Vikár László: Cheremis folksongs (Budapest, 1971)

L. VIKÁR AND G. BERECZKI CHEREMIS FOLKSONGS The “Cheremis Folksongs” sum­marizes the results of a long research accomplished in com­mon by ethnomusicologist László Vikar and linguist Gábor Be­­reczki, whose attention was di­rected by Zoltán Kodály to this domain. They together visited six times during 13 years the Finno- Ugrian and Turkic peoples living in the Central-Volga region. Of their extensive original collection some 320 folksongs give here a comprehensive picture of the mu­sical dialects of the Eastern, the Forest and the Mountain Chere­mis. The characteristics of Chere­mis folk music are thoroughly analysed in an introductory es­say, containing a critical survey of the former collections, too. The method of arranging the material deviates from earlier practice: the tunes follow each other in a musi­cal order so as to simplify identi­fication and facilitate comparison with foreign musical styles. The textual part has also been given special treatment in an introduc­tory study clarifying questions of dialectal separation of Cheremis idiom, folklore beliefs and customs and their social-historical back­ground. All song-texts are transcribed ac­cording to international practice. The commentary notes contain data of melody and text and refer­ences to earlier-published vari­ants. As regards the song-texts, the book is trilingual inasmuch as also word-by-word translations

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