Dur versus Moll: Zur Geschichte der Semantik eines musikalischen Elementarkontrasts, edited by Stefan Keym and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen. Köln: Bohlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, 2020. Pp. 357–78, 2020
This paper examines how the phenomenon of the fluctuating third in folk musics of Hungary and the... more This paper examines how the phenomenon of the fluctuating third in folk musics of Hungary and the Czech lands might be perceived and interpreted, in formal and affective terms, in a few select works by Central European composers ca. 1840–1940. It follows two previous studies of folk-music influence in Béla Bartók’s music by Imre Olsvai (1969) and Kata Riskó (2015) respectively, which speculate about how Bartók responded compositionally to the phenomenon sometimes (too restrictively) known as “Transdanubian third”. An examination of repertoire and compositional techniques by Liszt, Brahms and Dvořák reveals that the origins of this adaptation predates Bartók by many decades. Beyond ascertaining the transcultural origin of this particular adaptive practice in art music (a challenge in itself that will be tackled to some extent), there is a particular question about whether and how such a practice impacted on a more traditional major-minor tonal syntax, as well as ethos. In respect of the latter, this study builds on Patrik Juslin's (2001) and Michael Spitzer's (2010) music-orientated development of James Russell's (1980) circumplex model of emotion, further expanding these methods to include the basic, and admittedly crude (but useful) happy/sad dichotomy associated with major and minor respectively. Alongside other musical elements and acoustic cues, what a few select, suggestive examples will show is the way composers twisted and bended the usual meaning of these modes, by listening 'transculturally' to oral cultures with a different modal ethos. The methods offered are preliminary and the sample tiny. More solid conclusions will require big-data research, But the qualitative kind of analysis offered here should encourage such a continuation.
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