Béla Bartók and the development of the formal analysis of Serbian vocal folk melodies

Radinović, Sanja (2007) Béla Bartók and the development of the formal analysis of Serbian vocal folk melodies. Studia Musicologica, 48 (1-2). pp. 183-200. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

Abstract Béla Bartók's and Albert Lord's capital work on folk songs of the Serbs and Croats (Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs, Texts and Transcriptions of 75 Folk Songs from the Milman Parry Collection and a Morphology of Serbo-Croatian Folk Melodies, New York: Columbia University Press, 1951) has been known for more than six decades to Serbian experts. Yet, in Serbia Bartók's contribution have remained insufficiently studied and valued by the time being, specially his methodology of formal analysis and precious conclusions about the principles of traditional melopoetic shaping, realized on that basis. The author of this paper presents Bartók's notions on the formal structure of Serbo-Croatian folk songs, and then highlights delayed and extremely negative reaction on Bartók's work, made by the cultural public in postwar Belgrade. Namely, on account of this book of Bartók, Stanislav Vinaver and Josip Slavenski, renowned representatives of the then expert public opinion, engaged in a fierce debate with the Hungarian writer József Debreceni in the Književne novine (literary magazine) during the 1950's, concerning Bartók's political pretensions to a part of the Yugoslav territory, which are supposedly distinguishable precisely from some of the conclusions from the said study. Today it transpires that in the delicate political climate of the time the great authorities of Vinaver and Slavenski had a direct bearing on the negative reception of the said Bartók's ethnomusicological work, which considerably slowed down the potential development of Serbian ethnomusicology, primarily its methodological bases.

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