“THE HUNGARIAN FOLK-SONG … ECHO OF THE ENTIRE HUNGARIAN SOUL” – THOUGHTS UPON A QUOTATION FROM ZOLTÁN KODÁLY

Abstract

“... it is false method to start out from the diatonicism and then later turn back to the pentatony as if to an exceptional oddity.” Zoltán Kodály writes these lines in 1943, after he ascertains that pentatonic tunes constitute the Hungarians most ancient music. Thus the pentatonic scale is very important in Hungarian music in general. The pentatonic scale mirrors the Hungarian characteristic: the pentatony is that which receives into, and accepts. It is open to foreign elements (and the pien notes which are often very characteristic of the Hungarian pentatony, represent the foreign elements). It models that spirit, in which he lives his life in its entirety. However, that entirety is formed from many tiny little parts. Therefore it receives the foreign elements without changing its own pentatonic character. Nevertheless the diatonic scales are closed. In them, folk-songs only very rarely use the foreign notes in their system. They represent a spirit which takes itself out of unity, and in most cases it is unable to accept the strange difference, the mentality and the world view in which it finds itself quite foreign. The pentatonic scale is a separate system, independent of the heptatonic. There is no direct kinship between the pentatony and the diatonicism. In the same way as there is no kinship amongst the people who use these two different systems basically. The only people are the Hungarians who use both scales in an exceptional way.