Folk Songs and Material Culture in Medieval Central Europe: Old Stones and New Music by Nancy van Deusen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Folk Songs and Material Culture in Medieval Central Europe: Old Stones and New Music by Nancy van Deusen Kathleen E. Nelson van Deusen, Nancy, Folk Songs and Material Culture in Medieval Central Europe: Old Stones and New Music (Studies in the History of Daily Life 800–1600, 6), Turnhout, Brepols, 2019; hardback; pp. xiii, 279; 23 b/w figures; R.R.P. €110.00; ISBN 9782503541327. This is a remarkable and rewarding book, one that will hold interest for a broad range of readers, including medievalists, historical musicologists, and ethnomusicologists. Professor of Music and the Louis and Mildred Benezet Chair in the Humanities at Claremont Graduate University in California, Nancy van Deusen’s publications span disciplines including historical musicology, music theory, and historical anthropology. In this book, van Deusen challenges commonly perceived boundaries between disciplines, inviting the reader to engage with the discussion and move beyond limits of specialization. Hungarian folk song is the focus, with the book drawing on the author’s long experience of research in Hungarian archives. Purpose and method are effectively introduced in the opening sentence of the author’s preface: The purpose of this book is to deal with the present through the attainments of the past, namely through a system of analysis using terms and concepts taken over from centuries of thinking and writing during Latin Antiquity, through what is now known as the European Middle Ages, enduring relatively unchanged well into the nineteenth century (p. xi). The many illuminating discussions include examination of the term ‘silva’ as used by Chalcidius in his fourth-century translation into Latin of Plato’s Timaeus, and the ways in which the term has been interpreted, demonstrating the fruitfulness of its re-examination; thorough consideration of the concept of type and how types are identified, relevant to the study on Hungarian folk song and more broadly; and her illumination of the musicological concept of form and its prominence since the mid-twentieth century in analysis, pedagogy, and writing about music. Van Deusen draws insightfully on her many years of research in archives of central Europe, especially in Hungary, as well as on her extensive knowledge of medieval music, and medieval and more recent philosophy. Thoughtful narratives or ‘vignettes’ of personal experiences during her research in and around Budapest are interwoven and serve to illustrate points. Chapter topics include ‘Herder and his Influence: A Background for Conceptualization’, ‘Historiography of Ideology: Conceptual Bases for the Collection of Folk Song’, ‘Old Stones, Useful Chunks: Working with Material’, ‘Methodology and the Question of “Types”’, ‘Transcription, Translation, Transmutation’, and ‘Nationalism and Folk Music’. A helpful glossary of mainly Latin terms is also provided. [End Page 283] Kathleen E. Nelson The University of Sydney Copyright © 2022 Kathleen E. Nelson