Ban and Maneri Rethink Ethnomusicology

Those familiar with the biography of Béla Bartók know that, in addition to being one of the leading composers of the twentieth century, he also was a pioneer ethnomusicologist. Working with an Edison machine for recording and playing back sounds through the medium of cylinders, he and Zoltán Kodály toured much of eastern Europe to capture performances by a diversity of Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, and Bulgarian cultures. Sadly, the outbreak of World War I terminated these expeditions; but, by that time, they had accumulated a generous body of source material, which would subsequently influence the efforts of both composers. Indeed, after his move to the United States, one of his income sources was a research fellowship from Columbia University for working on collections of folk sources that were in the university’s library.

Mat Maneri and Lucian Ban (photograph by Mircea Albutiu, courtesy of ECM Records)

In the spirit of that aspect of Bartók’s career, one week from today ECM will release an album entitled Transylvanian Dance. It consists of eight tracks of performances by Mat Maneri on viola and pianist Lucian Ban. As many will expect, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders. As the accompanying booklet states, all of the tracks are “based on songs and dances collected by Béla Bartók in Transylvania.”

Now, to be fair, I should disclose that I have been listening to Bartók’s music since secondary school; and when Hungaroton Classic released its 29-CD Complete Edition, I did not waste any time adding it to my collection. If the Discogs Web page is representative, It would seem that it is now hard to come by copies of this collection on sale. I find this unfortunate because I fear that Transylvanian Dance is a pale approximation to both the flesh and the spirit of Bartók’s efforts and achievement. This is, at best, an album of good intentions. However, while the spirit may be willing, the “flesh” of the performances themselves is likely to come across as weak to any listener familiar with the Bartók repertoire (or, for that matter, ethnomusicology). For my part, I derived far more satisfaction when violinist Alexandra Conunova (who is Moldovan) played all six movement of Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances suite as the encore selection for her Shenson Spotlight Series recital in Davies Symphony Hall at the beginning of this past March.