Béla Bartók. Autograph notebook documenting Bartók's phonograph recordings of Slovak folksongs, c.1907, or later

Béla Bartók

Autograph notebook documenting Bartók's phonograph recordings of Slovak folksongs

containing the details of c.74 field phonograph recordings by Bartók, written in black ink and annotated by the composer himself in pencil and red crayon, the individual cylinders numbered by Bartók from '1'-'24', the folksongs on each cylinder identified by name and listed with lower-case letters ('a', 'b', 'c' etc.), a later autograph numbering of the cylinders ('1151'-'1069') entered against some of the original entries (representing the numbering of the cylinders at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest), the last three positions ('22'-'24') left blank

12 pages, 8vo (17 x 10.7cm), with a further page of later pencil numberings ("927 / 954 / 990/ 989 / 999..."), the lower cover containing some autograph annotations, including the syllable classification 'Z z Z + Z z' in red crayon, ties, no place or date [c.1907, or later], outer leaves dust-stained and detached, a few tiny stains

The well-known photograph (Bartók Archive, Budapest) showing the composer with his phonograph, recording a young woman singing, was taken in Zobordarázs (present-day Dražovce, Slovakia) in 1907. The very first song entered in the present manuscript (no.1a) is Priletel pták [The bird flew above the clouds], which Bartók recorded in Dražovce in November 1907, the singer being Jozefina Homola. A setting of the song can be found in Bartók's Four Slovak Folksongs (BB 46) of 1907 (two other folksongs from that collection, Dolu dolinámi [Deep down in the valley] and V tej bystrickej bráne [In the gates of Bistrica] are also recorded in the present manuscript: nos.11a and 21b, respectively). It would appear that the manuscript represents a listing of Slovak songs from Bartók's 1906 and 1907 collecting tours, although its ultimate purpose has not yet been established.

LITERATURE:

Slovenské ľudové piesne III, No. 1440g (Priletel pták); Iveta Štrbák Pandiová, 'Bartók's Music Legacy in Slovak Ethnomusicology and Music Pedagogy', American International Journal of Contemporary Research, vol.2 no.4 (2012), pp.128-131

PROVENANCE:

Formerly in the collection of the composer's son, Peter Bartók (1924-2020)