Vargyas Lajos:
Egy felvidéki falu zenei világa - Áj, 1940
Planétás Kiadó - Európai Folklór Központ, 2000

Contents A few words to the Reader The musical life of the village of Áj Introduction Learning songs The life of a song Variation The manner of singing "Higher" music Minorities The society Summary List of the Slovakian names of the localities belonging to Slovakia today The musical material of the village of Áj Old folk songs New folk songs Popular art songs Miscellaneous songs Occasional songs Folk hymns Gypsy songs Slovak songs Songs from the counly of 'Gömör és Kis-Hont' Foreword to the first edition of·the musical material (1960-61) Notes (1960-61) Editor's notes Abbreviations·and symbols Bibliography Index of syllables Index of cadences Index of the singers Index of texts of tunes

"When I registered for a Ph.d., István Györffy, my professor of ethnography, sent me to Kodály for a dissertation theme. Kodály recommended a monographic elaboration of a single village which he had defined earlier in the preface to the first edition of Hungarian Folk Music (1937): "But, the most illuminating endeavour would be to map of a village's entire melody stock, the description of its music life in minute detail, that is, to create a musical monograph of it." Since he knew of my collection in Áj, he suggested elaborating the music of that village.
That work was completed and published as my dissertation under the title "The musical life of the village of Áj" in 1941, illustrated with 80 music examples. Given the circumstances, however, one could not think of publishing the whole collected material. (Not even the two village monographs - Pál Járdányi's The secular music of the Hungarians of Kide, Kolozsvár, 1943, and István Halmos's Music in Kérsemjén, Budapest, 1959 - were able present their entire collections apart from some examples incorporated in their studies.) Twenty years later, in 1960, 1961 and 1963 my folk music collection was published in installments in the bulletins of the Ethnographic Museum, wich were only accessible to narrow professional circles. The stock of "art songs" amounting to more than half the entire material, however, has remained unpublished to this very day. The present publication makes up for this deficiency, giving the entire musical material of the village in addition to the dissertation.
My dissertation was published nearly 60 years ago. Since even today it is still considered pioneering, I think it is necessary to acquaint international scholarship with it. Therefore, the study and the introduction have also been translated into English. (Most regrettably, the song texts cannot be given in translation as it would swell the volume disproportionately. As the work is first of all of a musical nature, this flaw is not unsurmountable.) I do hope that both Hungarian and foreign readers will find material in it worth learning and using. In the hope of that, I am releasing the second edition of the work - and the first edition of a substantial part in it."

Lajos Vargyas