Paksa Katalin - Németh István: Muravidéki magyar népzene (Budapest - Lendva, 2018)
A régió népzenéjéről
50 MURA VIDÉKI MAGYAR NÉPZENE The melody line can be descending without the quintal shift as well (64, 69-71,73). Sometimes the descent comes after two identical melody lines (74, 75), the tune may descend after the mid-range start (76, 77), sometimes it reaches the keynote already in the antecedent part (78-80). The more recent further development of the style is represented hy the csárdás tunes descending from high (81-83). The ideal of the descending melody line is rooted very deep in our musical mother tongue. That is why a “pseudo-descending” tune emerged from the second half of a new-style song, from its third line with a high peak and its fourth line plummeting into the depth, which got separated from the complete tune and became popular as a four-lined formation (84). As for the performance of the tunes, most are in giusto rhythm. In 1998 we failed to find old-style tunes performed parlando-rubato. What is more, Ferenc Korin of Dobronak remarked that “we never had such long-drawn-out tunes” meaning that these songs had already fallen through the filter of memory. The few examples of old style tunes in free rhythm presented in the book had all been collected many years earlier (70,71,73,76,77). Tunes with ascending melody line (No 85-106) They do not coalesce into a homogeneous style. They are in part of western, and in part of unclarified origin. They include more recent, 18th century third-shifting tunes (95-98), and forerunners of the new style (103-106). As against a single genuine old-style tune sung with a ballad text, this group contained the highest number of ballads, the texts of most of them also being of foreign origin (86, 88-92, 94, 100, 101, 103). Early new-style tunes (107—133) As a most recent result of ethnomusicological research, we have now detailed knowledge of the development process of the new style from the second half-last third of the 19th century (Bereczky 2013). The style spread from the middle of the language territory and arrived in Transylvania and Moldavia at some delay (as the notes to the new-style tunes also reveal). It evolved in two phases, the early new style being more closely tied to the popular art songs of the 19th century. Its rhythm is “more archaic” than that of the fully fledged new style, it lacks the later compulsory closing rhythm, and the tonal range of the melody lines is narrower. It is special to the Mura region that a relatively high number of early new-style tunes are known here. The tunes are sung with match-making words, too (37, 38), while this kind of tune-text connection cannot be exemplified among fully-fledged new-style tunes. A considerable part of early new-style tunes evolved from popular art songs (107-109, 113-115,117, 118, 123-125, 131). They are classified as folksongs because Béla Bartók’s definition, notably that “they are instinctive manifestations of the
