Brandon Dinh

MUH 3212
21 March 2018
Detailed Outline & Main Point

Revised Thesis
In the early twentieth-century, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók made annual visits to
Transylvania to research Hungarian folk music. During this time, he collected over six thousand
folk songs and formalized transcribed them into standard music notation. Bartók wanted to
represent folk music, through his own compositions, in a style that highlighted the cultural
disparity between the rural and urban cultures. Bartók eventually traveled to countries outside
Europe, including Algeria and Turkey, to expand his research. Bartók’s approach to
ethnographic fieldwork yielded a new appreciation and comprehensive understanding of
Hungarian and Turkeish folk music. He contributed significantly to the growth of
ethnomusicology through his fieldwork, transcriptions, classifications, and personal
compositions.

Detailed Outline
1. Introduction
a. Béela Bartók and Hungarian Nationalism
b. Ethnomusicology and Legacy
c. Thesis Presentation Commented [KZ1]: Thesis statement should be the
very first thing we read. It should not come at the end
2. Collection of Hungarian Folk Music of the introduction but at the beginning.
a. Nationalism
i. War of Independence
1. Hungary’s loss in the war is followed by years of oppression from
Austria.
2. A nationalist movement arises out of Hungarian political struggles.
ii. Hungarian Nationalism
1. Inspired by the nationalist movement, Bartók seeks to find folk
music that is representative of Hungary’s true heritage.
2. Peasant music was considered unsophicated and not worthy of
thorough research.
b. Ethnographic Fieldwork
i. Partnership with Kodály
1. The phonograph validated Bartók’s findings and held them above
previous researchers’ that had inaccurate and erroneous findings.
2. His years of fieldwork with Kodály established precedents for
future musicologists.
c. Discoveries and Misconceptions
i. Political Significance
 1. Bartók discovered an older style of Hungarian folk music that did
not conform to any national music styles.
2. Challenging gypsy music and the idea of national unity.
3. Researching Turkish Folk Music
a. Fieldwork in Turkey
i. Bartóok wanted to research Turkish folk music for evidence of Turkish-
Magyar contact during migration.
ii. He approached Turkish folk music with the same respect as he did with
Hungarian folk music.
iii. In 1936, he accompanied Turkish composer-musicologist Ahmed Adnan
Saygun in Adana, Turkey to conduct fieldwork.
iv. They worked together in notating the music, and Saygun translated the
lyrics.
b. Classification
i. Bartóok collected melodies, discussed peculiarities of performance,
orthography of texts, refrains, and relation between text and melody.
ii. Contributed to the beginnings of Turkish ethnomusicology.
4. Legacy of Bartok
a. A Comprehensive Understanding of Folk Music
i. Bartóok’s use of folk music as a compositional resource in his own work Commented [KZ2]: You have to include the accent
mark every time.
elevated the regard of folk music.
ii. Bartók realized that the pentatonic scale was vital to folk music and more
significant to music than previously thought.
iii. His compositions took the influences of the Hungarian folk style and
worked it into new pieces that honored the heritage of rural Hungarian life
and created a new compositional style that was unmatched in its purity and
originality by any of his contemporaries, including Kodaly and Liszt.
iv. Without Bartók’s contribution, current ethnomusicologists would be
lacking in their comprehension of music in rural Hungary and Eastern
Europe, and they would possess fewer techniques of studying folk music
in the rest of the world.
5. Conclusion and Reflection
 Discussion of One Main Point
Beginnings of Ethnomusicology

Béela Bartók (1881-1945) began his ethnomusicological studies in the early- twentieth-

century during a politically difficult time in Hungary’s history. Hungarians were still recovering

from their losses in from the War of Independence againstto the Austrians nearly half a century

earlier. During the decades of oppression from under neighboring Austria, advocacy for

Hungarian independence gained popularity and public support. This nationalist movement called

for open display of the Hungarian coat of arms, a traditional Hungarian hymn in place of the

Austrian national anthem, and useage of the Hungarian language in the Austro-Hungarian army.1

Inspired by Hungarian nationalism, Bartók searched for folk music from Hungarian ethnic

natives, known as Magyars, to understand Hungary’s truest musical culture.

During a trip to rural Hungary in the summer of 1904, Bartók heard a peasant folk tune

sung by a young Magyar(ian?) woman. This was his first exposure to authentic Hungarian

peasant music and was a pivotal experience in his life.; Iinspired by his personal discovery of

this music, he set a goal to “collect the most beautiful Hungarian folk songs and raise them to the

level of art songs by providing them with the best possible piano accompaniment.”2 At this time,

peasant music was considered to be too unsophisticated to be appreciated universally. One of

Bartók’s contemporaries , Hungarian composer-performer Franz Liszt, claimed that the music Commented [KZ3]: folk music? Magyars’ music?

was a distortion of gypsy music and too simplistic to produce any new artistic result.3 Bartók

argued that the music contained ethnic originality and uniqueness, and eventually sought to

redeem the folk melodies by making them accessible and contemporary by incorporating the

music in his own compositions.

1
Nelson, David. "Béla Bartók: The Father of Ethnomusicology." Musical Offerings, no. 2 (2012): 75. Formatted: Highlight
2
Amanda Bayley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Bartók (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 28.
3 Formatted: Highlight
Halsey Stevens, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1964), 23.
 In 1905 , Bartók met Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) who shared a

similar interest in researching folk music. Kodály taught Bartók how to use a portable Edison

phonograph to record music during his travels.4 This machine validated Bartók’s research by

allowing him to replay recordings, accurately notate melodies, and archive them.; Tthe use of the

phonograph allowed researchers to reference Bartók’s findings and this held his research above

the inaccurate records of earlier amateur researchers. Together, Bartók and Kodály began

extensively recording folk songs in across the Hungarian countryside from 1905 until 1914 (the

beginning of World War I) and developed a basis for ethnographic fieldwork.5 This fieldwork

established precedents of for how later ethnomusicologist would pursue and collect ethnic music.

After nearly a decade of research and fieldwork with Kodály, Bartók became a scholar

ofn Hungarian ethnic musical styles. Based on his findings, Bartók argued that Hungary did not

have a unified music culture.; Tthere was a misconception that Hungarian folk music was a

homogenous style but Bartók discovered that there were many contrasting folk styles and sub-

styles that were dissimilar to any known national music.6 Although Bartók’s research was Commented [KZ4]: Rework this sentence.

conducted with scholarly intentions it also, his research had political and historical significance.

Some of the music that he found was only known to Magyars communities and represented the

oldest layer of Hungarian folk music. To the Hungarian government, this claim was seen as

offensive because it challenged the idea of national musical unity. Popular gypsy music was the

preferred representative of folk music because Hungarians believed gypsy music captured the

4
József Ujfalussy, Béla Bartók, trans. Ruth Pataki (Boston, MA: Crescendo Publishing Company, 1972), 64.
5
Ibid., 68.
6
Ibid., 80.
Hungarian spirit more accurately than peasant music. His Bartók’s claims were not widely

accepted until around after the end of World War II.7

One of Bartók’s greatest contributions that brought fostered a newfound appreciation for

Hungarian folk music was his incorporation of folk styles into his compositions. He understood

that folk music was a collective creation of a community and acknowledged a particular quality

of “otherness” in the music.; Rrealizing the disparity between classical and folk music, Bartók

emphasized that folk music belonged to the culture of “the others” and outsiders had toit should

be approached it with respect by outsiders whoand had to labored in order to understand it.8

Although Bartók was native Hungarian, he considered himself an outsider because he was not a

part of the Magyar community and was careful in how he appropriated the music. Commented [KZ5]: As you move forward with your
writing, I want to challenge you to write without using
commas or semicolons.

7
Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
Formatted: Highlight
2000). 79.
8 Formatted: Highlight
Bartók, Béla. "The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music." Tempo, no. 14 (1950) Pages?
 Bibliography

Antokoletz, Elliott, Victoria Fischer, and Benjamin Suchoff, eds. Bartók Perspectives. Oxford
University Press, 2000.

Bartók, Bela. Studies in Ethnomusicology. Edited by Benjamin Suchoff. Lincoln, NE: University Formatted: Indent: Left: 0", Hanging: 0.5"
of Nebraska
Press, 1997.

Bartók, Béla. "The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music." Tempo, no. 14 (1950). Formatted: Highlight
Accessed February 25, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/943852.

Bayley, Amanda, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Bartók. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University
Press, 2001. Commented [KZ6]: Let’s meet briefly to discuss first
line hang indentation so you don’t have to manually
click the space bar to achieve this spacing.
Born, Georgina and David Hesmondhalgh. Western Music and its Others: Difference,
Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley, CA: University. of California
Press, 2000.

Frigyesi, Judit. Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2000.

Leong, Daphne. "Bartók's Studies of Folk Rhythm: A Window into His Own Practice." Acta Formatted: Highlight
Musicologica 76, no. 2 (2004): 253-77. Accessed February 20, 2018. Formatted: Highlight
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25071241.

Nelson, David. "Béla Bartók: The Father of Ethnomusicology." Musical Offerings, no. 2 (2012):
75-91. doi:10.15385/jmo.2012.3.2.2.

Nettl, Bruno. The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-three Discussions. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 2015.

Schneider, David E. Bartók, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition: Case Studies in the
 Intersection of Modernity and Nationality. Berkeley, CA: University. of California Press,
2006.

Stevens, Halsey. The Life and Music of Béla Bartók. New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
1993.

Stevens, Halsey. "Review: Béla Bartók's Folk Music Research in Turkey." Review of Notes, Vol. Formatted: Highlight
34, No. 2 (Dec., 1977), Pp. 342-344, by Suchoff Benjamin and Bela Bartók. Accessed Formatted: Highlight
March 15, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/897629.

Suchoff, Benjamin. Béla Bartók: Life and Work. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001.

Ujfalussy, József. Béla Bartók. Ruth Pataki, trans. Boston, MA: Crescendo Publishing Company, Formatted: Highlight
1972.