n the first volume of Rumanian Folk Music (Instrumental Melodies) I portions of Bela Bart6k's subsequently-discarded preface, concern ing the fate of his folklore publications, are presented in explanation of the editorial processes necessary for achieving the publication. 1 By way of introduction to this revised edition of a previous, although in complete, published version of the Rumanian Carols and Christmas Songs (Colinde), we refer again to the author's suppressed lines which pertain to this volume: The second publication by the same publisher was to include my collection of Rumanian...

he wealth and variety of artistic creations evolved by the Ru- T manian people in the course of the centuries have long alerted the interest of foreign scholars whom circumstances brought to the lands of the Rumanians. The Polish chronicler Matthew Stryjcovski (16th century), the Genovese Franco Sivori, secretary of the 16th century reigning prince Petru Cercel, the Magyar poet Balassius (Balassa Balint 16th century), Paul Strassburg, the envoy of Sweden's 17th century King Gustav Adolph, the Silesian poet Martin Opitz (17th century), the German Johannes Troester (17th century), and many...

n several of his writings on folk music Bela Bart6k recalls an incident I that happened to him in 1904 during a visit to a small village in Tran 1 syl vania. Quite by chance he heard there an eighteen-year-old Hun garian peasant girl singing Hungarian folk songs whose construction was 2 significantly different from the songs he had known until then. This experience appealed to his imagination far deeper than chance oc currences usually do. It sparked in him a creative fire that was there after to impart to his music certain characteristics that are recognizable today as indigenous to the...

he editorial treatment of the second volume of Bela Bart6k's T Rumanian Folk Music is not dissimilar to that applied to Vol. I. The matter of poetic texts here, however, must allow for a sizeable increase in corrigenda and addenda. But first, let us delve into the source material upon which Vol. II is based. THE MANUSCRIPTS The various drafts of Vol. II fall into five basic categories of editorial process: music, texts, notes to the melodies (and texts), preface, and 1 miscellaneous reference material. M usic.-The first draft comprises field recording transcriptions, and notations made on the...

N January 30, 1944, Bela Bart6k, writing from Asheville, North O Carolina, where he had gone to regain his strength after a long period of ill-health in 1943, commented, Here I have started on a very interesting (and, as usual, lengthy) work, the kind I have never done before. Properly speaking, it is not a musical work: I am arranging and writing out fair copies of Rumanian folksong texts' Although the date has not as yet been established, the first draft of the Rumanian folk texts as texts per se was written-if an apparent age of the MS. can be considered a clue-sometime before Bartok had...