Rudasné Bajcsay Márta

On János Arany’s Song Collection and Some Problems Surrounding Critical Editions
Márta Bajcsay Rudas

The collection by one of the greatest Hungarian poets containing his favourite songs, put down in musical notation by himself towards the end of his life, was first edited and published (as far as the music was concerned) by Zoltán Kodály in 1952. Kodály’s rendering of Arany’s songs has been considered an example of how a critical source edition should appear from the musicological point of view. Now that the same song collection is about to be published as part of the series of the complete edition of Arany’s ouvre, some aspects have to be reconsidered. Ont he one hand, the lessons learnt from recent preparatory work on another set of material: Kodály’s Collection in Nagyszalonta, published in 2001 (an early folk music collection of which only a fragmentary though representative part was published in 1924) teach us that to reveal and explore all details, however paintstaking a job, is the only way to fin the clues when following in a scholar’s footsteps, in parallel with editing his material. On the other hand, a fashionable tendency to doubt any authenticity or competence in definitely answering difficult questions (and prefers presenting „virtual” texts on the world-wide-web of literary editions or encyclopaedias) discourages such work from following the traditional scholarly methods of producing critical source editions. Is it possible to exclude the „subjective factors” when rendering a source material? Is it necessary to take sides concerning „the real” versions? It is important to see that taking risks and responsibility are part of the game when preparing critical editions.