Hungary

The crucial date in post-war Hungarian music-folklore, the history of which can be given here only provisionally, in skeleton form, is 1951, the year in which the first volume of Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae was published. The origins of this source publication go back to the early years of our century, at a more comprehensive perspective even to the previous century; one might even say that the planning of these volumes is intimately connected with the Hungarian music-folklore movement in general. So the chronicle of the thirty-eight years which divides the publication of a draft plan, the joint work of Bart6k and Kodaly (Az uj egyetemes nepdalgyijtemeny tervezete, Ethnographia 1913) from the issue of volume I, would constitute a history of the folk music research movement in Hungary, the task of writing of which is becoming more urgent as some of its facts and achievements tend to become blurred and obscured, or even consciously obliterated in the minds of its participants. A beginning of such a history was made by Zoltan Kodaly himself, in his Foreword to the first volume of Corpus; and the recently published English version of his biography by Laszlo E6sze contains a number of passages which bear upon the subject. Magyar Nepzene Tara, to give the original and authentic title to what has become known abroad under the Latin name quoted above, is issued by the Publishing Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and is planned to run to about twenty volumes of which four parts, in five volumes, are available to date. (Cf. Barbara Krader, Journal of the American Musicological Society 15:232-34, 1962.) The title page bears the names of Bart6k and Kodaly as joint editors: this should be taken principally as a gesture honoring these most distinguished personalities of our discipline. The editorial work including preparation for the press of the first volume was in the hands of a small committee which, enlarged and suitably constituted, had become the Group of Folk Music Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1953, as a proper department of the institution, and for administrative purposes it was delegated to the Academy's Literature and Linguistics (Class I) section. Their research group now possesses its own premises in the Academy's building-laboratory, store-rooms, library; at one time it even had automobiles at its disposal. But above all, an essential factor that distinguishes the group's work from the largely individual undertakings of pre-war times, is an ample financial subsidy from the government. The permanent staff includes at present some 20-odd members who, apart from their work within the institutional framework, also pursue their own folk music research activities. The various committees and sub-groups are directed by Pal Jardanyi, Gy6rgy Kerenyi, and Benjamin Rajeczky. The research group, in their capacity of being responsible for Corpus, to the publication of which the entire energy of Hungarian folk music research is

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