Béla Bartók. Autograph notebook documenting Bartók's phonograph recordings of Hungarian folksongs, 1906-1907, UNPUBLISHED

Béla Bartók

Autograph notebook documenting Bartók's phonograph recordings of Hungarian folksongs, UNPUBLISHED

containing the details of over 350 field phonograph recordings by Bartók, written in black ink and extensively annotated by the composer himself in red and blue crayon, blue ink and pencil, the individual cylinders numbered by Bartók from '1'-'26' and '37'-'131', the details for nos.'27'-'36' entered probably by Bartók's mother, Paula Voit, and annotated by Bartók, 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 ('923'-'1048' and 'm.F.2301-2300 [sic]') representing the numbering at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest, with details of the original tonus finalis ("T.f. = h...T.f: d, c,...T.f.: h..."), the location and also in some cases the provider of the information, WITH NINE AUTOGRAPH MUSIC EXAMPLES (including for nos.55, 60a, 63e, 72b, c, 78a, 83a, b)

c.60 pages, plus blanks, 8vo (16.8 x 10.5cm), the first 8 leaves with ties, the remaining leaves unbound, Békés County and elsewhere, 1906-1907, some dust-staining, old repairs to a few bifolia with translucent adhesive tape

AN EXTRAORDINARILY RICH AND MULTI-LAYERED MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENTING BARTÓK'S FOLKSONG STUDIES.

By the end of the nineteenth century the phonograph had become an indispensable tool for the folksong collector, the first to employ it in Hungarian ethnomusicological studies being Béla Vikár, in 1896. Bartók himself started to use it in 1906, although he was of the same opinion as Kodály, who insisted on the primacy of the field notation since the singer's performance might not be infallible. See lot 64 for the field notebook containing Bartók's transcriptions of some of the folksongs recorded in the present manuscript.

LITERATURE:

Vera Lampert, Folk Music in Bartók's Compositions (2008), passim; David Taylor Nelson, 'Béla Bartók: The Father of Ethnomusicology', Musical Offerings, vol.3 no.2 (2012), pp.75ff.

PROVENANCE:

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