42. évfolyam / 3-4. szám (2004)

The Unbearable Lightness of Ethnomusicological Complete Editions: The Style of the Ba’al Tefillah (Prayer Leader) in the East European Jewish Service.
Judit Frigyesi (Bar Ilan University, Jerusalem)

A Tribute to László Somfai

In Jewish music scholarship, it has been accepted that the melodies of the ba’al tefillah (prayer leader) are improvised orally within the framework of a melodic mode. Because of that reason, Ashkenazi Jewish liturgical music is commonly represented as a repertory of melodies, which are possible to concentrate in a complete edition that is read with the tacit understanding that the melodies may be varied in the performance. This paradigm does not seem to hold true for the art of the East-European traditional prayer leader. The melodies of the prayer leaders cannot be conceived of as variants within a modal type. They are independent artistic creations, compositions in the sense this word means in Western music. Like in art music, “composition” here does not mean complete freedom; the prayer leader has to compose within – better to say: or against – a musical-stylistic framework. The article attempts to show the nature of this compositional attitude among the traditional East-European prayer leaders, demonstrating that the individual solutions cohere to a complex artistic work that are deeply connected to the unique musical orientation, personality, artistic character, and life of each prayer leader.

Ordinary Melodies in the Context of the “Old Roman Chant” Question
Gábor Kiss

The author gives an overview of the Ordinary melodies in the Old Roman sources and tries to evaluate their repertory by using a wider range of Italian and, especially, Beneventan comparative sources. A survey of the melodies reveals a conspicuous paucity of items that appear as a stable element in the standard repertory. Moreover, the Old Roman melodies differ markedly from the later Ordinary repertories concerning their style, use of mode, melodic structure, etc. Their repertory does not show the same variety and heterogeneity that often characterize the repertory of later traditions or even that of a single source during the Middle Ages. On the contrary, the material gives the impression of a remarkable uniformity and consistency. In the use of such melodies the Old Roman sources share with other contemporary Italian sources. Apparently, this melodic thinking belongs to the musical practice and taste of the 11^th-13^th century Italian repertories. Since the archaic character and stylistic traits of this repertory differ sharply from those of the Gregorian Ordinary repertory, the question emerges whether the 11^th-13^th century Italian sources preserved a melodic tradition or melodic taste prior to the Carolingian period. Nevertheless, this layer of melodies completely disappears from later Italian sources, where they were obviously suppressed by new Ordinary melodies following a different melodic taste and aesthetic principle.

In the Workshop of the Musicus
László Dobszay

The Alleluia Natus est beyond some Central- and North-Italian occurrence is recorded only by the Missale Notatum Strigoniense. The variants shows that the “musicus” in Hungary adapted the melody to the “pentatonic” dialect prevalent in this country. In contrast, when an Fransciscan antiphonary takers over an antiphon on King St. Ladislaus from the diocesan sources changes the emblematic d-a-cí formula to d-a-b, as it is correct in the “diatonic” dialect. That means, the existence of Gregorian dialects “though never mentioned in the medieval theoretical writings” belonged to the theoretical concepts of the contemporaneous musicians.

19^th-Century Paths to Palestrina’s Music: Differences in Approach of the Italian, German, and French Editions of the Missa Papae Marcelli
Zsuzsanna Domokos

For the 19th-century interpretation of Palestrina’s works, the publications serve as important sources since the publishers preparing their editions had to make decisions also in musical matters. The first editions published during Palestrina’s lifetime represent the original sources. These are choir books, containing only the most necessary musical information, as the way of performing was evident, thanks to the living tradition. However, the tradition was broken, except in the Cappella Sistina and even there it went through continuous changes. Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century, when the reform movements in church music began to promote the revival of 16th-century a cappella music, especially that of Palestrina, the authentic publication and performance of the representative compositions of the style to be followed raised serious problems. Because of the discontinuity of the traditional way of interpretation and the fundamental changes in musical thinking, the 19th-century publications of Palestrina’s works differ greatly from each other. After all, there were no important, complete editions of documentary value produced since the 16th and early 17th-century publications.
The study musically analyses some Italian, German and French publications of the Missa Papae Marcelli between the 1840s and the 1880s with the aim to find the conceptional similarities and differences among the different schools underlined by aesthetical writings of the time.
The whole analysis is based on the account for the original sources serving as bases for these editions and also gives some musical examples of the performance practice of the Cappella Sistina, the traditions with which every publisher was familiar with.

Towards a Performance History of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin: Preliminary Investigations
Dorottya Fábián (The University of New South Wales)

The paper examines the recorded history of performing Bach’s Solos for unaccompanied violin (BWV 1001-1006). Starting with an overview of the early reception and performance history of the works, it continues with a brief account of editions and a summary of the various interpretative approaches one can observe in the more than forty available recordings issued between 1903 and 2002. This is followed by a more detailed examination of various aspects of performance such as vibrato, portamento, bowing, rhythmic projection, articulation and ornamentation. Placing these trends in their historical context, the study also summarizes typical aesthetic notions and shows how various audio- and performance analysis tools and methods may help to account for these features. The results are interpreted in terms of how historically informed approaches are distinguishable from mainstreamperformance styles and how these interact. The findings contradict some general opinion regarding trends in tempo choices and provide evidence for a discussion of how violin playing and Bach interpretation have changed over the last 100 years.

Franz Liszt’s Fist Hungarian-Symphonic Attempt: The National-Ungarische Symphonie
Adrienne Kaczmarczyk

The idea of combining the Hungarian national style in music with the style of the Western European symphonic music occupied Liszt’s mind from 1840 on. His first attempt at solving the problem was the National-ungarische Symphonie, a composition he planned to write in the 1840s but appears neither in Liszt’s own catalogues nor the modern catalogues of Liszt’s works. The present study examines the nature of this symphonic scheme taking into consideration the surviving manuscripts and the musical relationships of the planned work. The National-ungarische Symphonie had close ties both with the piano cycle Ungarische Nationalmelodien (1839-46) and the unfinished plans of Symphonie révolutionnaire dating from about 1840 and 1850, respectively. On the other hand, the plan of the Hungarian national symphony influenced indirectly the concept of Hungaria (1854) and Hunnenschlacht (1857), that is the symphonic poems in which Liszt first solved with success the problem of joining the Hungarian national style to the Western European symphonic one.

”Umerenno” or “Andantino molto”
On Musorgsky’s tempo markings
Márta Papp

Until the end of 1872, Modest Musorgsky gave his works Russian language tempo and performing instructions, which was a departure from generally accepted tradition. Before the stage premiere of Boris Godunov and the publication of the piano score, he exchanged the Russian markings for the traditional Italian, and from then on, exclusively used Italian in his manuscripts. This is an external change but it represents something more: it is a sign of metamorphosis of his musical style. The majority of passages in the first version of Boris, marked “Umerenno” [“Moderately”] is music which the composer intended as “recited” music with a flexibly changing tempo. The score of the definitive version was furnished with far more detailed and differentiated tempo markings, making us suppose more closed, or at least, music units that are more clearly differentiated from each other. This latter characterises Khovanshchina and Sorosintsi Fair, and other Musorgsky works from the 1870s, while in works written at the time of Boris and in earlier songs, we encounter versions of the “Umerenno style”.

Zoltán Kodály’s Art of Fugue
About the neo-classicism of the Concerto for Orchestra
Anna Dalos

Although Zoltán Kodály’s name has frequently been associated with trends in 20th-century neo-classicism, his oeuvre has never yet been examined in detail from this perspective. This is certainly the case for the Concerto for Orchestra (1939/1940), which in terms of its Bachian quotations, fugue and characteristically Baroque rhythmic types is the paradigmatic work of Kodály’s neo-classicism. This study attempts to reinterpret the form of the piece with the support of Kodály’s sketches, and strives to clarify the role of baroque elements and quotations in the composition. I draw on theories of stylistic history (specifically the Baroque) of the German art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, whose university lectures were heard by the young Kodály in Berlin, in 1906. Part of my argument is that Kodály implanted Wölfflinian characteristics of the Baroque style in his Concerto. I also suggest, however, that his intention was not merely to establish a Hungarian Baroque music (as argued by Szebolcsi). His Concerto also reflects his conception of folk music, which he conceived as bearing an archaeology of centuries of music. In this respect he created a stylistic synthesis, in which various historical-stylistic layers – folk music, Baroque elements, Classical forms, national romanticism, impressionism and new Hungarian music – appear simultaneously.

Bartók Analysis in America
János Kárpáti

The study focuses on the American analytical approach to Bartók, particularly the books by Elliott Antokoletz (The Music of Béla Bartók: A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-Century Music. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1984) and Paul Wilson (The Music of Béla Bartók. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
Without underestimating the logic of the methods of the two above discussed American theorists and the validity of the musical phenomena and of the hidden or overt creative conceptions revealed in their work, the study concludes with two main critical remarks: (1) The title of both books The Music of Béla Bartók promises an all-embracing, complete picture of Bartók’s music. The result, however, is far from being so broad. (2) Both analyses concentrate on the pitch content, examining the peculiar tone-structure of a given work or detail (movement, section) identifying in them either the cells, or the sets understood in a narrower or wider sense. At the same time the authors completely disregard the several other but equally significant musical components of the works.

Bartók und seine Liedtexte
Ferenc László

Der junge Bartók vertonte 1898-1900 insgesamt neun Texte von Heinrich Heine, Karl siebel, Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Friedrich Rückert, Nikolaus Lenau und Goethe, und nur in zwei Fällen gab er in den Noten den Namen des Dichters an. Im sechsteiligen Zyklus Liebeslieder betrachtete er die Texte als ob diese einfache “objets trouvés” wären: Mit grosser inneren Freiheit passte er hie und da den Wortlaut seiner augenblicklichen Lebenslage an. (Das „Libretto“ dieses Zyklus kann in mancher Hinsicht für einen Präzedenzfall zu dem der 30 Jahre später entstandenen Cantata profana gehalten werden, wo die Textvorlagen rumänische Volksdichtungen waren.) Bartók nahm sich ähnliche Freiheiten auch in seinen ungarischen Liedern nach Gedichten von Lajos Pósa (Vier Lieder, 1902-1903) und Endre Ady (Fünf Lieder op. 16, 1916), wenn auch in geringerem Maße. Im unvollständig gebliebenen Gelegenheitswerk Fünf Kinderlieder (1905) vertonte era us dem Gedächtnis zu der Zeit allgemein bekannte Verschen. In Fünf Lieder Op. 15 verschwendete er seinen Genius auf Gedichte, die tief unter dem Niveau seiner Musik liegen. (Sie stammen von zwei Teenies aus der Provinz, die als Erwachsene ihre dichterischen Ambitionen aufgaben.) Die jahrelang dauernde Entstehungsgeschichte der deutschen übersetzungen zu Op. 15 und Op. 16 veranlasste Bartók wiederholte Enttäuschungen. Die bei der Universal Edition schließlich erschienene deutsche Version von Op. 16 hat ihn auch nicht befriedigt.

The Making of a Folk Song Arrangement Cycle: The Sources of Bartók’s Eight Hungarian Folksongs
Vera Lampert

In 1918, when Universal Edition became Bartók’s publisher, the composer considered only the “5 Szekler songs” of 1907 and the three soldiers’ songs of 1917, among his numerous unpublished songs, worthy of publication. Examining the rich source material of the Eight Hungarian Folksongs, one can follow the process by which the two groups of songs, written a decade apart, became a unified composition that can be performed convincingly as a song cycle. Bartók revised all of the songs, most probably during the 1921-1922 concert season. His emendations, applied to all of the songs, were generally directed towards the thinning of the accompaniment. The most significant textual changes affected the earlier group where one of the songs was discarded and replaced; radical changes happened also in nos. 1 and 4. In the second group, no. 7 was also altered in a significant way. When establishing the final order of the songs, Bartók kept the songs of the two groups together, the earlier group starting the cycle, the later one closing it. He also slightly rearranged the sequence of the earlier pieces and transposed the later ones.

On the Reception of Bartók’s Bagatelle No. 1
László Vikárius

The article revisits a number of documents related to the reception of Bartók’s allegedly “bitonal” early experiment, the first of his Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). All sources discussed and partially quoted (in the original French, German or English, as well as in Hungarian translation) once belonged to the composer’s library and are now kept in the Budapest Bartók Archives of the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They include mentions of Bartók as one of the forefathers of polytonality in published in La Revue Musicale and Musikblätter des Anbruch (by Jean Deroux and Paul Landormy) in 1921/22, Darius Milhaud’s “Polytonalité et Atonalité” of 1923, the article on “Harmony” in Eaglefield-Hull’s A Dictionary of Modern Music (1924), Henry Cowell’s “New Terms for New Music” in Modern Music (1928) and Edwin von der Nüll’s monograph on Bartók’s style based on a detailed investigation of his piano music (1930). The origin and early theoretical use of the polytonal concept en vogue from the early 1920s is also discussed in general. While the varying interpretations of his succinct piano composition significantly contributed to his acknowledgement as a pioneer of modernism after the First World War, the composer himself, in a late commentary on his Bagatelles (in “Introduction to Béla Bartók Masterpieces for the Piano”), denied any polytonal tendency in the piece and declared it to be in a “Phrygian coloured C major”. The designation C major, clearly formulated by von der Nüll, can be traced back to Bartók’s earliest references to the piece. However, despite his evidently consistent view of the piece as being in C, an as yet unpublished letter of 14 February 1909 to Emma Gruber (later Mrs. Kodály) proves that Bartók was fully aware of bitonality which he then called, for lack of a more specific term, “cacophony”. His late and vehement protest against the bitonal interpretation of the piece seems thus to have originated in the personal significance of Bagatelle no. 1, which was probably conceived as a paradigmatic expression of the Man/Woman problem. The article is a variant of “Backgrounds of Bartók’s ‘Bitonal’ Bagatelle” written for the Somfai Fs. Whereas the longer English version contains discussions of a number of more recent analyses of the piece and is more detailed on the compositional sources, this version gives fuller information about articles and studies of the 1920s.

Analytical Notes to Bartók, Improvisations, Opus 20, and the Ordering of the Series
Iván Waldbauer

A study of Bartók’s correspondence with his publisher, Universal Editions of Vienna, as well as early manuscripts of the Improvisations, further certain analytical observations of the finished score, permit a reconstruction of the history of composition and Bartók’s thought processes shaping it. It is known that he began writing “little piano pieces” in the summer of 1920 with no more intentions of any overarching design principles than a “harmonically freer” sound would for these settings of Hungarian peasant songs. It seems almost certain that it was only after having completed seven of the eight pieces in the fall of that year, that he discovered various harmonic procedures that create audible and perceptible links among some of them. These links must have arisen by subconsciously operating intuition. He ordered the pieces accordingly and composed the finale with the conscious purpose of affirming in it the writing of the unity of the series by clear references to these memorable earlier events.

The Role of Narrative Analysis in the Comparative Approach to Performances.
The Adagio of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Márta Grabócz

This article makes an attempt to synthesize the results of some of my earlier researches.
Their aim was to examine in the very details the strategy of the slow movements of Bartók compositions the subject of which is the “meeting of Man and Nature” (Op.10/1 “In Flowers”; Op.12/1 “Preludio”; IVth quartet/III (“Non troppo lento”). With the help of these “intertextual” [comparative] analyses I examine here the “Adagio” of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: namely its strategy (=form) in the specific use of topics (“intonations”).
In the last part of the article I compare the performance of six conductors at the key-moments of the 4th section of this palindromic structure (ABCB’A’).

Some Impressions on the Performance Tradition of the Bartók Violin Concerto
Péter Laki

The recording of the world premiere of Bartok’s Violin Concerto with Zoltan Szekely is an exceptionally valuable document, yet at the same time it is unique: Szekely’s background as an artist (his career as a quartet player in particular) sets him apart from all subsequent interpreters of the concerto. Therefore, younger players have had to develop their own approach to the work, even if this means that their style is sometimes at variance with Szekely’s.