Fekete Csaba

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# Cím Abstract Folyóirat Oldalszám
Szenci Molnár zsoltárdallamainak forrása abs.
The Source of Geneva Tunes in the Hungarian Psalter by A. Sz. Molnár (1607)
Csaba Fekete

The Geneva Psalter, translated into Hungarian by Albert Szenci Molnár (1574-1634), is still in use by the Reformed Church in Hungary. The translator, also editor of the Bible, and the Dictionarium Latino Hungaricum, studied in Heidelberg of the Palatinate (of Rhine, i.e. Pfalz). He mastered the tunes there, was active in the area, also became precentor. Consequently he based his adaptation of the Psalter on the German by Ambrosius Lobwasser and the Latin of Andreas Spethe, though he consulted the problems of the French with his fellow minister a native Frenchman. The first edition of his Psalterium Ungaricum was manufactured in the same printing house where the unison German Psalter was also printed e.g. in 1598.
Yet in the edition of A. Sz. Molnár’s collected works published by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1971 it is taken for granted that the primary source of the tunes should be the first full French edition of 1565 with four part music.
The present study points out differences between the edition of tunes in the so called primary source and the musical form in the first Hungarian version, together with some misprints. These difficulties are not dealt with in the 1971 edition (The Poetical Works by Albert Szenci Molnár. A Collection of the Early Hungarian Poets, Volume 6.). The editor of the Geneva tunes in 1971 was the Rev. Kálmán Csomasz Tóth (1902-1988), who was also editor of the Reformed Psalter and Hymnal of 1948, and a well-known authority of Hungarian musicology. He represented thoroughly the theory developed by H. Hasper (1886-1974) a Dutch hymnologist and editor of the revised Dutch Psalter. Hasper in his interpretation cancelled all accidentals in pure diatonic modality of the Geneva tunes, including subsemitonium (diesis) of cadences, rejected any real value of semibrevis and minima rest at the end of lines, and replaced these all by Gregorian division signs, and also invented triplets to distinct sesquialtera rhythmic formations.
Because of the church policy in the Stalinist era K. Cs. Tóth needed support, such as Hasper’s, to validate his new concept of the Hungarian Church Psalter and Hymnal, so he stressed that his solution of the musical problems is authentic, and absolutely in accord with orthodox Calvinist practice of Geneva.
This point of view raises the crucial question, i.e. what fits best a scholarly edition? (1) The one true to the German on which the work by A. Sz. Molnár was based; or (2) the one true to the theory by Hasper for the interpretation of the tunes of Calvin’s age?
2004., 42. évf. 1. szám 37. - 47.o