Modes and modal systems (groups of related modes) are none other than generalized types of melodic movement occurring in folk music, both vocal and instrumental. Arising first in folk song, they become fixed in the scaling of folk musical instruments, in the linear measurements that determine the structure of intervals. The chief types of instruments with fixed scaling are wind instruments with finger-holes, and fretted stringed instruments of the lute family. Whereas the human voice and lutes-without-frets belong (potentially at least) to the realm of free melodic creativity, musical instruments with fixed scales preserve historical stages in the development of melody, of individual modes and of entire modal systems. The scaling of an instrument is indeed a kind of notation; its symbols are not written on paper but exist as linear proportions on the instrument itself.

Among the vast and varied song repertories of North American Indians, there is a category of songs that has received little attention from ethnomusicologists and anthropologists: the native melodies with English words. A number of these songs have been heard with amusement by workers in the field, and a few have been recorded, but to my knowledge no one has attempted to study the significance of this material and its relation to the societies that have produced it. Despite the paucity of recordings and information that precludes a comprehensive study of these interesting songs, this paper is offered as an initial and tentative effort to give form and interpretation to this material, with the hope that others may be stimulated to carry out further investigations and research.

When the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, early in the sixteenth century, they found high cultures among the Aztecs of the Valley of Mexico and the Mayas of Yucatan. From the vivid accounts of their chroniclers we know that music played an important role in government, civic affairs and religion. At the awesome sacrifices of countless captives before the images of war-gods, thousands of dancers and singers would perform to the accompaniment of percussion instruments, flutes and trumpets. There were the upright, unbraced drum, huehetl, the sacred two-toned wooden slit-drum, teponaztli, bone and stone scrapers, rattles and scraped turtle shells, shell trumpet and tubular trumpets, double, triple and quadruple whistle flutes (the only melodic instruments) and ocarinas of all shapes and sizes. Young people, trained in special schools, were employed by the Aztec priests and nobles to compose music for these occasions and to serve as court musicians. Though the Spanish soldiers and priests who witnessed the Aztec ceremonials were horrified by the brutality and bloodshed (particularly when they saw their own men led to the sacrificial altar) they also reported on the beauty and skill of the musicians and dancers.

Die Umsiedlungen im Gefolge des Zweiten Weltkrieges haben die wichtigste Quelle für die Kenntnis des älteren deutschen Volksliedes fast zur Gänze verschüttet. Ich meine jene Melodien, die seit den achtziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts in deutschen Sprachinseln Süd- und Osteuropas aufgezeichnet werden konnten (Suppan, 1962-63). Heute sind nur noch wenige ergänzende Einzelstücke von ähnlichem Wert und Alter aufzulesen. Von einem solchen Relikt, das die beiden Freiburger Volkskundler J. Künzig und W. Werner 1961 in Süddeutschland auf Tonband festhalten konnten und in dankenswerter Weise dem Referenten zur Verfügung stellten, soll hier die Rede sein: es handelt sich um das Fragment einer siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Totenklage, die der ältesten Schicht zugehört, die bisher in diesem Raum erfasst werden konnte.

Im Mai, 1962, arbeitete eine gemischte italienisch-jugoslawische ethnomusikologische Expedition in Resia, einem isolierten Alpental in den westjulischen Alpen, das auf der italienischen Seite der jugoslawisch-italienischen Staatsgrenze liegt. An der Expedition nahmen teil: Prof. Giorgio Nataletti vom Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare aus Rom und eine Gruppe aus dem Institut für Ethnomusikologie, Ljubljana. Die Bewohner von Resia, etwa 3000 an der Zahl, sprechen einen archaischen slowenischen Dialekt. Auch ihre Musikkultur ist ausgesprochen archaisch; ein grosser Teil da von ist zweifellos alter als alles, was bis jetzt im Alpengebeit bekannt wurde. Ihre Kultur ist eine Hirtenkultur mit Merkmalen einer halbnomadischen Lebensweise. Die beiden genannten Institute planen, sobald wie moglich eine gemeinsame Publikation über Resia herauszugeben.

The earliest musical documentary sources of Bohemian folk music date from the fourteenth century; but up to the end of the eighteenth century the volume of such sources is small. Despite insufficient historical evidence, however, it has been possible to determine the main developmental trends of earlier times from studies of literary and iconographic evidence and, in particular, from the wealth of church hymns for congregational use.

From the beginning, folk music did not pursue a course separate from that of professional performance. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in particular, the inter-relationship between these two was highly beneficial to both. The range of folk-musical instruments was roughly the same as that required for professional performance. Only a few instruments—bagpipes and other rural types—were not used by both cultures. The gradual switch from the bagpipes and whistle-flutes, so popular in the Middle Ages, to the stringed instruments of subsequent centuries, affected folk and professional performance equally. Only the wind instruments of the gothic and renaissance periods failed to find their way into Bohemian folk music on a large scale.

That folk song found its way into Mahler's music is often stated but never demonstrated. The term 'folk song' must only be taken to cover the kind of song absorbed by him during his youth; later in life he did not concern himself with folk tunes. The songs of his homeland, on the border between Bohemia and Moravia, include (a) Moravian songs with archaic features, (b) Czech and German-Bohemian folk songs with clearly defined stylistic elements from the eighteenth century, and (c) songs of the bordering German lands of Bavaria and Silesia. Analysis has shown that Mahler used formulae from Moravian folk song, including the lydian fourth, and that there is a basic relationship between his music and the folk songs of his homeland. His melodies tend to be rhythmically free and to use repeated notes. Rhythmic features, such as short notes on strong beats, syncopation, and feminine endings, point to Czech folk song. Repetition of short formulae, and chain- or open forms occur, as in Czech and Moravian folk song. His writing for strings aims at producing the characteristic tone of folk fiddles in Iglau, and displays the heterophony between voice and accompaniment characteristic of that region.

The Chams, numerically the smallest group of the three Shküpterian tribes in southern Albania, live in villages far apart from one another, on the coast of the Ionian and Adriatic seas. In 1944 they left West Epirus and were settled between Sarandë and Durrës. Whereas the Tosks and Labs sing almost all types of song in more than one part, and in a specific kind of three- or four-part polyphony including a drone, the Chams exhibit different types of part-singing, among others a peculiar technique intermediate between solo and part-song. Furthermore, in choral songs, strictly solo-singing plays an important part. The tonal structures used by the Chams display a colourful variety not found among the Tosks, who incline to pentatonic structures. The types of rhythm used by the Chams, and their style of delivery, range from a free-moving style, as found among the Tosks, to a controlled and fixed giusto-style, as found among the Labs. An analysis of the vocal style of the Chams should be useful as an aid to understanding southern-Albanian folk song.

The material here analysed was collected in the mountainous region of western Serbia, in villages of widely scattered houses, often far from lines of communication. From the remote past until the first decades of this century, the development of culture, including the development of folk music, has proceeded slowly. The characteristics of each epoch have been retained, however, so that at a later date a culture may reflect once new elements in a tradition persistently held. Owing to the slowness of development, musical materials observed and analysed at the present day may reveal the various strata of social and economic development from the past to the present.

The greater part of the material collected is vocal music, there is no purely instrumental music. The latter may serve as accompaniment to dances but very seldom to songs; indeed, vocal music is the most important music in this region. A further characteristic is that this vocal music is generally sung in two parts.

Over a large area of south-western Bulgaria, songs are mostly two-part. The first voice sings the melody; the second voice is smooth or slightly more florid, mostly on the tonic and adjacent degrees of the scale. This area can be divided into four regions, differentiated by the styles of singing in two-part songs: Pirina region, the region to the centre of western Bulgaria, and the Velingrad and Ihktiman Pazardjik regions. Each of these regions shows a different structure of two-part songs. The differences lie in harmonic and rhythmic structure, and in the range of the second voice.

The most widespread style is that of the Pirina region, characterized by the comparative restriction of the second voice.

Typical of the Velingrad region are the songs with a vigorously moving second part, ranging mainly between the first, third and fourth degrees of the scale and the leading note. Typical of the Ikhtiman region (the smallest of the four) are two-part songs with an elaborately ornamented second part woven round the melody and reaching the tonic a little before the first voice.

Von der slowakischen Volksmusik überwog die Ansicht, dass es sich um eine typisch einstimmige Musikkultur handelt, obwohl schon in den achtziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts wertvolle mehrstimmige Aufzeichnungen erschienen; später waren es L. Janaček, die russische Folkloristin E. Lineva und in den dreissiger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts K. Plicka, die sporadisch mehrstimmige slowakische Volkslieder vorlegten. Man war aber der Ansicht, dass diese dokumentarischen Aufzeichnungen mehrstimmiger Volkslieder sämtlich isolierte, regionale Erscheinungen darstellen; sie wurden im Zusammenhang mit der walachischen Kolonisation genannt, und es wurde ihnen das Attribut eines fremdem Musikelementes gegeben, oder sie wurden als entlehntes Stilelement der Kunstmusik gewertet.

Die ungarische Volkstanzforschung unserer Tage ist die organische Fortsetzung jener am Anfang des Jahrhunderts begonnenen Forschungsarbeit, deren erste bedeutende Zusammenfassung das Werk Marian Réthei Prikkels: A magyarság táncai (Die Tänze des Ungartums), Budapest, 1924, ist. Sein unvergängliches Verdienst ist die Erschliessung des äusserst bedeutsamen historischen Quellenmaterials und der Entwurf der Konturen eines umfassenden Bildes. Seine Mängel zeigen sich in erster Linie darin, dass das neuere Tanz- und Tanzmusikmaterial unerschlossen blieb. Um die Beseitigung dieser Mangelhaftigkeit machte sich Sándor Gönyey als erster verdient; er machte die ersten Schritte zur zeitgemässen Fixierung des lebendigen Volkstanzes, als er sich in seiner Sammelarbeit ab 1926 eines Kinoapparates bediente. Die Ergebnisse der Sammlungen Sándor Gönyey und die Tanz- und Tanzmusikforschungen von László Lajtha werden in ihrem gemeinsamen Aufsatz, im Tanzkapitel des IV. Bandes A magyarság Néprajza (Ungarische Ethnographie), 1937, zusammengefasst.

This paper examines the dances of the Jewish people in Eastern and Central Europe, from medieval times to the present. Included in its scope are: dances developed in the community Tanzhaus—an institution found in every ghetto in Europe, a place for weddings and major festivities and for recreational activities on the Sabbath; dances characteristic of the Jewish craft guilds, with occupational earmarks; dances of the Hassidim, a sect (originating in the Carpathian Mountains) the members of which made melody and dance a form of worship. These dances, performed by men only, were varied for special occasions and marked by a definite style. With the development of the Hassidic Movement, the dances spread rapidly, crossing numerous geographic boundaries. It will be shown how dances changed in form and adapted themselves to new localities, as communities of Jews migrated to the Western Hemisphere and to Israel.