Báré (Bărăi) – Magyarpalatka (Palatca). The Mácsingó Family. Village music from the Transylvanian Heath (Belső-Mezőség)

The Final Hour Program and the “Új Pátria” Series

Since the governmental changes in Romania in 1990, the ease of crossing of the borders, increased possibility of working abroad, influx of consumerism and the cultural and sub-cultural effects caused by new of availability music cassettes have all contributed to more rapid changes in the folk traditions in Transylvania, even in the remotest villages. That is why the Fonó Budai Zeneház set to work to provide the financial background and facilities necessary to do this comprehensive collection of Transylvanian village music.

The Final Hour project is supported by the Institute of Musiscology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Starting in September 1997, there have been regular recording sessions with bands from Transylvanian villages who still play the local traditional music. Each band is at our disposal for five days during which time it is possible to make archival recordings of not only each band’s repertoire of melodies which serves the entertainment needs of more than one ethnic group, but also to document information regarding customs surrounding the traditional music and dance life. Singers and one or two couples of good dancers arrive to Budapest for these recording sessions with each band, helping to maintain the vocal and dance function of the instrumental music. Part of the program is devoted to documentation of the existing Transylvanian traditional flute music.

The CD archive resulting from work of the Final Hour program offers a vast amount of material on the musical traditions of Hungarians, Romanians, Gypsies, Saxons and Jews in Transylvania for research studies as well as a wealth of authentic material and background information for those involved in popular folk music movements. The complete collection will be available for scientific research in the archive of the Institute of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The Fonó Records has started this series of CDs under the title “New Pátria,” presenting selections of the most representative material from the collection. This series is the spiritual descendant of the “Pátria” series from the end of the 1930’s by Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and László Lajtha in cooperation with the Hungarian Radio and the Museum of Ethnography.

Báré (Bărăi) – Magyarpalatka (Palatca). The Mácsingó Family:

This recording of the Final Hour collection presents instrumental music from central Mezőség, an area of Transylvania which, thanks to the work of Zoltán Kallós and György Martin, is relatively well known and popular. The Mezőség (meaning more or less “area of fields”) in contrast to what its name implies, is an area of relatively high (4-500 m), at one time wooded hills which follow the course of short streams, lying between the Szamos, Sajó, Aranyos, and Maros Rivers northeast of the Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár (Cluj). It is a region of mixed ethnic population that was settled by Hungarians between the tenth and eleventh centuries, and has been depopulated many times by wars, making it necessary to bring in other groups of people such as Saxons, Swabians and Romanians. Nowadays Romanians make up the majority of the population, the Saxons and similarly the Jews have left Transylvania en masse due to events of the last fifty years.



Gypsies came to Transylvania in the sixteenth century, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century had almost entirely taken over the musical entertainment profession. The Gypsy musicians are generally Transylvanian Hungarian Gypsies, with names Hungarian or of Hungarian origin, who observe the predominant religion of the village where they live. Depending of the ethnic majority of the village, they speak either Hungarian or Romanian and they are likewise either Calvinist, Catholic, Evangelist or Orthodox. The musicians on this recording are originally from Magyarpalatka (Palatca) and are Calvinist, “Hungarian” Gypsies.



The instrument which carries the melody in a band from Mezőség is the violin, while a specially tuned (g - d’ - a), 3 stringed viola and a 2 or 3 stringed double bass provide the harmony and rhythm. In Palatka in the fifties and sixties it became common to have two violins and two violas playing; this is the formation playing on this recording as well. The violin’s playing style is very dynamic, richly ornamented, strongly rhythmic, and it controls the rhythm and tempo of the accompaniment. A Gypsy prímás from Mezőség learns and plays the melodies which are used in that area without discrimination, adjusting them according to his own preference, varying for example rhythm or tempo. For them there is no ideologic point of view when considering the origin of a melody. The name of a dance generally has no relationship to a melody’s origin. For example, in the “lassú cigánytánc” (slow Gypsy dance) or in songs sung at Gypsy wakes no actual Gypsy melodies are heard. Or, Romanians, Hungarians, and Gypsies alike feel the same tunes accompanying boys into the army (called “katonakísérő” in Hungarian) like their own. Or, we hear obviously Hungarian melodies sung in Gypsy or in Romanian (or even in de-a lungu rhythm.)



The Gypsy prímás in most cases does not know the text of the melodies. This is why they often – particularly with new style melodies with a dome-like structure – change the melodies, which results in a different structural basis: for example simply starting in the middle of a tune, causing the dome-like, arch-shaped structure to change to a descending one. The violas play the accompaniment, building major chords from the main notes of the melody, strenghtening it here and there with the dominant-tonic at the end of the phrase. The accompaniment style that is built upon the main notes with its mixtura, being more obvious in the melodies with slower tempo; just as the asymmetrical rhythm becomes more even and symmetrical as the tempo quickens. The songs in parlando, aside from their free accompaniment style, use basically two styles of bowing: called in Hungarian “duva” or “dűvő” (wherein two quarter notes are produced by one stroke of the bow, with a marked stress on each of them) and the so-called “esztám” (wherein staccato syncopated eighth notes are played). For dance tunes, the bass (called “gordună” or “gordon” in Romanian) always plays on the main beat (on “one”). To the well intentioned Western ear, many times the notes don’t sound clean or like even the right note. Rhythmically speaking however, they are precise, given that this is the main function.



On this recording we present the music for many kinds of dances from this area. The “Hungarian” dances generally are called “ungureşte” (meaning Hungarian in Romanian), and are requested from the musicians as such. At the various events where marches are played – escorting the bride, gathering the guest for a work party, bringing the wheat in from the fields following the harvest – melodies with “szökős” rhythms are played, as in Palatka. When the procession stops from time to time, these can not only be danced to, but because of their tempo they are also perfect for “rikótozás” (rhythmic shouts). In the Mezőség area, the dance and music traditions of the ethnic groups mentioned here, have become the most uniform in all Transylvania. The couple dances starting with the “ritka csárdás” (also called “cigánytánc” or “ţigăneşte”) are common to all ethnic groups: the “szökős” (in Romanian, “bătută”) and “sűrű csárdás” (haţegană) make up the dance cycle and are done by the Hungarians, Romanians and Gypsies alike. The Romanians replace the archaic “lassú cigány tánc” (“împiedicata”) which the Hungarians do, with “de-a lungu”; these are descendants of the old European processional type dances. According to our informants from these villages, some time ago the dance cycle consisted of the “lassú cigánytánc – ritka csárdás – szökős (bătută)” progression of dances. It also seems archaic that to the music of the “Hungarian” dances, they danced de-a lungu in couples or that the men danced it separately.



During the last decades, it has become the fashion to put the “târnâveana” at the end of the dance cycle; because it is similar in rhythm and tempo they also use its dance melodies for the foursome dance (négyes), for example in Mezőkeszü. The two kinds of men’s legényes dances, the ritka and sűrű magyar are included amongst the so-called Hungarian dances, but the négyes is also “Hungarian”. The asymmetrical Romanian men’s dances, the slow “româneşte în botă,” the “ponturi” or “rara” are the Romanian versions of the Hungarian “ritka magyar”, like the “bărbunc” is the Romanian version of the “sűrű magyar”. The Gypsies also dance the “bărbunc”, their slapping sequences being for the most part similar to the “sűrű csárdás” though in a Gypsy version, used in the “csingerdi”. The cycle of couple dances in Mezőség lasts 30-40 minutes, is generally danced from beginning to end with the same partner and has resting steps inserted. For the last cut on this recording, we have chosen a progression of music which is longer than usual, which nicely shows how the traditional intermezzo (“floricele” meaning “little flowers”) are used, and also works well for dancing at home or learning the dances. When this recording was made, there were good dancers present from the village of Mezőkeszü, thus the recording includes some songs from that village as well.



1. De-a lungu, slow and fast csárdás
2. Foursome and two men’s dance from Keszü
3. If the big steam engine starts to leave, let it go… (soldier’s song from Keszü)
4. Music for sending off the soldiers and slow csárdás
5. I’d like to be a tree in the forest
6. Funeral music for Romanians, de-a lungu
7. Music for end of the wheat harvest (Romanian)
8. Gypsy wake song and slow Gypsy dance
9. Hungarian dance and fast dance from Keszü
10. Gypsy lament and Gypsy couple dance
11. The crane flies far overhead
12. Slow Gypsy dance, slow and fast csárdás

Musicians:
MÁCSINGÓ György “Gyurkuca” (1937) - violin
MÁCSINGÓ Péter (1944) - violin
MÁCSINGÓ Sándor (1939) - 3 stringed viola
MÁCSINGÓ Náci (1965) - 3 stringed viola
KODOBA Károly “Ica” (1924) - double bass
HORVÁTH Anikó (1939) - voice
TÓBIÁS Dániel (1928) - voice