In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia

Sipos, János (2000) In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia. Bibliotheca Traditionis Europeae, 2 . Balassi Kiadó, Budapest.

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Abstract

János Sipos In the wake of Bartók in Anatolia Béla Bartók collected folk music in Turkey in 1936. His book about the Anatolian collection did not make a stir, although the work is a milestone in ethnomusicology. What may underlie this lack of scholarly interest? Disregarding for now all sorts of possible explanations, one argument still carries much weight: Bartók’s Turkish collection is so meagre that drawing conclusions valid for the folk music of a people numbering some sixty million is only possible with much caution and reservation. When I taught at the department of Hungarology at Ankara University, in 1988–1993, I had the opportunity to collect some 1500 tunes. I began my collection in areas where Bartók had stopped his. Then, as fewer and fewer new tunes were found, I shifted my field of research gradually westward. A six-year stay on the spot, the mas¬tery of the Turkish language, and regular collecting, transcribing and analyzing work enabled me to prepare a large body of systematized Turkish material for publication. Are there similar Hungarian and Anatolian tunes? What can the similarities be ascribed to? I attempt to answer these questions in this book.

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