Form-Extending Dance Tunes

Abstract

Certain form-extending methods in instrumental dance music have preserved their validity up to the present day. Their effect can also be felt in one group of vocal tunes used for dancing. This group can be recognized bJr the fact that the tunes constituting it have become longer due to closing formulas and/or repetitions and the words originally a stanza of four isosyllabic lines have similarly been extended with repetitions or meaningless word# in order to match the lengthened tune. After one type of the latter jaj-jaj-jaj of this type are usually labelled jaj-sonys in Hungarian folk music research.l Form-extending dance tunes are to be found in large quantities in Transylvania, the area of Hungarian language territory where traditional in#trumental dance music has also reached a highest standard and has been preserved in its traditional function up to the present day. Scientific interest has mainly been focused on jaj-sonys, the textual forms, so far, while the instrumental background has not been detected though its close contact with the former could be felt from the beginning. Thus, after a brief review of the results achieved up to now, the following study will mainly concentrate on instrumental aspects. It became apparent due to the quickly increasing activity of collecting Hungarian folk music in Transylvania from the 1940s on that the jaj-sonys are mostly at home among the Szekely-Hungarians (Eastern Transylvania) and Hungarian# in Central Transylvania within all the Transylvanian territory. One of their groups was welcomed by Lajtha as a re-discovered type of Hungarian folk songs in an article based on his collecting activity at Szek ((:entral Transylvania) and published in 1943. He, too, stresses the dependence of the above type on instrumental music but failstodemonstratethat dependence.2 Ja.rda.nyi analysed the jaj-songs of Kide, another village in Central