Folk & Traditional Music of the Western Continents
The folk & traditional music of Europe, Africa & the Americas explored.
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EASTERN EUROPE 79 |
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labeled A with that labeled A5. Obviously their melodic contours are similar, but at some of the points at which A has a minor third, A5 has a major second, and A5 begins a minor sixth below A but ends on a perfect fifth below A. Now, if we translate the tones into the numbers we have assigned, and compare musical lines A and A5, we have the following sequences:
 The relationship between the number sequences is constant because, of course, the principle involved in this transposition is not a constant relationship of the vibration rates, which is what would occur if the interval of transposition were an exact one, but that of tonal transposition. Presumably the scale used in this song existed, in an unconscious sense, in the mind of the composer when he was making up the song, and when he began transposing he did so within the framework of the scale, which is made up of both thirds and seconds.
The practice of transposing as an integral part of the composition process seems to have radiated from Hungary to its neighbor |
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example 5-2. Czech folk song, "Vrt sa devca," learned by the author from oral tradition.
countries. The Slovaks and, to a smaller extent, the Czechs make use of it also. The Slovaks transpose sections largely in the manner of the Hungarians (up or down a fifth), but the Czechs do this more frequently to the intervals of the third or second. Perhaps the difference between the Czechs and Hungarians here is due to the greater |
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