Über die Herausgabe ungarischer Volkslieder [On the Publication of Hungarian Folk Songs] - INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY TO GUIDO ADLER

Berlin and Leipzig: W. de Gruyter and Co. 1931. Sonderabdruck aus den Ungarischen Jahrbüchern Band XI, Heft 3. Ungarische Bibliothek. Für das Ungarische Institut an der Universität Berlin herausgegeben von Julius Farkas. 8vo pamphlet. 25 cm. 17, [1] pp. Inscribed in ink on the title "Prof. Dr. Guido Adler / hochachtungsvoll [yours respectfully] / Béla Bartók." In fine condition.


An important association copy inscribed by the composer to the father of modern musicology, Guido Adler. This volume confiscated by the Nazis and recently restored to his heirs from the library of the University of Vienna.


Beginning in 1905 Bartok turned his attention to collecting and cataloging the folk music of his native Hungary. With the help of his friend and fellow Hungarian, composer Zoltan Kodaly, Bartok produced a series of commentaries, anthologies, and arrangements of the folk music that he had collected. In the present review, an offprint of the original publication in the journal Zeitschrift fur Musikwissenschaft, Bartok concerns himself with an anthology of Hungarian foolk music by the German musicologist Heinrich Moller. Here, "Bartok gives a more refined and sharper vision of his views of Gypsy music in this published polemic than is presented, say, in his 'Hungarian Folk Song'...Bartok argues that Moller's collection of Hungarian folk songs...is faulty from a 'scientific viewpoint.' Bartok's main complaint...is that the popular art song is not adequately differentiated from the peasant folk song, and that even within these larger categories the proper sub-types are not represented. And even worse (at least for Bartok), Moller apparently has privileged the popular art song, which Bartok hardly feels is worthy of serious study....Finally, Moller has made possibly the most damning mistake of all in Bartok's eyes, which is that he incorrectly designates the new Hungarian popular art music as 'Gypsy music.'" (David Malvinni, "The Gypsy Caravan," p. 150-151)


Guido Adler is regarded as the father of modern musicology. He was the founder of the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar of the University of Vienna, regarded as the prototype of musical research centres worldwide. He was a friend of many composers, including Brahms, Bruckner, Bartók and Mahler, who presented him with the autograph manuscript of the song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. After the Anschluss and during the last illness of the musicologist, the great library which he formed became a bargaining chip for the survival of Adler and his daughter Melanie. She imagined that they might be able to leave Vienna if the collection were given or sold to a library. The bargaining failed. Adler died, the library and his manuscripts were confiscated and Melanie transported and shot in 1942. This and the other books were catalogued by the library later in that year. Some parts of the library were found after the war and restored to the family and are now in the University of Georgia. The present volume was more recently discovered in the Music Library of the University of Vienna, marked with the stamp and inventory number of the Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar, having been stolen by the organisation Adler had founded. (11715)

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