Hungarian Folk Songs, The

Bartok’s classic Hungarian Folk Music, long out of print in English, remains the standard study of a single folk musical culture. This new edition of a major work in ethnomusicology is enriched by Benjamin Suchoff’s research on Bartok’s notes, analyses, and observations in the New York Archive of Bartok Estate, and the volume contains:

-the history of Hungarian ethnomusicology.

-a discussion of the Bartok-Kodaly relationship.

-a comparative overview of Bartokian and other Hungarian approaches to the systematic classification of Hungarian musical folklore,

-a review of related literature with emphasis on variant relationships based on data extracted from source materials published as recently as 1979, and

-previously unavailable or new data on Bartok’s biography, research methods, and approach to musical composition.

The volume also includes a tabulation of material, compiled in accordance with Bartok’s innovative procedure which first reached the scholarly public in the composer’s 4-volume study, Yugoslav Folk Music. A computerized lexico-graphical index of themes is provided.

The Bartok texts and the music examples have been enriched by the addition of Zoltan Kodaly’s annotations. Clarification, where needed, is achieved through the comparative study of Hungarian, German, and English drafts. Previous errata have been eliminated, and symbols have been updated in accordance with Bartokian procedures of the 1940s.