Pentatonicism in Hungarian Folk Music

t should not surprise anyone who is already aware of the restricted content of our published folksong collections and superficial samplings of folksong from a few of our regions, that recent research, more thorough and wider in geographical scope, has brought to light fresh material which has provided us with new notions hitherto unsuspected from such folksong publications as Matray's, Szini's and Bartalus'. We now know that the five-tone scale, a criterion for judging the beginnings of many, if not all peoples', musical culture, exists and flourishes in our tradition since Bela Bart6k first discovered a large number of pentatonic melodies among the Szekely of Transylvania in 1907. Where are such melodies to be found? Besides the Szekelys, we are able to ascertain that melodies of the pentatonic type are well known among the Csangos of Bukovina. There are traces of pentatonicism in the folklore of Trans-danubia as well as among the Hungarian population of the Northern Carpathian Mountains. In other words, everywhere where vestiges of an old folk culture still survive. That this folk culture was once unified is conjecturable from the surprising analogy among the fragments that have been collected from the various regions. At one time, the so-called "Magyar scale" was regarded as the most characteristic feature of Hungarian music. This has long since been recognized as a misconception. If we look for features which distinguish the music of the Magyar folk from that of her neighbors, we single out as the foremost feature, next to rhythm, the presence of pentatonicism. Construction of the scale. Our five-tone scale is a "natural," or "melodically descending," minor scale from which the second and sixth degrees are omitted. If we select, for instance, g as the tonic note, the scale comprises the notes g'-b-tlat"-c"-d"-f". The majority of melodies extend below the finalis g' to f', and touch the octave of the tonic, g". On rare occasions it also extends to the upper 3rd, the b-flat". Thus, the widest possible melodic range is: f-g'-b-flat"-c"-d"-f"-g"-b-flat"'; and the narrowest: g'-b-flat"-c"-d". The latter melodies comprise only four notes, in which case one could speak of "tetratonicism." However, these melodies are exceptional. Since half steps do not occur, our scale is of the anhemitonic pentatonic type.