The Muzsikás Bartók Album With Márta Sebestyén and Alexander Balanescu

This CD is meant to demonstrate the intensity of the composer Béla Bartók's involvement with folk music, as we, the members of the Muzsikás Band, see it. Undoubtedly one of the most seminal of the influences to shape the music of the twentieth century, Bartók, we are personally convinced, harked back to the traditional world of folk motifs, harmonies and rhythms even-as Zoltán Kodály put it-in some of his "most audaciously experimental works".
A hundred years ago, when Bartók was starting out on his musical career, folk culture was light-years removed from the middle class to which he himself belonged. "The unbelievably rich treasure trove of folk music was entirely unknown in so-called 'cultured' urban circles", Bartók wrote. "They did not as much as suspect the existence of this kind of music."
There are many anecdotes about how Bartók discovered folk music for himself. On one account, it was in 1904, when he heard a Transylvanian servant girl sing an old folk song; he liked it so well that he felt he simply had to learn more about authentic folk music.
Soon, he and Zoltán Kodály, his friend, set off to collect folk music in the countryside, initially jotting down the tunes as they were sung, then using a phonograph to record the singers. The result was a collection of many thousands of tunes, and the birth of a new science: folk music studies.
Trekking through the countryside on dirt roads with a phonograph in tow was no small physical exertion. Bartók, however, had nothing but fond memories of these trips: "People who believe that collecting folk songs was a terribly tiring job involving a great sacrifice of comfort and convenience are mistaken. As far as I am concerned, I can only say that the time I spent doing it was the happiest of part of my life. I would not trade it for anything on earth."
Bartók collected folk songs in virtually every Hungarian-speaking region of the Carpathian Basin, and learned a great deal about folk dance and instrumental music, too, on his travels. His experience of the fruitful coexistence of the various archaic folk cultures of Transylvania (Erdély) was likely to have helped to crystallize his own personal creed: "The real guiding principle of my life... is the ideal of all peoples coming to live as brothers... all the wars and hostility notwithstanding. I have tried to put my music at the service of this ideal to the best of my ability; that is why I willingly embrace every influence, whatever its source: Slovak, Romanian, Arab or any other."
In 1919, Bartók felt that folk music collectors were all but losing the race against time. But the folk tradition turned out to be much more resiliant. Bartók and Kodály's successors were still making valuable finds decades later, and gradually, all this accumulated material was systematically studied and catalogued.
The study of folk dance received a new impetus in the 1950s when portable cameras and tape recorders came into popular use. Under the guidance of György Martin, a new generation enthusiastically undertook the task of "mapping" the Hungarian-speaking regions' dance traditions, and discovered, in the process, an enormous amount of till then unknown dance music in some of the archaic Hungarian regions, principally Transylvania (Erdély), where Zoltán Kallós did some outstanding work.
The 1970s saw a new wave of folk revival sweep over Hungary, with much of the interest focused on folk dance and folk music. The new generation wanted to experience the folk tradition in its original, unadulterated form. We, the members of the Muzsikás Band, began our own studies at this time, going on collecting trips into the countryside, our principal aim being to learn the instrumental techniques of the village folk musicians. Dancers, too, sought out the still functioning village dance groups, and learned the traditional steps.
We were all caught up in the magic of the folk tradition. Something akin to a new sense of community evolved in the clubs and cultural centres where we and the dancers passed on what we had learned to people who took as great a pleasure in learning it. It was the beginning of what would grow into the táncház movement.
There was a demand for folk music outside the clubs as well; we gave concerts, made records, and soon the Muzsikás Band found itself giving concerts the world over.
On one occasion, we were invited to play in New York at the Bard College Music Festival, where the theme, that year, was Bartók's music. Although the audience knew Bartók's music well, most of them were hearing Hungarian folk music for the first time ever. It was then that we decided to make a record which would demonstrate Bartók's ties to folk music. Almost every tune we play in the Muzsikás Bartók Album was originally collected by Bartók himself, and can be found, in some variation, in his works.
Just how this folk influence on Bartók's music "works" is illustrated in the Album in the case of three of his Forty-Four Duos for Two Violins, performed here by the band's own Mihály Sipos, and the Romanian-born British violin virtuoso, Alexander Balanescu. For purposes of comparison, we have given in full the songs that served as the inspiration: Bartók's original phonograph recordings, somewhat scratchy, to be sure, but capable, for all that, of bringing to life the singers of yore and the sound that so captivated Bartók. Alexander Balanescu, an old friend of ours who has been playing the Duos for years, had this to say about the experience: "Now that I am playing with the Muzsikás Band, I feel that something important is happening to me. I am ever more aware of just how much the cultural background, the place where I have my roots, means to me."
The songs are sung by Márta Sebestyén, who has been with the band from practically the very beginning, and has a superb knowledge of archaic folk singing styles. With a rare sensitivity and authenticity, she reproduces the songs as Bartók heard them in the villages, and recorded them with his phonograph.
An extra touch of verisimilitude is added to the dance music by Zoltán Farkas and choreographer Ildikó Tóth, who join us in some of the numbers-you can hear them stepping and stomping at times.
The entire CD is a quest for the answer to the question: What was it in folk music that attracted Bartók like a magnet? Perhaps the same thing that we find irresistible.
Muzsikás. The Bartók Album. Featuring Márta Sebestyén and Alexander Balanescu. Hannibal HNCD 1439.