Dialectal Peculiarities in the Performance of a 17th Century Hungarian Folkhymn

Abstract

Bela Bartok was the first who defined the Hungarian folkmusic dialects according to musical signs characteristic of geographical regions in his book "lghe Hgngarian foZksong" published in 1924.1 His four dialects the Transdanubian, the Northern, that of the region of the GEreat Plain and Transylvanian were soon expanded by a fifth one, the Moldavian discovered by Pa1 Peter Domokos.2 This classification is still valid and has been justified by newly discovered musical material.3 Bartok states that the different musical dialects can only be observed in old tunes. Each region has got its own typical "old types" so it's mainly the repertoires and the rate at which these various old styles occur-that differ from each other. Nevertheless it seems that there are various ways of performing these melodies owing mostly to musical ornaments. Bartok points out that the 8-syllable parlando-rubato tunes are rich in ornaments in the Transylvanian dialect. He makes no mention of the decorations of the other dialectal regions. Since then we have found that the songs with the most ornaments come from Moldavia but different variations in various quantities can be observed in Slavonia, the Zobor-region, the upper Tisza-region and not so often in Southern Transdanubia. The question arises whether this phenomenon is caused by the variety of ornamentation, its increased variability, which occur far more frequently in comparison with the basic notes, or by definite local tendencies, oinamentation peculiarities which vary by region. Owing to economic, social and historical reasons there are big differences of development between our regions. It can be seen in the different ways that