Douglas Barbieri asked:

> Would it be instead of a language "accent" would you more mean a
> cultural flavor? Hungarians were raised in Hungarian culture, steeped
> I would imagine in the folk traditions of their country. Bartok was
> heavily influenced by the folk songs of his country, so I would
> imagine Hungarian musicians would best understand that aspect of his
> music and really bring it out.

You are right, Doug. However, a great part of that aspect of the
Hungarian folk music (and of Bartók's music) includes some
peculiarities of the Hungarian language (any composer's music is
influenced by the composer's mother tongue).

In Hungarian,

1. the tonic accent is always on the first syllable of the word.
Consequently, in the music of most Hungarian composers, the measure
bar has a greater importance than in other musics. (the first beat of
each measure is more accentuated). In Bartók's scores the measure
changements have always prosodic reasons, even when there is no text.

2. the lenght (short or long) of vowels, consonants and syllables is
very important, it always vehicles an information. For example:
"halok" means "I'm dying", and "hallok" is "I'm hearing", "hálok"
(with an acute accent over the 'a') means "I'm layed down", and
"hálók" (with an acute accent over the 'a' and the 'o') means "nets".
Consequently, in the music the rhythms are very important, exaggerate
them a bit is far better than make them round.

3. the lenght of a syllable is quasi independent of the tonic accent.
The main idea here is that a tonic accent never lengthens a short
syllable, quite the contrary, the accent slightly shortens the
syllable. For example, an eight note as a first note of a bar
(therefore accentuated), followed by a dotted quarter, must be
slightly shortened, in stead of being lenghtened.


Choose some folk-music-like pieces of Bartók, and hear them with some
Hungarian,then with some not Hungarian performers, and try to hear
what I meant above.


Best wishes, Pierre