Scan 160
The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians 5 Ed. 2nd, 1904
18 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Czechoslovakia, §II, 2: Folk music
3east European melodies and harmonic and tonal principles to Hungary, the Ukraine and other areas. Through transformation and assimilation, it has acquired a remarkable stylistic variety. Bartók, referring to central European folk music in a letter of 1911 (see Baník), wrote 'in this country, it seems, the Slovak people is the richest in folksong. In almost every village they know different songs'
5(i) Sources. The sources for Slovak folk music are manifold. In the Middle Ages there was a social group of folk epic singers called igrice or igrce ('player') who performed mainly in villages but also at court. They can be traced in 12th- to 18th-century sources, which describe various ordinances, prohibitions and penalties against them. 15th- and 16th-century sources show greater interest in folksongs and were frequently cited in editions of spiritual songs (e.g. J Silván) and to a lesser extent in folkdance music: many central European sources mention such dances as the hauduc and ungarcesca.
7Collecting on a large scale began in the 17th and 18th centuries, some results of this activity being the Victoris manuscript, a collection of harpsichord pieces (see Burlas, Fišer and Hořejš), a collection by Anna Szirmay-Keczer of violin pieces (see Kresánek, 1967) and one from Uhrovec containing almost 800 melodies (see Elschek, 1966, Hudobnovedné štúdie). In the 19th century such groups as the Friends of Slovak Songs began systematically collecting and editing folksongs, they collected about 5000 Slovak folksong melodies including 2000 published in the Slovenské spevy. Similar work was done from the 1870s onwards by the Matica Slovenská. Among later important collectors were Bartók, Bím, Halaša, Janáček, J E Jankovec and J. Kresánek. After 1950 extensive fieldwork was started by the ethnomusicology department of the Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and in the folk music department of Bratislava radio 16,000 Slovak folksong melodies had been published by 1974, there is also a stock of 50,000 folk music transcriptions and more than 60,000 recorded folksongs and instrumental melodies in the archives. Study is aided by computers. Historic, genetic and regional studies have been supplemented by basic methodological studies in folk music analysis, systematization, comparison and cross-cultural relations. Electronic melographic devices are used for transcription, as are graphic and written kinetic dance notations. Instrumental folk music, folk instruments and folkdance receive great attention and are widely documented on film.
9(ii) Historical styles. The many different styles of contemporary Slovak folk music may be classified according to their historical strata or regional characteristics (Style in this context refers to a group of melodies or melodic types with a similar or identical musical structure.) These are discussed in chronological order.
11The 'magico-ritual style', whose recitative-like melodies have a tonal skeleton of a 2nd or 3rd, is represented by about 1000 songs, 1·5% of all the Slovak folksongs collected. 51% of them are in a free melodic form based on simple motivic formulae and short repeated lines; 31% show two- or four-section structures with four to six syllables a line. Melodic structure and content are largely determined by the texts. These songs are connected with ceremonies for the winter and summer solstices and with harvest and funeral rites. Children's songs and play songs are also found in this style, which is similar to eastern Slav ceremonial songs and more generally to the European children's repertory and non-European tribal songs. Melodic types are not clearly differentiated; they consist of static formulae moving around a tonal skeleton, as shown in ex 7. All transcriptions are of recordings in the sound archives of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
13Slovakia
15The 'peasant style' is characterized by the interval of the 4th which acts as the skeleton or frame of the melody. the central tone and the note a 4th above are the most important notes of the melody. 4 to 5" of collected Slovak folksongs (about 3000 melodies) belong to this 4th-tonal style. The frame of a perfect 4th is sometimes extended to more complicated forms, such as that juxtaposing two 4th frames, authentic and plagal, this is common in the '5th formation' of dance-songs (i.e. a phrase repeated a 5th lower). Ex 8 is representative of this style, with rhythmically expanding cadences (i.e note values increasing towards the end of a phrase). It cannot be organized into regular bars and, as in 75% of the songs in the peasant style, it has four sections. 62% of these four-section melodies are isometric with six-syllable lines, their form varies (e.g. AABB, ABAB, AABC or ABC'D). The tempo of performance is crotchet = c100, the prevailing durational values being a crotchet and a quaver. Types of song in this category are harvest and hay-making songs, wedding and christening songs and laments and lullabies. The most beautiful and characteristic melodies are the trávnice, the hay-making or meadow songs, whose texts are predominantly based on subjects drawn from nature, as in ex 8
17The 'shepherd style' developed between the 14th and 18th centuries, with a melodic structure built on the framework of a 5th. It represents 30% of the collected Slovak folksong repertory. This style is partly a continuation of earlier traditional Slovak peasant styles and partly the result of acculturation from the period of the 'Valachian colonization'. The mountain regions of central and north Slovakia were sparsely inhabited and economically insufficiently exploited. The nobility therefore encouraged sheep-rearing by giving various rights and privileges to shepherds when they settled in these
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.