Faculty Advisor Name
Dr. Mary Jean Speare
Description
My project is an introductory work that lays the foundations for my graduate dissertation. In this work I have taken numerous Hungarian folk songs and mapped what I consider important elements that identify these melodies as "Hungarian folk music". I then took these elements and compared them to Zoltán Kodály's work Psalmus Hungaricus. As he was commissioned to write this piece for the 50th anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest, the composed material is all original. My argument is that although it is all newly composed material, Kodály clearly uses the elements of Hungarian folk tunes. Whether this is intentional or not, these elements can be found in the vocal line, the choral lines, and the orchestral parts in Psalmus Hungaricus. This work establishes what elements define Hungarian folk song, and a preliminary analysis of a few sections of the Psalmus Hungaricus score.
Included in
The Incorporation of Hungarian Folk Song in Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus
My project is an introductory work that lays the foundations for my graduate dissertation. In this work I have taken numerous Hungarian folk songs and mapped what I consider important elements that identify these melodies as "Hungarian folk music". I then took these elements and compared them to Zoltán Kodály's work Psalmus Hungaricus. As he was commissioned to write this piece for the 50th anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest, the composed material is all original. My argument is that although it is all newly composed material, Kodály clearly uses the elements of Hungarian folk tunes. Whether this is intentional or not, these elements can be found in the vocal line, the choral lines, and the orchestral parts in Psalmus Hungaricus. This work establishes what elements define Hungarian folk song, and a preliminary analysis of a few sections of the Psalmus Hungaricus score.
