Recent recordings

The lyrics of this folk song is sung here the same way as my memory serves me today. I just couldn’t find the original. Should I find a publication of it later I sure will paste it somewhere here.

However, this might be an apt example of the nature of folk songs and of ”poetical themes wandering freely and being transformed locally” as I mentioned in the introduction. The singer remembers something, somehow, and sings it freely.

The lute accompaniment of this song is based on the chords of András L. Kecskés.

Some more personal addendum on the pretext of Erzsébet Török: Zsuzsanna Gedényi writes in her memoirs („Csillagom, révészem – Török Erzsi tükre”, <Püski Kiadó, Budapest, 1997>)

„One of our acquaintances had a tumbledown old Tatraplan car. Far not everybody had a car those days, privately owned cars were rarities indeed. This kind gentleman offered to give a lift to the singer lady… … all in all, we had two more punctures coming home from the country so we arrived back in Budapest at haf past seven in the morning.”

I believe this „kind gentleman”might have been my father. Not only had he a tumbledown Czech Tatraplan at the end of the 50-ies, but he also knew many artists of that age personally. I also have a memory of my mother crying and quarelling early in the morning why my father didn’t phone her (of course, there were no public booths on highways, nor did simple people like us usually have a phone at their homes in the communist era). It might have been this occasion I believe.

My father was a truly good father. I sing this song to him, to Erzsébet Török and to every soul who have already passed this transitional physical world – that is, to the community of saints – commending them and all of us still alive here into the mercy of God, using the symbol of parental love – the Joyous Lady Mother – for the love of God.

John Dowland First Booke of Songes ( 1597) became an immediate bestseller. It was published at least in five reprints until 1613. Perhaps this success was the reason of his similar song collections that followed (see below: ”The Epistle to the Reader”), in the third of which (The Third and Last Booke of Songes or Aires, 1603) this beautiful enigmatic poem was set to his own music. The author of the poem is unknown, might even be Dowland himself.

If such songs were the ”top hits” of the age that might explain something about how and why audiances were open to Shakespeare’s art, e.g. the Hamlet Soliloquy:

”To die: to sleep; No more”

Sometimes I sing this song – of course, in Hungarian to Hungarian audiences – of Bálint Balassi (1554-1594) which has a double – Hungarian and Latin – title : Borivóknak való (For Wine Drinkers) / In laudem verni temporis (In praise of spring-time) dropping stanzas 4, 5 and 6. I do this partly because these are the stanzas having the most of the archaic phrases hard to understand at first for present-day’s ears, but also – maybe subconsciously – because I don’t feel like willing to praise ’ blood-stained weapons’.

Still, I have mixed feelings when I drop these stanzas. And also when I don’t. So I don’t quite agree with myself in either case. This needs to be explained:

The ’good, brave frontier soldiers’ gave their lives for the ’sacred case’ defending Christianity and the homeland. The Turkish soldiers gave their lives to save the souls of their infidel Hungarian brothers for the ’only one faith’. There have been so many causes, faiths, and so much blood has been shed for thousands of years for the lust of power operating with ideologies. An is still being shed today.

In my opinion, this poem is about praising life, and that’s why I sing it. And if I don’t hide the fact that it was chiefly the sword that represented manly virtue for our predecessors in their times and that they were led by their belief in defending the country, it is to give due honour to them and is not some kind of sabre-rattling.

If there are flush meadows of Elysium somewhere, and our ancestors – including Sir Balassi – are galopping around on their ’speedy stallions’ there, I imagine they wish us to stop wars and show manly virtues in defending life instead.

In the ’Balassi-codex’ we find this comment before the poem: ”To the tune of the song ’Fejemet nincsen már’<’No place to lay my head’>”. This confirms the statement I made earlier that in this age poems and songs meant very much the same. This translation is the work of the recently deceased (2012) linguist, poet, literary translator of Hindu-English origin René Bonnerjea who lived in Hungary for forty years and besides holding other posts, was a professor of the prestigious Eötvös College in Budapest. Thanks to Andy Brunning  for answering questions about prosody in applying the translation to the original tune.

Getting in contact with Calvinistic circles during his stays in Poland, Bálint Balassi got to know and thus translated the song starting with “Błogosław nas nasz, Panie”, a paraphrase of Psalm 67 from the book of Jakub Lubeczyk: Psałterz Dawida (1558). He also added a fourth stanza of his own to his translation. The preamble in his publication literally translates: ”A Polish song from verb to verb. To the tune of Blahoslav nas”.

I sing only the first stanza here in three languages: the original Polish version, Balassi’s Hungarian translation and also an English adaptation. This later one is a joint work with singer Jeni Melia and lutenist Christopher Goodwin secretary of the British Lute Society with whom and with the Kecskés Ensemble we gave some concerts in Poland by the invitation of Polish lute-artist Antoni Pilch in 2009. Grateful thanks to Antoni for his kind invitation and to Jeni and Chris for their co-operation and the tremendous help they gave me in the venture of translating to their native tongue.

As for the imitation of Polish pronounciation besides some native speakers, I owe great gratitude to Polonist Ms Anna Íjjas.

The accompaniment of the song is based on the interpretation of András L. Kecskés.

The arrangement of these two folksongs* is the work of contemporary composer Elek Huzella (1915-1971), presumably the 2nd and 3rd pieces of his Four Lovesongs for Voice and Guitar.

’Presumably’ because from the music sheet I once owned, only these two songs survived in photocopy, so being unsure of the source, I can only make probable its title.

Though I made a transcription of the accompaniment for lute as well, I found this 20th century setting – meanwhile accepting the original intention of the composer – more becoming to be played on guitar. Also, I chose a light action, commercial guitar for the purpose since effects like slides for example sound better on it.

An interesting addendum: The 2nd song based on the Messianic symbol of the rooster’s crow and amended with some additional lines in Hebrew became an internationally recognised treasure of Hungarian Judaism.** Here’s a short video from a Purim party I was kindly invited to and where I sang with the guests this version, too.

I always try to get advice from reliable native speakers when translating and novelist Ms Julia Rubin was kind enough to help me translating these songs. I met her in luthier Romanek Tihamer’s  workshop. Her new novel touches upon the lost instrument the lute-harpsichord, and travelling by in Europe, she visited Tihamer to hear the sound of his reconstructions of the instrument. I am very grateful to her for the thorough weighing of words and the brilliant pieces of advice she gave me.

* Or lovesongs from the renaissance era? – the lyrics of the first song was found in the 17th century Mátray-Codex, the second one was collected by Zoltán Kodály in 1912 as a folksong, but the provenance of it is widely debated by scholars <unfortunately, all related literature I found is in Hungarian>

** A quote from internet: ’… In particular, Reb Taub is renowned for his own poetic creations – Jewish religious texts set to Hungarian folk melodies of the immediate region, which he often considered to have originated in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. To cite his most famous example, Reb Taub once heard a shepherd boy in a meadow singing; having recognized the tune as an ancient Jewish melody from the Temple, he paid him two gold pieces for his song. The rabbi instantly learned the melody while the boy forgot it. The song itself, in Hungarian “Szól a kakas már“ (The Rooster is Crowing), remains famous to this day, repeatedly performed and recorded.’

Verbatim, non-literary English translation

Our bishop of Medvedgrad, what have you done
Turning against our king Mathias
The rolling of the wheel of truth cannot be stopped
You will dwell in a dark dungeon until you die

Why bring a Pole unto our throne
A pillory-fate would be on our necks then
The Hungarian coat of arms should not go to strangers
Let our sad past be the warning

John of Čezmice, we ask you
Never to indulge in conspiracies
Let not your hand be shamed by the dagger
Let the quill be your only arm until the end

A bilingual (Croatian-Hungarian) traditional folk-song on Janus Pannonius

Lute artist András L. Kecskés heard many years ago a historic song sung in Croatian about Janus Pannonius performed by the Croatian folk singer and guzla player Mile Krajina. He had put the melody onto paper right then and there. Later on, he acquired the sheet music of Hugó Borenich as well, a teacher and church organist from Rétfalu (today part of Osijek, Croatia). He summarized it all in his recent letter to me:
“Here I send you the sheet music with chords by Hugó Borenich. I personally prefere the version of Mile Karijena (~as more authentic perhaps?). My story goes back to the 1980-ies when I was invited to give a concert in Szigetvár. There, to my surprise, I performed on the same stage as the fantastic guzlar, the Croatian folk singer, Mile Krajina. Practically, it was a song-dual with the two of us me and Mile Krajina the guzlar his roots of style anchored deep in antiquity. No need to say this “dual” ended with the total failure on my side. Mile sang a harsh and shrill sound resembling the sound of a trumpet (the way it was still heard in the 1950-ies by historic singers in country fairs in Hungary…) Otherwise, Mile considered himself a folk poet, he was introduced like that every occasion on stage. He varied the pieces he performed every time, he even changed the melody at times. We – musicians playing from sheet music – are the victims of this practice going back to antiquity, hence the uncertainty about giving the “correct” tune. The lute accompaniment worked out by me is already imaginable by the turn of the 15th and 16th century… Apart from his songs about the Zrinyi-s and the Hunyadi-s, Mile also performed a historic piece known in Osijek about Janus Pannonius to which H. Borenich attached a few “church organist style” chords* as well in his sheet music. The tune of the historic song on J.P. performed by Mile differs a bit from the one published by H. Borenich…”

In the literature** available by me in Hungary, I found no traces of either the lyrics or the melody, however, the later shows resemblance to the melodies of Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos. After tedious search on net and correspondence with the Croatian Academy of Sciences I could gather the followings about the provenance of the song:

http://real-j.mtak.hu/4901/1/HungarologiaiKozlemenyek_1989_81.pdf

“…for example the recently deceased Hugó Borenich, teacher and reformed church organist of Rétfalu, used to perform his folk-song repertoire accompanying it on organ (even he himself had collected the work-song tradition of Slavonia), … the frequent slurring of the borderline between non-professional and professional opposition is depicted by the typical local figure of Marci Istye who at different occasions such as baptisms, weddings and funeral parties played the role of the professional artist as singer and zither player and apart from his folklore repertoire readily sang popular songs such as the legend of Jelengrad including the love story of the countess and the peasant boy, the Hungarian folk-song on Janus Pannonius, the Zrinyi ballad and the epic about Márkó Sztancsics the captain of Szigetvár…”

Hugó Borenich wrote about his collecting songs in 1933-34 in:

https://www.vamadia.rs/sites/default/files/2020-11/04_Jugoszlaviai_magyar_nepkolteszet_I_.pdf

“… I found the fragment of the folk-song about Janus Pannonius in Budakovác … this is where I became acquainted with Marci Istye (1866-1940), “the man of songs of Szarvasvár”, the legendary figure and keeper of the folk heritage of the Drava river region. It was him who called my attention to the old folks-ong that mentions a bishop. At that time I didn’t know who the song was about even though I could get the tune down form Marci Ištye’s singing. The song fragment found in Budakovác had the same subject-matter. The real final form comes from Kálmán Rumpf teacher of Vörösmart who had the whole text of the folk-song about Janus Pannonius. Combining all these, came to light a so far unknown historic folk-song about the great humanist of the 15th century. It was published together with the short biography of Marci Istye in 1973 in the Review of the academy of Sciences and Arts of Yugoslavia.”

And here is the English abstract of the said review kindly sent to me in PDF by the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Croatia:

It is awe-inspiring that – contrary to endless wars and centuries of Turkish occupation – the folk memory could keep alive an artistic relic of both the Croatian and Hungarian nations for 5-600 years in which our poet is warned against taking part in the plot against King Mathias.
The video recording of the song where I sang the song with introductory and ending lines in Croatian (apologies for my pronunciation where appropriate – my native speaker helper who said it was OK might have been too polite) and the rest with a bit updated Hungarian text can be heard at:

youtu.be/zj3Jjmn0hLo

On this site here, I have the sound recording of the full song with alternating Croatian and Hungarian stanzas plus the first 4 lines repeated in Hungarian at the end, all in the original folk version published by Hugó Borenich.

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* These chords are acually the chords played by Marci Istye, the source from who this song was collected, on his horse headed tambure.

** Yugoslav Folk Music, Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs and Instrumental Pieces from the Milman Parry Collection by Béla Bartók and Albert B. Lord, Vol. I-IV.

Publications of the Milman Parry Collection, Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs, General Editor: Albert B. Lord, Vol. III & XIV.

Bodor Anikó: Vajdasági magyar népdalok, Vol. I-III.

Paksa Katalin – Németh István: Muravidéki magyar népzene

The ballad ”Paseábase el rey moro” was translated from Arabic into Spanish (though doubted by some scholars if an Arabic version had existed at all) by Perez de Hita (1544-1619) in his historical novel (Historia de los vandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrages (1595–1619), or Guerras civiles de Granada). The ballad tells the story of the loss of Alhama, the last Moorish fortress before Granada, in 1482. Perez de Hita writes in his book: “The Count of Tendilla (who became the governer of Granada after having defeated the Moors) felt obliged to prohibit this ballad because it stirred up the populace to such a degree as to disturb the peace and make it necessary to resort to armas in order to stifle the mutinies of the Moriscos .” The music is written for vihuela by Luis de Narváez („Los seys libros del Delphín, de música cifras para tañer vihuela”, 1538: Romance <<Paseávase el Rey moro>>, del quarto tono). Neither the original Arabic poem nor it’s tune survived, however, I play some beats at the beginning of a supposed ”original” version before I start Narváez’s accompaniment as a prelude.

The ballad was translated by Lord Byron, too. Here are the fist few stanzas of it from an early publication:

This romance is a lyrical love-song, a dialogue, written by Luis de Milán (~1500-~1561) in his Libro de música de vihuela de mano; Intitulado El Maestro (1536) which was the first vihuela publication in the 16th century.
The vihuela was the popular version of the lute in Spain. Its shape resembles the guitar though it’s light structure and tuning follows the lute. My vihuela is tuned as: e’e’, bb, f# f#, dd, AA, EE, but sometimes I tune it down a full or a semitone for singing purposes. There’s a remark in a contemporary script saying that transposing the accompaniment to fit the singer’s vocal range should be avoided. It is advised to pick an appropriate size and accordingly tuned vihuela instead, one that fits the singer’s voice. Having only one vihuela, the choice was to retune it, but even that didn’t help in distinguishably but still acceptably sing the female and male parts in the dialogue so I chose a descant lute for the accompaniment instead.

This Portuguese or Gallego villancico (song) is from Luis de Milán’s (~1500-~1561) Libro de música de vihuela de mano; Intitulado El Maestro (1536).
The engraving next to the MP3 player depicts Orpheus playing the vihuela from the above book. The picture under it shows the tablature of the song with the tune to be sung printed in red.
An early 17th century Spanish author writes about the vihuela:
“This instrument has been held in great esteem until our own times, and there have been excellent players; but since the invention of the guitars there are very few who apply themselves to the study of the vihuela. This is a great loss, because every kind of notated music can be put on to it, and now the guitar is nothing but a cow-bell, so easy to play, especially when strummed, that there is not a stable-boy who is not a musician of the guitar.”
Though I translated the poem, concerning its message, there’s no point in singing more than one initial line of it in Hungarian. Even that only for fun once the site is supposed to be about translations. However, it is quite lofty to sing in medieval Gallego, the temptation of which I couldn’t resist. My grateful thanks to Ms Laura Lukács literary translator for her help in phonetics, prosody and semantics of the Spanish and Portuguese texts.
One more word about the poem: Luis de Milán was also a poet, but his merit as a poet I cannot judge. However, the most famous Valencian poet of the time Fernández de Heredia advised Milán „to stick with the only art of which he was a master, vihuela playing”.

This poem of Lord Byron was set to music by Richard Dyer-Bennet. I first heard it sung by Joan Baez in the early seventies. I follow here the original accompaniment with minimal differences on a lute guitar tuned to d/a/f/c/G/C. I felt this instrument fits best the romantic poem and song.

At least visually.

Addendum: A contemporary composer (unfortunately forgot the name) wrote a duo for lute and bagpipe. When he was criticized for the lute being non-audible due to the bagpipe, his answer was something like this: It is deliberately so. I wanted to draw attention to the importance of the neglected visual aspect of music.

Some other personal addendum: Finishing recording this song a couple of times, being hungry and searching for a restaurant ’so late in the night’, friend Tamás and I found ourselves in the streets of Budapest ’a-roving by the light of the moon’.