When Bartók played for me some records he had made of improvised lamentation songs, or rather orations, it was a gripping revelation. Sorrowing peasant women who had lost some dear one- a child, or a grown son – had been induced somehow to face the (to them) terrifying recording machine, chant into it their names and ages, describe their grievous loss in unrhymed song (or rather 'Sprechgesang'); they would sometimes break down, sobbing, in the middle of a record(….)