Béla Bartók Letters

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

122-123

text excerpt

For 8 days now I have been doing collecting work in the oases villages – thanks to the letter of introduction – the work is going more easily than in Hungary. The Arabs accompany almost all their songs with percussion instruments; sometimes in a very complicated rhythm (it is chiefly varying accentuations of equal bar lengths that produce the different rhythmic patterns). This is the most pronounced difference between their singing and ours. Apart from this, there are many primitive melodies (confined to three adjoining notes of the scale), and the compass of a fifth is hardly ever exceeded. None of their original string instruments have survived (they have the violin instead); their wind instruments have quite peculiar scales.

For 8 days now I have been doing collecting work in the oases villages – thanks to the letter of introduction – the work is going more easily than in Hungary. The Arabs accompany almost all their songs with percussion instruments; sometimes in a very complicated rhythm (it is chiefly varying accentuations of equal bar lengths that produce the different rhythmic patterns). This is the most pronounced difference between their singing and ours. Apart from this, there are many primitive melodies (confined to three adjoining notes of the scale), and the compass of a fifth is hardly ever exceeded. None of their original string instruments have survived (they have the violin instead); their wind instruments have quite peculiar scales.

excerpt from 'Béla Bartók Letters' pp. 122-123 (118 words)

1450109196668:

1450109196668