Béla Bartók Letters

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

244

text excerpt

I have recently noted down some of my own Serbian and Bulgarian phonogr. recordings dated 1912, or rather I have revised my earlier, not altogether accurate, notations made from these recordings. I think the Serbian material will interest you, so I am sending you a copy of the notations. It’s true that some of the Serbian pieces are well-known melodies, but nowhere have such accurate recordings and notations been published. In fact, I think this is the only Serbian material so far to have been taken down (with the greatest possible accuracy) from phonograph recordings; for, as far as I know, no phonograph has been used hitherto in your country for folk-song collecting; or at any rate, no material collected in this way has been published. The figures marked M.F. refer to cylinders owned by the National museum in Budapest, the (sole) figure marked F. refers to a cylinder owned by myself. / Some parts of the texts I understand quite well; there are places, however, where I cannot find my way: the words I don’t know I can’t find in the dictionary. But it is quite possible that I have taken them down wrongly or that I don’t hear them clearly in the phonograph recordings. I should be very grateful if you could write them down for me with the necessary corrections – if ever you have time, that is (it’s not urgent). / For instance, is the last word on p. 9 perhaps ‘NEĆE’? What does ‘LUČE GUČE’ mean on p. 10? And ‘MA NO VI ĆE’ on p. 11? I simply cannot get the sense of verses 2 and 3 of No.21. / By the way, the method, in which the syllables are swallowed in the songs that are sung, is very interesting; this is that phenomenon first noticed and described by Kuba. Very valuable, in my opinion, are the bagpipe notations; bagpipe music so exactly taken down has not appeared so far, to my knowledge.

excerpt from 'Béla Bartók Letters' pp. 244 (340 words)

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