Group 4 (Preface, pp. 13-14, 46, 50). This group contains four three-bar motifs (Appendix I, Nos. 320-323), a six-bar motif (Appendix I, No. 319), and two five-bar motifs (Ap­pendix I, Nos. 317-18) of which the first is a structure in shifted rhythm that can be expressed symbolically as a b I c a I b c' I e a I b c II·

Bartok, in p. 1 of his Preface to this volume, refers to the material of his Bihor publication (see also fn. 3, above) as "included though revised thoroughly on the basis of the phonograph records." For the ihterested reader who would like to make a comparative study of un­revised and revised music examples, a concordance of this material follows below.

CONCORDANCE OF BIHOR-R.F.M. VOL. I MELODY NUMBERS

(Figures on the left hand of each column refer to the Bihor publication)

292-118a. 293-87. 294-102. 295-69b. 296-15t. 297-15k. 298-15c. 299-15s. 300-374b. 301-15p. 302-321c. 303-150. 304-15r. 305-483. 306-15d. 307-15z. 308-15i. 309-18d.

310---18c. 311-18b. 312-15x. 313-336. 314-394b. 315-179. 316-373. 317-394a. 318-337. 319-46. 320-396. 321-230. 322-64. 323~305.

324-358. 325-809. 326-697a.

327-703. 328-700. 329-438. 330---485. 331-478. 332-484. 333-321d. 334-243m. 335-522b. 336-523. 337-643. 338-642. 339-687a. 340---719. 341-730. 342-694b. 343-684.

Bihor melodies not in R.F.M. Vol. I: 344, 360.

67 Addition of his original subtotals results in the figure of 1,106.

[ xlii]

345-424. 346-640b. 347-542bis. 348-626. 349-641. 350---639. 351-732b. 352-627. 353-737. 354-738b. 355-706. 356.,...-693. 357-683. 358-722. 359-715. 361-728. 362-648.

Editor's Preface

During 1941 and 1942, Bart6k worked alternately on the preparation for publication of his Serbo-Croatian and Rumanian folk music col­lections, completing the former in November and Vols. I and n of the latter in December, 1942. In subsequent years, probably using the same working procedure, he revised this material, submitting the final version of the Serbo-Croatian book to Columbia University Press in December, 1944, and bringing to a close the master sheet draft of the Rumanian poetic texts in the Spring of 1945. The various correspondences on the subject, beginning in August, 1944, reveal Bart6k's discontent with certain phases of the editorial rewriting of Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs. 68

This, however, was not his first experience in such matters, for he writes:

My first publication of greater significance was "The Hungarian Folksong." [sicJ69 Trouble started right there. I obtained the proofs, containing mistakes, mostly due to misunderstanding ... 70

It was decided, therefore, to retain as far as possible the "essential flavor" of the author's expository style as expressed in the master sheet draft of Rumanian Folk Music, even at the risk of including non­idiomatic phraseology, so long as clarity of meaning was not voided. On the other hand, because of the identicalness of sentences and even paragraphs in the Rumanian and Serbo-Croatian drafts, in a few cases adoptions or adaptations from the latter replaced portions of the former where the need for revision was indicated. In fact, it was further decided to follow the format of Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs in order to present to the public, ultimately, Bela Bart6k's folk music pUblications in homogeneous form.

There are two areas in this volume, none the less, which differ slightly from the author's presentation. 71 First, in regard to those signs used in the music notations of both volumes, explanations appearing in Vol. n but not in Vol. I of the drafts were transferred to their position in this volume (numbered from seven to eighteen, pp. 59-60). Second, reference material was added in the form of photographs and an index.

6' See the Bartok file at Columbia University Press. Also, letters between the author and Victor Bator, Boosey and Hawkes, and George Herzog, all in the BA .

•• Hungarian Folk Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1931. Translated from the German edition by M. D. Calvocoressi.

70 From the second paragraph of the deleted pages described in fn. 28 above. 71 Excluding from discussion here, of course, the attenuated Errata list (pp. 66-67 above).

[ xliii ]

Editor's Preface

"The length of pregnancy of the elephant is short in comparison ... " Bart6k wrote in regard to the delay in production of Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs.72 Even more time has been involved with the pUblication of Rumanian Folk Music, for the idea of an all-inclusive five-volume pro­ject (to include the revised Colinde and Maramure$ studies in English translation) was conceived years before it could be implemented in 1953.73 Yet, this seemingly inordinate span of time saw the develop­ment of the Bela Bart6k Archives into a full-fledged repository of, among other notabilia, the source material so necessary for accomplish­ment of the present undertaking. Concurrent with the increase in Archives holdings was the growth of the Estate of Bela Bart6k, to the extent that the required research and translation work could be essayed in accordance with the author's wishes. 74

All has been the result of the vision and acumen of Victor Bator, Trustee of the Estate of Bela Bart6k.75 The Trustee, whose creative approach to the administration of Bart6k's residua may well set a precedent in artistic circles, has remained steadfast to the ideals of scholarship and quality despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles placed in his path, in recent years, which threatened to return Bart6k's ethnomusicologicallifeworks to the limbo from which he rescued them. Sic vos non vobis.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following, whose contri­butions in one form or another facilitated the editorial work: Roland Baughman and personnel of Columbia University libraries (Music, Special Collections, Photographic Services), Emilia Comi~el and Sabin V. Dragoi of the Folklore Institute in Bucharest, Kamill Erdos, Magda Ferenczi, Mary Ann Ketly, Ruth Klein, Elma Laurvik, Peter Nemethy, Ruth Nelson Quinche, Eleanor Suchof£, E. C. Teodorescu, the late Nike

72 Letter to Victor Bator, dated August II, 1944. ,. That year, Constantin Brailoiu was commissioned as editor. He chose to begin with

Colinde (Vol. V)" but his work was left unfinished at the time of his death in January, 1959.

74 It is perhaps not generally known that Bart6k signed an agreement in May, 1940, for the establishment of a Trust (George Herzog, Boosey and Hawkes were designated co· trustees). Its purpose was to sell his music manuscripts to pay for the cost of publishing his Rumanian and Slovakian folk music studies. He terminated the agreement in 1942, and, in a letter to Ralph Hawkes on August 2 of that year, he explained that "the actual situation as well as conditions which can be expected for the coming 20-30 years evidently show that the purpose connected with the Trust of my manuscript material can never be realized. II

,. Dr. Bator and Dr. Julius Baron were designated co· trustees in Bart6k's will, dated March 28,1943. The latter resigned in February, 1956, because of illness; the former continued as sole successor trustee.

[ xliv]

Editor's Preface

Varga, Ivan Waldbauer, and Henry H. Wiggins of Columbia University Press.

In retrospect, what follows hereinafter is the result of an attempt to approximate Bela Bartok's own conception of Rumanian Folk Music as a publication: "to place this material before the public as carefully prepared and in as perfect a form as is called for by its unparalleled value."

BENJAMIN SUCHOFF

New York

[ xlv]

Contents

FOREWORD, by Victor Bator

EDITOR'S PREFACE, by Benjamin Suchoff THE MANUSCRIPTS

CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDA

DANCE-WORD TRANSLATIONS

CONCORDANCE OF BIHOR-R.F.1'vI. VOL. I MELODY NUMBERS

PREFACE, by Bela Bartok

vii

xxv xxvii xxix

xxxviii xlii

CHOICE OF THE MATERIAL 4 GROUPING OF THE MATERIAL IN GENERAL 6

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME ONE 7 GROUPING OF THE MELODIES 7 INSTRUMENTS 15 LIST OF THE VARIOUS DANCE GENRES 27 ORDER OF DANCES IN SUNDAY DANCING 33 CHOREOGRAPHY TO SOME OF THE DANCES 34 MUSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 42 LIST OF MELODIES OF POSSIBLY FOREIGN ORIGIN 56 REMARKS ON SOME OF THE PERFORMERS 57 EXPLANATIOX OF THE SIGNS USED IN THE MUSIC NOTATIONS 58 STATISTICAL DATA CONCERNING THE OUTPUT IX COUNTIES AND

VILLAGES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ERRATA IN THE MELODIES

MUSIC EXAMPLES

NOTES TO THE MELODIES

INDEX

62

65

66

69 677

701

Bela Bartok 1881-1945