| In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia |
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In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia. By János Sipos, trans. Judit Pokoly, ed. Mihály Hoppal. Budapest: European Folklore Institute, 2000. Pp. 221. Introduction, Musical transcriptions, References, Compact Disk. In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia is a work of comparative musicology that attempts to answer two basic questions: Do similarities exist in Anatolian and Hungarian folk tunes, and what are the reasons for the similarities? In constructing his answer, Hungarian ethnomusicologist János Sipos builds upon the work of scholars before him--most notably that of Hungary's pioneering ethnomusicologist Béla Bartók. Ultimately, Sipos seeks to reveal the possible shared origins of Hungarian folk music and the folk music of Turkic peoples over 1500 years ago, emphasizing the pre-Ottoman Turkic influences on Hungarian ethnic culture. Sipos justifies his project by noting that much work has been done in comparative linguistics regarding the ancient internal and external social relations of Turkic tribes, but that similar work in comparative musicology lags far behind (p. 9). Sipos uses Bartók's Turkish collection as his own study's point of departure, first summarizing the older body of collected texts. He discusses the context of Bartók's collecting activities in Turkey in 1936, Bartók's main conclusions (in Bartók's own words) as a result of these activities, and a brief history of collection's fate after Bartók emigrated to the United States in 1940. Sipos pays homage to the collection, calling it a "milestone in ethnomusicology" (p. 10), as it was the first systematic study of rural Turkish folk music and because Bartók's conclusions had serious international implications. Among the more important was Bartók's claim that the melodic structure and cadential patterns of Turkish folk music in Anatolia bore close resemblance to old Hungarian folk melodies; thus, he argued, the style dated from at least 1500 years ago, when Turkic and Hungarian tribes lived the closest to each other. Bartók wrote, "If there is any other instance in the world which gives a possibility of such irrefutable determination of the age of folkmusic, going back so many centuries, I am not aware of it" (in Sipos p. 21). In the Wake of Bartók in Anatolia attempts to test Bartók's conclusions about the similarities between Anatolian and Hungarian folk music by examining a larger body of Turkish folk music material collected since Bartók's time (p. 24). This larger corpus includes Sipos's own Turkish collection--1500 tunes collected between 1988 and 1993 while he was a professor at Ankara University--as well as the Turkish Radio and Television collection, the archival material at Selcuk University in Konya, and the collection of Turkish folk music researcher Muzaffer Sarisüzen. Sipos uses the same kinds of analytical tools employed by Bartók: he examines melodic and pentatonic structures, melodic ranges, and cadential patterns for similarities and differences. Throughout his study, Sipos is very careful to suggest that nothing can be concluded definitively and that coincidence may account for some similarities. He comments on the nature of ethnomusicology as a discipline, suggesting both its limits and the ways the discipline works together with history in such a study. To illustrate this point, he provides a brief summary of contact between Hungarian and Turkic tribes throughout history. In the process he makes his explanation of similarities clear, while at the same time allowing readers to decide for themselves. Sipos even provides suggestions for further research should readers be unconvinced by his arguments. Overall, this book is both intellectually stimulating and an important contribution to an area that is admittedly understudied. Lisa Overholser |
