Subject: Bela Bartok Hungarian collecting online
From:
SteveMansfield
Date: 02 Feb 10 - 10:35 AM
I've just copme across this on Alex Ross's 'Unquiet Thoughts' blog, and, rather than paraphrase, might as well just quote ...
QUOTE ...
The Institute for Musicology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has placed online a fairly amazing trove of materials relating to Béla Bartók's pioneering work as a folk-music collector.
The composer's vast archive of Hungarian folk music has been digitized, and a fair number of his phonographic recordings have been uploaded in MP3 format.
The search engine is a little tricky to use, but if you click the "+" sign under "Name of collector," check the "Bartók Béla" box, and then enter the dates 1904 to 1905, you will see the beginning of Bartók's work in the field. (Entries containing audio have a listing in the "Ref. no. of media" column.)
The year 1907 is particularly significant; that summer, Bartók went into the Eastern Carpathian Mountains, in Transylvania, to gather songs from Hungarian-speaking Székely villagers. On that trip, he achieved a deeper understanding of folk style, which led to a transformation of his own musical language.
... ENDQUOTE
|
sj
