Outline of a Method of Musical Folklore

Constantin Br#iloiu

Ethnomusicology, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Sep., 1970), pp. 389-417.

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 OUTLINE OF A METHOD OF MUSICAL FOLKLORE
Constantin Brailoiu

(A translation from the French)

I t is with good reason that musical folklore is generally defined: a branch of

musicology. However, it would be better still t o say that it is a different
kind of musicology: the works of numerous scholars have gradually made it
an autonomous science whose object is precise and whose methods are being
outlined.
It began, at the same time as other specialized disciplines, from a desire
t o delve more deeply into particular problems which had been ignored or
regarded as secondary and, as a consequence, t o limit even more, the scope of
each category of investigation.
But the growing limitation of the subject explored carries with it an ever
more complicated means of investigation. The more our goal is restricted, the
more we will find ourselves limited, in order t o explore it completely, t o
consider the phenomena themselves, and at the same time, the conditions of
these phenomena and of those related t o them.
Now, each time our study has as its goal a human fact or one related t o
human reality, we will inevitably conclude that an understanding of any
particular aspect of life is not possible without comprehending life itself, in its
entirety. And this is why the need for specialization and dissociation [from
musicology] has had as its corollary, paradoxically, an ever increasing desire
for synthesis, s o that we have seen a new philosophy taking shape in the style
of the ancient [Greeks], a new science of all sciences, which embraces within
its realm the totality of knowledge: sociology.
But the "society" which this science is studying is merely human life in
its broadest sense, and sociology applies itself precisely t o the study of this
life, of all its conditions and manifestations. Those sciences which aim only at
studying one of these conditions or manifestations have much difficulty in
choosing their methods: if these methods are too limited, many paths t o
knowledge are cut off; if they are too broad, dallying too long on the
examination of eccentric problems, the sciences risk annihilation by pure and
simple reabsorption into sociology.
And, this is most particularly the case of musical folklore, which
constantly faces this dilemma. Because its goal being the cultural produce of a
collectivity, a "social fact" par excellence; the simple definition of this goal
makes us feel from the start the threat of sociology. It is said that the task of
musical folklore is t o study folk music. What do we mean by that? At the
moment, folklorists, in general, have agreed t o make the word "folk"
synonymous with "peasant" and t o say that their science is engaged in the
music solely of peasant origin and use. However, other definitions are possible.
One could just as well have said that the expression "folk music" designates
the totality of the melodies existing at a particular moment within a certain
rural society-as some scholars still wish t o say, particularly the Germans. The
data of our study would at once be completely changed and folklore would
no longer signify the study of peasant music, but the study of the musical life
of the peasant, and we would be squarely in the field of sociology. The
analysis of musical forms, though still necessary, would become secondary and
would retain only the importance of one possible approach. In this case, such
organic processes as the alteration of an archaic repertoire by an urban or
suburban infiltration (let us say after the opening of a bus service), the loss of
the dialectal character of a regional style through contact with the style of
another region (let us say in the mountains, as the result of a lumbering
enterprise bringing in workers from distant places), or the rise, within the
village environs, of hybrid melodic types, by the rapid assimilation of art
music (let us say after many new record players appear in the village; or the
school in the area buys a radio receiver): all this would appear more
interesting t o a man of science, because it is more alive than the sporadic
preservation of archaic specimens. On the contrary, if we worked only on the
definition of authentic rural musical styles, the specimens collected, analyzed
and classified by us-like butterflies pinned down t o their exact theoretical
place in the hierarchy of living creatures-would never disclose any secret
beyond their material reality other than their life on earth.
So much for the goal. Assuming it t o be defined as the study of peasant
music, we must still choose our method, not to speak of our technique, and
the difficulties will ever increase. Shall we limit our curiosity strictly t o
musical facts and use only musical criteria t o understand them, without
seeking the secret of musical sounds except from the sounds themselves, and
from what we know of their laws and history? Or, shall we try t o become in
turn psychologists, economists, historians, geographers, that is t o say in short,
sociologists? Shall we consider ourselves, for example, as having realized our
goal when we have described an archaic musical style in detail, proving its
antiquity and establishing its persistence or decay? Or, shall we give ourselves
t o discover why this style persists or declines, if it is a question of an organic
or an accidental fact, and consequently, t o define exactly in what measure the
style in question still satisfies the tastes of a society or is beginning t o
withdraw from it? On the other hand, poverty in the repertoire of a particular
festival may be due t o economic reasons. The use of certain musical elements
(rhythms, scales) can take its origin from some past influence. The key t o
some surprising territorial divisions may be obtained by plotting the land and
sea routes, as for example in Romania. the paths of the curious "trans-
humance" of Transylvanian shepherds toward the Carpathian plains, routes
along which songs traveled with the sheep. Shall we pursue ultimately these
relationships between cause and effect? Or, shall we select the problems which
propose themselves, from all sides, delimiting our appropriate realm and
tracing a boundary line between our science and the others?
No categorical answer seems possible to these questions, which, in fact,
boil down to one: Up t o what point can folklore approach sociology without
loosing its personality? Only the time and the place where we work, and the
material that is being studied will decide; the answer is in the concrete, and
not in the abstract. Doubtless, where the melodies of the peasants are
preserved only in the memories of a few, without any bearing t o the life of
the society, the musical information will suffice. Where, on the contrary, these
melodies really exist, are born, are transformed, and die, intimately bound
together with the evolution of the collectivity from which they stem, the
musical reality will remain impenetrable without the knowledge of the social
reality. The study of a repertoire (theoretical, of course) from which
traditional music related t o particular occasions was entirely absent, could be
pursued from the strictly musical point of view, whereas another repertoire
(also theoretical), comprising only music related t o particular occasions would
require at least a description of those occasions.
When the Archives of the Society of Romanian Composers was created
three years ago [I9281 in Bucharest, it was clear from the start that its
organizers could not limit themselves to collecting and classifying the musical
data; they would still need t o clarify this data with a range of information
and evidence, and to amplify the acoustical documentation with another
documentation whose type and extent would need t o be determined. This was
absolutely required by the nature of our folk music and the condition of
contemporary Romanian peasant society.
One can consider as particularly characteristic of the Romanian folk
repertoire its division into clearly defined genres of different styles and usage,
whose performance is itself strictly regulated by the usage. Most of these
genres are tied t o a ritual or specific occasion. Only one is "autonomous," and
that is the lyric song, which is sung anywhere and anytime only for the
pleasure of singing; it is the song "properly speaking." But actually the latter
also has its occasion, which the text of one folk song indicates very
appropriately, when it describes the sufferings of a heart tormented with too
many sorrows, and ends in these words, probably the most profound words
ever uttered about music:
"My fortune is t o be able to sing. . ."
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE

Without any doubt, a science which works on material of this descrip-

tion cannot, under any circumstances, ignore the social phenomenon to which
the musical phenomenon is inextricably attached.
If the rural archaic life had continued to exist in its entirety, with its
traditional way of thinking and its concrete manifestations, from one end of
Romania to the other, perhaps our accessory information could have em-
braced only the facts closely related to the music. Unfortunately (or
fortunately, which I need not decide here) it is not in this static world that
our folklorists will work. As the forms of Western life have permeated
Romanian society, the rural world has been drawn into an evolution, rapid
here and slow there, but everywhere active. As an eloquent illustration, two
photographs were taken, a few moments apart, at the wine-harvest of 1930, in
the district of Rimnic-Sarat, seven kilometers from the town of the same
name. They depict two country peasant girls, one aged eighteen, the other
nineteen; one born in the same hamlet where I took her picture, the other in
a mountain village about thirty kilometers away. These pictorial documents
attest that the former appears exactly llke a girl of her age a century ago,
entirely dependent upon the closed rural economy and manual industry. She
wears only the clothes which were made by herself or by her family, except
for the scarf. The other girl, entirely dependent upon mechanical industry and
monetary exchange, wearing shoes, dressed in a skirt and blouse, does not
have on her one centimeter of cloth which did not come out of factory
looms. This time it is the scarf that still betrays her rural origin.l
A new rural generation has thus emerged and far from simplifying our
task, it has, on the contrary, aggravated the situation. The fact is that it does
not mark the end of all folklore creation, at least folk music, as one might
think. As in Hungary and perhaps in other countries of Eastern Europe which
are least explored, a modern folk music style has been born in Romania. This
style, where the marvelous instinct of adaptation of the peasant collectively
has merged the elements of every type in an unexpected synthesis, is in full
bloom today and produces daily, melodic specimens of greater or lesser
success. At the point of juncture between the ancient world without an
alphabet and the new world of printing and machines, one sees in our rural
society a process taking place whose spontaneity is truly astonishing: this
process is the dual effort of integration and adaptation which tends, on the
one hand, to pour the attributes of modern civilization into the mold of the
tradition, and on the other hand, to impose upon this tradition the appear-
ance of the contemporary world. In the first case, the peasant will cut his
ancestral shoes out of a broken tire; in the second, the schoolboy will come
to the city wearing a vest in the Western style, or very nearly Western, but
made from material woven by his mother on her ancient home loom.
Resembling these shoes is the tin Alpine horn ( b u ~ i u r n )and
, ~ resembling this
vest is the Italian guitar which has some strings removed to permit an
accompaniment similar to that of the old cobza, which is becoming increas-
ingly rare.
The preceding comments will have sufficiently clarified the conditions of
folklore in the particular case of Romania. Its method of study is thus only
outlined, but an archivist may not dictate to a science what its laws are. It is
sufficient to have marked the steps of an unavoidable path. The Archives is a
depository of systematized materials, and not an academy. The quick glance
we cast just now at Romanian folk music and its environment has taught us
which materials, defined by the nature of things, are to be collected: the
melodies and everything which will help us to know their origin, their style
and their life.
Henceforth, it will be, above all, a question of technique.
Whether it is a matter of collecting or of classifying the assembled facts,
an immutable principle must always guide our work: the exclusion, to the
extreme limit of possibility, of any subjective element. It is true that the strict
observance of this principle will cause many difficulties and unfortunately will
have to undergo certain improvements in practice. It will prevent us, however,
from the risk of foolhardy interpretations and hasty conclusions.
The concern for objectivity impels us, first of all, to undertake the
mechanical recording of melodies. Only the machine is objective beyond
question and only its reproduction is unquestionable and complete. No matter
how well we notate a performer's melody by dictation, we will always miss
something in our notation, whether it be the timbre of the voice or that
particular coloration of the melody due to the vocal production of the
peasant, without speaking of the timbre of the instruments. Furthermore, the
mechanical recording avoids fatiguing the informants, and facilitates an
extensive collection. Finally, it provides us with a means of control which no
exact science can do without.
The machine utilized by folklorists is the phonograph; in our case,
specifically the Edison phonograph, preferably the "Standard" type, which is
already twenty-five years old, but still affords the greatest number of
advantages, particularly in that it is lightweight, so that it can be used
everywhere. As this phonograph is becoming increasingly rare, the Archives of
the Society of Romanian Composers, in order to avoid using small German
instruments which lack resistance, has had a modern phonograph made in
Budapest which has various improvements, but is still more complicated to
handle.
The phonograph also has its inconveniences: its volume is weak and its
recordings-uniques-are made on wax cylinders which crumble and deterio-
rate, and are barely able to withstand more than twenty to twenty-five
playings. The recordings of ensembles remains particularly impossible. In order
to preserve particularly precious musical examples, the Archives has in the
past and still continues t o transfer certain cylinders onto discs (in Paris, by
the house of Pathe, for example); and on the other hand, it has had electrical
recordings made each time the modern equipment of a foreign record
company is brought to Bucharest. It should be added that as the Archives
intends to establish documentation on Romanian folk music, which is as
complete as possible, they have constantly added to their inventory of records
and cylinders through exchange with other Archives or through the purchase
of practical commercial recordings. Exchange is possible since the Archives
possesses one of the two existing machines for duplicating cylinders by a
mechanical means.
The infallible ear of the recording diaphragm will find the infallible eye
of the lens a trustworthy collaborator. This is where the auxiliary documenta-
tion of which we have been speaking begins. This documentation, incono-
graphical in part, will have for its first task, to fix the decor of the music, the
musical occasion. Engraved in wax or ebonite, the melody which was sung at
a certain time and place during the ceremonial dressing of a certain bride, will
keep a flicker of life if the face of this bride, the attitude of the singers, and
all her surroundings remain perceptible t o us. The sight of ritual scenes of a
burial will also give a special expressive intensity to the recording of a funeral
lament, and will make its text easier to comprehend. For example, the "song
of the fir tree," which is part of the funeral ritual of the village of Runc, in
the Gorj district of Oltenia, will need to be accompanied in the Archives' files
by photographs of this fir tree, the area in front of the house of the deceased,
the church courtyard, the road t o the cemetery, and the grave.
The camera is especially invaluable to us for the precise information and
control of our sources. Nothing is more important in folklore than the exact
knowledge of these sources for each particular event. The folk melody has no
tangible reality by itself. It only exists at the moment when it is sung or
played and our lives by the will of its interpreter and in the manner he
chooses. Creation and interpretation merge together here-it must be repeated
constantly-in a way that musical practice, based on writing or printing,
ignores completely. Indeed every researcher has been struck by the liberties
the folk musician takes in the performance of a melody, treating it as his own
possession (which indeed it is, to a large extent). Therefore, it is of utmost
importance to know who this performer is, what he thinks of the music, if he
has travelled; whether, as a consequence, he has or might have undergone any
influences, or could have important melodies, etc. Let us open one of the
Archives' card catalogs and look at a document contained therein (see Fig. 1).
This is what we call the "Informant's file." One finds first, the name of the
informant, then the name of the district and the village where (in this case)
she was born, followed by a series of detailed points of information:
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE 395

J
C
SAFTA DIONISIE RACU
p d g k r a ~( Drgguq 1

4 2 a.,?nalf. - a f o s t servi
t o a r e i n Po jorta ( F g g g r a ~ ) ,
[Photograph
V ~ i l a( ~ B g g r a q ) a fost la
of c a m p l u n g ( ~ u ~ c1
s i
Informant]
g a 2 n t a t : n o t . 9 (fgr.) a= ,

-11 (fgr.1

i Fire f o a r t e emotivg . ~ l i n g e

-cfai nnt5z nded9 i a u z i n d u - ~ ic i n t e c e l e l a fonggraf . O r -

micG ,q i - a p i e r a u t b a r b a t u l ,r%manand cu
t r e i c o p i i . Z i c e c g " f e t e l e de a z i nu n a i c a n t &
c a n t e c e - a ~ e z aet , c a n t s numai de b a d i u f 1 - 5 i : "Eu
p l a n g , c a n d m 5 c a n t hupg omul meuu.

Figure 1

"Forty-two years old, illiterate, was a servant in the village o f . . . and o f . . .,

has been at . . ., has sung melodies cataloged among the notations t o nos. 9
and 11, of which phonograms are lacking.3 Some information even more
precise follows: "Has a very emotional nature. Cries while singing and listening
t o her songs reproduced b y the phonograph. Was an orphan from childhood,
has lost her husband, has three children by him. She says "the girls today n o
longer sing the old favorites but sing only those which refer t o a boy
friendn-and again: "As for myself, I cry when I sing laments in memory of
m y husband."
 All this forms a personal picture which the physical one, that preserved
by the photographs does not contradict at all: that of a poor woman without
schooling, belonging by her mentality and costume to a disappearing genera-
tion, an unfortunate woman with the gift of a fine voice, who also could have
said that her only good fortune was to know how to sing. In other words, an
ideal informant, a probable repositor of the archaic regional repertoire.
In other cases, the informant's file can help to explain certain irregu-
larities. It will tell us, for example, why certain melodies were written down
from dictation, the reason being in one case that the informant stubbornly
refused to sing in front of the phonograph, being afraid that her voice "would
remain after her death."
Certain informant's files will be quite extensive: there is one example of
the old shepherd whose photograph once appeared in l'lllustration which
includes, in addition to the memories of a classical pastoral life and the story
of ancestral migrations [transhumance] along the "sheep routes," a large
number of details on the man's typical way of thinking, dominated in its
entirety by the mystic love of the ewe, a holy animal which never goes to
sleep without tracing on the earth the sign of the cross.
The camera is sometimes insufficient when one has to capture a
ceremony, and always insufficient-in the absence of practical dance notation
-when one has to capture dance steps. It will be replaced by the movie
camera, either on narrow film strips for laboratory study, or on standard film
for simple illustration. Sound film alone can satisfy all requirements4
The folklorist's mind will have to work once again with the objectivity
of a machine when he collects statements and observations in the field. This
information will form the file from which our knowledge of the life of
melodies will be drawn. The elaboration of this musical biology (let us dare to
use this discredited term) assumes a system, whose instrument, in practice, is
the questionnaire. In a moment we will come to a "minimal" questionnaire,
whlch is used in routine expeditions. Very often one must deepen and amplify
the type of interrogation in order to gather data conforming to principles
stated above, as detailed as possible, on the one hand, about the music itself,
let us say, about the object; on the other hand, concerning the rural musical
world, its way of making, feeling, and judging the music, let us say, about the
subject.
In a general way, for the gathering of materials, we use a team equipped
with a phonograph, a motion picture camera (the Path6 baby type), as well as
a certain number of printed forms, without forgetting the number used for
the temporary classification of the recorded melodies. Such a team is usually
composed of two persons: a musician and a linguist, who makes the phonetic
transcription of the text. They usually travel over one area, not too extensive,
which has been chosen arbitrarily, on principle, in order to avoid all a pnon
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE 397

criteria: once collected, the material will itself reveal the reality and will teach
us the musical cartography.
Provincial correspondents, working according to instructions from the
Archives, will themselves help us frequently. Finally, fortuitous collections in
the capital itself will provide us with many precious specimens. A female
domestic servant, newly arrived from her village; a passing rural musician; a
young peasant who became a policeman; one of those fruit and vegetable
peddlars who abound in the city streets: these are the sources of such chance
discoveries.
In all cases the acquisitions of an expedition will be composed of
recordings, photographs, films and a temporary catalog of recorded melodies.
With each cylinder we will find the so-called "field" cards referring to the
recordings on the cylinder: these are the questionnaires mentioned earlier (see
Fig. 2). One will see shortly how these materials will be incorporated into the
Archives.
Our investigations will be able to progress much further when we
undertake a monographic study of a musical "unity": a genre, a human group,
or even a characteristic individual; for example, when we stay four to six
weeks or more in a village, for the purpose of acquainting ourselves with its
musical life in full detail. A large number of procedural techniques, impossible
in other circumstances, can be applied here, and above all, an investigation by
means of the "informant-type." An informant can be typified in many ways:
he may appear as an authorized interpreter of a certain musical genre, or he
may personify a trend of rural public taste, or he may illustrate a rule, or
clearly represent an exception. The widow and the shepherd mentioned before
are typical informants, the typical elements of preservation. They may be
contrasted with a typical element of dissolution: a young vagabond who has a
primary school certificate and an infallible memory, having left his village at
the age of eighteen, accompanied by a photographer, later having become a
kind of salesman for the domestic cloth industries from the neighboring
villages, then a cook at the "A la Reine de la Nuit" cabaret in a suburb of
Bucharest, a soldier in Bessarabia, a day laborer, a shepherd, again a cloth
salesman, again a shepherd, the servant of a landowner located at the other
end of the country, and finally, until further notice, a domestic laborer. The
repertoire of the individual naturally reflects his biography; it is composed, as
one would expect, of different verses learned in the cafes with evening
entertainment on the outskirts of the capital, but also of childhood songs,
among which is a ballad of the greatest historical and sociological interest.
Still, above all, one must consider as "typical" the average individuals who
happen t o like to sing: a child less than ten years old, a boy and a girl fifteen
years old or more and not yet married, a married man and a women thirty to
forty-five years old and an old man and an old woman (over fifty).
398 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE

SOCIETATEA COMPOZITORILOR ROMAN1

- 3%.239
Fonograrna No. . . . . . . . .

-- ---- - - -- --

Locul gi data PnretjistrXrii I

Titlul (rau prirnele cuvinte ale t e x t u l u i ) ~

Informator I

45
Vbrsta 8 ............... -
Mewria 1 ........ ......................

$tie carte ? ......%.......... A pXr$sit satul 2' f l t g

unde A loat? a. $4,,.&,.&..&
...........

kL&d..A.&t ccc& &A.f=.

Unde. c&nd qi de la cine a PnvAtnt ciintecul Y
J.C4LLI&a-,.bncUaf.

..
Figure 2

Another efficient method of investigation consists of preparing a kind of

"registry" of melodies: at the time of recording, one will note each melody
briefly, and as each informant passes before the microphone, one will find out
if the melody is known or unknown t o them. When a variant is encountered it
will be recorded; if an informant systematically sings it t o a new text, one will
simply take note of this text. In this way "frequency cards" will be made out,
furnishing us a means of reconstructing the complete repertoire of a village,
identifying its living, dead, or dying constituent parts. A living melody is a
melody frequently found. This is the case of the melody which we read on
the card produced in Figure 3, and its tempo-allegro guisto-and syllable
count constitute the essential characteristics which are immediately recog-
n i ~ e d .This
~ melody, consciously recorded several times, is therefore found in
the repertoire of a large number of informants under twenty-six years of age,
some of whom are cited here (Fig. 3).

('Green leaf of three spinaches, I enjoy my way here.')

&. = recording on cylinder of phonograph
&. = abbrev. of m,the name of a village
Fgr. Rc. 7a w 3 Alex. Hotoboc, 16 years.
&t6 Polina Popescu, 19 y.
Mar. Cimin, 17 y.
& t2
i
Mar. Bianchi, 17 y.
Domnica Loghe, 17 y.
Uleana Iacobescu, 21 y.
Ana Serban, 23 y.

1
Rosa Bianchi, 19 y.
7-t Marina C u ~ l e a ,19 y.

Lina VilHreanu, 18 y.

Ioana Gh. Popescu, 23 y.

Vasile Neagu, 26 y.

Gh. Cin,ivoiu, 19 y.

Maria GBman, 9 y.

Fgr. Rc. 114a text 217 Anica V. Lazar, 10 y.

Clitilina V. Florica, 10 y.
Dina Procopie, 15 y.

Catilina Udrea, 15 y.

Ana Dobre, 15 y.

Elisabeta D. Popescu, 14 y.

Domnica I. SFrbu, 14 y.

Marina C u ~ l e a 19
, y.

David Arib5~oiu,14 y.

Citilina A r i b i ~ o i u ,15 y.

Anica Ciauran, 18 y.

Figure 3
 .
('Green leaf of a tulip. .') . lOOa text 209
F R ~Rc. Ecat. D. Tivig, 58 y.

Figure 4

At the other extreme of the frequency diagram, one will find for
example, the melody shown in Figure 4, characterized by its ornamented lines
and its free and slow pace-lento rubato. During one field trip$ only one
informant could sing it to us, and that informant was a person of a certain
age (fifty-eight years old) and importance, not at all like the adolescent
interpreters of the preceding melody. Although very important for the study
of folk psychology, the statements of the peasants have generally very little
objective value and can never be taken literally, unless incontestable facts
confirm them. However, when this woman assures us that her song was more
than one-hundred-and-fifty years old, the statistics invite us to pay some
attention to what she says. The figures prove, in effect, that the first melody
cited, known by many young people and much enjoyed in the village at the
time of our investigation, was very much alive among the present generation,
while the second melody, unknown even to the elder singers except for one, is
only a survival from an earlier time. Suppose that we note repeatedly these
same two facts: on the one hand, a large number of melodies sung in allegro
giusto, on the other, a limited number sung in lento rubato, we would be
justified in inferring that the latter-probably old if their interpreters are
mostly elderly-are disappearing from the social environment under study. The
characteristics of the styles can thus appear from the simple juxtaposition of
the cards.
Such cards can also be made, so to speak, on the spot at wedding feasts
and dances, or at those traditional spinning parties where women, young girls,
men and young people assemble to spin, tell stories and to sing (in winter as
well as summer in certain areas). Such a spinning party took place in house
number 147 of the village where we were working on August 4, 1930, and the
folklorist has noted here (Fig. 5) all the melodies sung between 10:30 P.M.
and 1:15 A.M. By relating this to the phonograrns whose sequence of numbers
have been added, it will be easy to ascertain with the help of documents like
these, the exact state of a repertoire.
Once our materials are gathered, we shall proceed to the second part of
our task, which consists of assembling the materials in order and integrating
them into a system.
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE

(Sezitoare = spinning party)

(2 ori = 2 times; 1 dati = once; Not. = Direct notation, not recorded;fi$i = card number)
Figure 5
 First of all, a delicate task awaits us, i.e., the transcription of the
recordings, a task for which one can never give too much attention to
reproduce faithfully in notation all the nuances of a rural be1 canto: the
glissandos of the voice, appoggiaturas, imponderable passing tones and orna-
ments. One must have a firm hand, a well-trained ear, and the constant aid of
the metronome. We have felt it useful to give all the notations, so far as
possible, approaching that seen in Figure 6 (the transcription of a funeral
lament, Bocet, from southern Transylvania, sung under the influence of strong
emotion, shown, for example, by an inarticulate sound on the eighth line
toward the middle).
Everyone knows that a folk melody is almost always a short phrase
which the performer repeats as often as necessary in order to complete the
text. But at each repetition, folk interpretation makes the rhythm, melodic
line, and even the formal structure undergo alterations which are more or less
perceived and which one can call variations. The study of these variations,
recently begun, is perhaps the most difficult but certainly the most important
problem of folk music: here, we touch upon the vital sources of the folk
creation. It seems probable indeed-and certain findings verify this-that the
"variations" of a certain good singer sometimes pass into the repertoire of a
collectivity, becoming entrenched and thus giving birth to new melodic types
through the transformation of old ones. Nothing is more natural: the elements
of music supposedly given by physics, the crystallization of a folk style
implies the manipulation of collective preferences. Therefore, from the
scientific point of view, one must consider as an error the habit of recording
the folk melodies only once or twice under the pretext that they repeat
themselves. To act correctly, one should always allow the informant to sing or
play as long as he feels it necessary, as has been done on the recording of the
funeral lament cited above. The melody-composed of three phrases-was sung
a total of ten times. It is written in its entirety on the first staff. Upon
playing back, when the melody line remained in tact, only the text was
transcribed in such a way that each syllable would fall exactly under the
corresponding tone; when it varies, the variations were notated under the
initial melodic formula; each rhythmic variation is indicated in its place, only
by the signs of duration. At the first glance, one will discern the manner in
which the Variationstneb 'the instinct of variation' is practiced; the fragments
of the melody which it has preferentially molded (the pencilled transcriptions)
and those which it has avoided (white spaces) are immediately visible. It
happens that the folk interpretation, always more or less similar to an
improvisation, goes so far as to break down the formal structure itself, as is
shown by the notation of this song from Bessarabia (Fig. 7), which the
informant began on its second phrase, and of the funeral lament from
Northern Moldavia (Fig. 8), which was, on the contrary, augmented by one
phrase at the first repetition.
(Translation for Fig. 6):
Text: (The underlined vowels are extra syllables or anacmses)
1st stanza: Dear relative-in-law, and my very dear (repeated)

Our relative-in-law, our very active

2nd stanza: I went and returned (repeated)

But you, what did you think?

3rd stanza: Haven't you thought it better (repeated)

t o come to me, m y relative-in-law?

4th stanza: I shall write a little letter (repeated)

a little letter with lovely words

5 t h stanza: T o carry and deliver it to my husband. (repeated)

Dear relative-in-law, and my very dear.

6 t h stanza: And [ m y ] husband will ask you,

"How are we doing around here?" (repeated)

7th stanza: But we are doing quite well. (repeated)

But, nobody is like [ m y ] husband.

8th stanza: Dear relative-in-law, and my very dear

For. m y relative-in-law, had I known

I would have taken you up t o the mountain

9 t h stanza: And, I would have taken you up t o the mountain

And I would have brought you back to the courtyard (repeated)
10th stanza: And I would have taken you up t o the hill (repeated)
And I would have brought you home again.
Translation for Fig. 7):

Text: s hpii and alei are anacrustic interjections with no meaning. The underlined vowels or syllables are extra syllables or anacruses.

1st stanza: Green leaf [of a] walnut seedling (repeated) 3rd stanza: Not trodden by cart with oxen
2nd stanza: It's a long way to Cremenciuc But, trodden by watchmen. (repeated)
It's a long, long trodden one. (repeated)
Figure 7

+-.
~r h-
Translation for Fig 8).
1st stanza: Mother's darling, where are you going? (repeated) 2nd stanza: But why don't you look back?
You don't even look back. For you left a cart with oxen
And the garden, the one with trees (repeated)
 Once the melodies are transcribed, it is then a matter of setting up a
methodical catalog and, if possible, a practical one. Our desire to remain
incessantly objective will encounter a serious obstacle here. Any catalog
presupposes a classification, and any classification, criteria. It is too great a
temptation to seek these criteria from musical analysis, but analysis inevitably
implies a subjective point of view. After encountering lengthy perplexities, we
finally decided not to take the style of the melodies into account, but to
adopt a method of classification which somewhat reproduces the musical
reality itself: thus, we established a two-fold catalog,7 assembling, on the one
hand, all the melodies having the same geographical origin, and on the other,
all those which belong to the same musical genre. The divisions by political
geography, that is to say, the names of the geographical divisions by
alphabetical order suffice for the regional classification and permits one to
find readily the melodies of any region. However, here we have reached the
point of our first compromise. Does a melody of Moldavia, sung by a
Moldavian in Bucharest, belong to a Moldavian repertoire? Or, at the moment
of recording, shall we consider it as a part of the musical repertoire of
Bucharest? Considering it as Moldavian, we would have it implicitly analyzed
(that which one must avoid), or considering it as an item from Bucharest, in
the case of a typical example, we would be inconsistent with the folk
classification which should guide us in all cases. The compromise adopted
consists in settling such difficult cases by following the indications of the
informants.
The nomenclature "by genre" which the catalog uses, was borrowed,
according to the same principle, from the people themselves. It is no less
conventional, for the folk terminology varies from province to province, if not
from village to village. To cite only one example, the asymmetric and
monotonic melody described by Bela Bartok in one of its variants (that of
Maramure~)and commonly called "doina" carries another name exactly in the
areas where it is popular: in Oltenia as well as in Maramureq-the evidences are
numerous and categoric-they say that it is a "long" song.8 Therefore, it has
been necessary to use conventional terms whose precise meaning is indicated
at the beginning of the catalog. The card catalog "of observations," about
which we will be speaking again, will restore the authentic terminology.
Once the melodies are grouped in the way that has just been described,
the following subdivisions will be established in the regional catalog following
the names of the village (alphabetical order), the genres (alphabetical order),
the dates of recording (chronological order), the age of the informants,
starting with the youngest. Within the groups comprising melodies belonging
to the same genre, one will bring together the melodies carrying a title
describing their popular usage, such as the dances or the ballads (of which the
people have the habit of expressly pointing out epic themes), and this will be
done by following the alphabetical order of the titles. In this manner, for each
village of each geographical division, we will have reconstructed the repertoire
of each generation at the time of each investigation.
In the other catalog, after having made the classification according to
the alphabetical order of the genres, we will continue to follow the alpha-
betical order of the titles, if the items to be classified have one, and if they
do not, then the order of the names of villages, and we will finish as in the
regional catalog (ages of informants, dates of recordings). This method will
furnish us with readily available information on the geographical distribution
of each genre in each region within each generation, all this at the time of
each investigation.
Now it remains only to systematize the documentation gathered.
One could see that all which concerns the informant, the repertoire
included, is recorded on his personal card, in the case of a typical informant,
but without the data concerning the technique, terminology and musical
creation. Thus, it will not be mentioned on the informant's card that the girl
F.D. . ., of J village, district of M . . ., alters "all the songs," according to her
contemporaries (a detail which is relative to the folk creation).
Thus, on the catalog cards, we only inscribe that which relates to the
individual melodies. The information of a general nature, that which concerns
the technique, terminology, and musical creation-all these are destined for
another card. The habit of such and such an informant of only singing such
and such a song at such and such an occasion is an accidental detail only valid
for this particular song: it will be recalled in the catalog. The ritual linked to
such and such an independent musical genre concerns, on the contrary, a
complete category of musical pieces and must be described elsewhere.
To better understand these procedures let us take a concrete example:
the "field" card cited earlier (Fig. 2). Let us begin by summarizing the
elements: number of provisional order Rc. 234, i.e., the 234th recording
made at Runc, district of Gorj, date of this recording, title of the recorded
melody (the "Play of the Puppets" played on the bagpipe), name of
informant, age of informant (forty-three years old), the degree of education
(illiterate), travels (has participated at the hay harvest in the region close to
Hunedoara beyond the Carpathians and has tended the sheep in the neighbor-
hood of the village), origin of the melody (learned it from his father at home,
a long time ago). To these, the following information is added: the informant
performed the "Play of the Puppets" for his friends and in public. He believes
that the "Play of the Puppets" brings him good luck. The puppets inherited
from his father were stolen from the informant, and the puppets he uses were
made by him. Sometimes he performs at the dance when the "band" is
absent. He is paid three to ten lei for a dance (he earns at most sixty lei in a
day). He owns some land. He says that all the dances cannot be played on the
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE 407

bagpipe. He knows how to play the flute9 and the ocarina. He says that
whoever knows how to play the flute, also knows how to play the bagpipe.
He himself "has made" a bagpipe (has mounted the pieces inherited from his
father on a new goatskin). The instrument was sketched (see Fig. 10). The
"Play of the Puppets" was photographed, filmed, and described (see special
cards). The father of the informant was himself a piper.
One will begin by extracting from this data, that related to the person
of the performer (D.D.V. . ., village of V.M. . ., district of G. . ., forty-three
years old, illiterate, pupil of his father, himself a piper, was at such and such a
place, believes that the P. of the P. brings him good luck); this data will be
used, together with the photograph of the informant, in making up the
informant's card.
The remaining information is to be chosen. We discern, above all, a
technical description: the affirmation of the instrumentalist that, t o play the
bagpipe, it is sufficient to know how to play the flute. The particulars on the
use of the bagpipe for the dance are related to the regional repertoire and the
earnings of the piper at this occasion, even though it is apparently a pure
economic fact, pinpoints equally the state of this repertoire, the large
difference between these earnings and that of the band (twenty to thirty lei
per dance), proving a marked preference of the dancers for the latter and
pointing out the decay of the bagpipe.10 Thus, only two pieces of informa-
tion indissolubly attached to the melodic sample remains: that which is
connected with the occasion (by chance) and that which is connected with

G O R J
Valea Mare
" JOCUL PAPUSILOR*

1 F'gr .631 ( c . B r i i i l o i u ) - Not .802 (C . B r B l l o i u )

I
?nreg.~unc(~orj)l4.4.31
D.Vulpe , 4 3 a . , a n a l f .
- d i n clmsoi - Dumitru

Vezi f i q e l e : inform. , R 1 0 1 ,T 134 ,T 135 , T 136 , T 1 3 7 ,

fotogr. X V I I - ~ , X V I I - ~ I ~ I I - ~ I ~ ~SP
mf. a i n v a t a t J . P . d e l a t a t a l s a u , d e m u l t . il Joacfi
l a p e t r e c e r i q i pentru p r l e t e n i
408 BRAILOIU:METHOD OF MUSICAL FOLKLORE

the origin (a particular case): thus, they are placed on the catalog cards and
edited as seen in Figure 9.l
The other elements given on the "field" card will supply us with the
materials of the following auxiliary cards:
R 101. --- Distr. of Gorj. (Villages of V.M., Runc and surroundings).
Inform.: D.D.V., 43y., ill.
The dance in the villages cited is still occasionally
performed accompanied "by the bagpipe": when the
violins are absent, etc. (followed by the amount of
earnings of one and the other).
These details were checked on the spot.12
T 134. --- Inform.: D.D.V.. . [etc.]. District of G . . ., village of V.M.
The informant affirms that in order to play the bagpipe, it
is sufficient to know how t o play the flute.
T 135. --- Inf.: D.D. V. . . [etc.]. Distr. of G . . . [etc.].
The informant says that all the dances cannot be played by
the bagpipe.
The card T 136 has a totally different aspect (Fig. 10).

-
C OR J

Inf.spune c& a "f&cutn singur cimpoiul s&u.De fapt a montat pe

up burduf nou piesele moqtenite dela tatHl s&.u.
Bazoiul dB fundamentala @ ,>iscoaia quinta sup.a acesteia 31
o serie maJor& incepand cu octava b~zciului.

Figure 10
 Finally, on card T 137, one will read:
The Play of the Puppets. Inf.: D.D.V.. . . [etc.]. Distr. of G . . . [etc.].
The P. of the P. is a short drama, played by two characters, a
male and female peasant: the meeting, erotic scene, and the final
dance. It can be continued ad infiniturn as the episodes repeat
themselves. The informant sticks a knife into the wooden table. A
thread is attached from the knife's handle to the forefinger of the
informant's left hand. The puppets are suspended from t h s thread,
on which they slide. The informant enables them to dance while
playing the bagpipe, by the movement of his finger. The puppets
were made by him, since those which he inherited from his father
had been stolen.
Once the films and photographs are classified, the ordering of the
material concerning the Play of the Puppets is accomplished.
The letters preceding the serial number on the cards cited, correspond to
the divisions of the auxiliary information files. Based upon the characteristics
of Romanian folk music and on experience obtained in the field, we have
established six similar divisions, that being the number of problems judged to
be the most important ones: Repertoire; Ritual, Ceremonies; Technique and
terminology; Aesthetic; Circulation; and, Creation. In other words, one tries to
answer the following questions: What does one sing? When and where does
one sing? How does one sing? Why does one sing like one sings? Where do the
songs come from? How did the songs come into being?
We did not think it necessary to make a special category for historical
documentation. The hstorical documents which one collects in a village are,
almost always, very unreliable,13 and can always be related either to a special
melody (and in this case, they will be cataloged), or to the living or dead
repertoire of a region. We have purposely avoided all critical or analytical
observations, in a positive manner, by the principle that: the work of the
archivist is not, I repeat, to present the conclusion, but to assemble and to
co-ordinate the materials of future systems.
Before closing, let us cite an example from these complimentary files,
card E (Aesthetic) (Fig. 11):
E 58. --- District of Gorj, village of Runc. Inf.: Marie Arbagic, nine
years old. To third grade of elementary school. August
1930.
The informant laughs at the guttural sounds characteristic of
the melodies of the ancient style which her mother
sings, a sound which she compares to the braying of
the donkey. To her, these ancient melodies seem "ugly
enough to make you run away."
 (Translation for Fig. 1I):
Songs from [the period of] military service.
Left side of page: My dear, I spent
last night b y
the field near
the station. The policemen
as they were running like
engines they were puffing
and I thought
by Heaven upon my word that they were
pushed by some
piston. One day
I met
a boy a well
bred one and we
spent a night
of love
and whispers and at
daybreak upon m y word
he was puffing like a
pistol.
Right side of page: Today I will
brace down the
girder come down
from now o n off
the nail you mirror
mother is out
- - -
in t h e villaee with the longing.
I'm alone
the chickiddy and I will
lock the door
of the parlor with
the bolt. Here I am
the same
as ever. My eyes
make a nice
pair and what
a beautiful head
appears. It is not
mine
it is mine indeed
and n o w behind the ear
there is (placed) a flower.
Figure 11
 And finally, here is a card R (Ritual):
R 45. --- Funeral lament. Obs. District of Fagar;$, village of DrBgus.
23.7.29.
At the burial of Vasile Trsmbitas, the lament was sung only
on the day following his death (23.7), namely: the
first time, at dawn; the second time, intermittently
during the morning; the third, in the afternoon at the
moment the flowers were placed in the coffin; the
fourth, when the priest arrived; the fifth, when the
coffin was lifted; the sixth, without interruption on
the way to the cemetery, except during three prayers
at the crossroads; and the seventh time, at the
cemetery.
The explanation of the procedure for classifying auxiliary cards would
lead us far astray. Shall we say, however, that this procedure is not the same
for all materials, and that it has as its purpose to allow the consultation of
accessory documents besides the recordings and notations. Also, let us say at
this point that this document will not always be the concise notation. Trying
unceasingly, as much as possible, to obtain the living facts, we will not
content ourselves only by taking note of the fact that, in the village of Runc,
where we have spent much time, the ballads are becoming more and more
extinct; and we will not content ourselves only by assembling figures and
statements on the subject. The stenogram,14 preserving forever the vain
efforts which the professional musician Zlataru has made on April 14, 1930,
calling to mind the ballads of Marc Daliu and the Turk, will be even better.

I
Figure 12
 Figure 13. A map of Romania. The shaded markings indicate the areas from which the Archives had recordings until
the end of 1931, the year when this article was first published. (The map was drawn by Mircea D. Nicolescu).
 Nothing will make the "circulation" of melodies more comprehensible
than a page from the song book of a young Transylvanian, such as a soldier in
Bucharest, and nothng will better explain the "technique" of a children's
game intermingled with music than the childish drawing (Fig. 12) with which
I conclude this dry dissertation of an Archvist.

The need for a republication and translation of this fundamental article became
particularly apparent t o Ann Briegleb after spending six months of research in Romania
in 1969. A TECHNICAL TRANSLATOR, Margaret Mooney, undertook the task of
translating the French into Enghsh. The translation was then edited by Mrs. Briegleb and
Mariana Kahane.

FOOTNOTES

1. Mr. Emile Vuillermoz published a witty and keen commentary on these

documents in [the Paris magazine] I'Zllustration of April 4, 1931.
2. Formerly made of wood and from the bark of the birch or sour [morello]
cherry tree.
3. The reference Cfgr.) indicates that the notation in question was made from
phonograms which were later lost.
4 . Since this paper was delivered, the first three-hundred meters of a folklore
sound film were recorded with the help of the Archives of the Society of Romanian
Composers, on June 22, 1930.
5. On the card cited, the figures indicate the number of the recordings and of
the texts, and the brackets contain the names of the groups of informants who sang
together.
6. Musical monograph of the village of Runc, dist. of G o j , Oltenia (coded Rc.
on the card). The field trip lasted five weeks (Summer, 1930) and was completed by a
further one-week inquiry (Spring, 1931).
7. The notations themselves receive, at the moment they are entered into the
files, a simple inventory number, the same as that of the cylinders or discs at the time
they are placed in the cabinets: only the cards are filed.
8. Many such examples can be found in Bdla Bartdk's remarkable work,
Volksmusik der Rumunen von Maramures (Munich, 1923).
9. It is the pastoral flute.
10. The "bands" which we mention here are small orchestras, generally called
taraf In this region, they comprise two violins, one three-stringed guitar and one
two-stringed contrabass. This is the minimal emsemble. These ensembles are recent. The
performers are real professionals, gypsies.
11. This is the "regional" card. Here one reads: name of the district, name of the
village, title of the melody, the actual inventory number of the recording and name of
the person who made it, actual inventory number of the notation and name of the
person who made it, date and place of the recording, the instrument upon which the
melody was played; name, age and degree of instruction of the informant; mention of the
documents t o be consulted: informants file, cards R 101, T 134, T 136, T 137, photo-
graphs XVII-1, XVII-2, XVII-3, XVII-4. Finally the two indications previously cited.
12. In all cases the date of the observation and the signature of the editor follow.
13. The folklorist is often surprised to hear that the peasants attribute a long age
to some refrain from a cafe-concert which has been popular for ten years, while an
authentic folk song which appeared one or two years ago seems recent to the peasant,
and indeed it is so. This is because we are working on living musical materials.
14. Unfortunately this cannot be translated.
EDITORS NOTES: The paper translated above was first published in the Romanian
journal, Boabe d e gn'u, 11, No. 4 (1931), under the title "Schira a unei metode de
folclor" (pp. 204-19). A translation in French ("Esquisse d'une mdthode de folklore
musical") appeared in Revue de musicologie, No. 4 0 (November, 1931), 233-67. This
contribution is still highly regarded among specialists as one of the important landmarks
in the field.
N. B.: Because the original photographs have been difficult to obtain, they have
been o x d in the present translation. Thus, the order of Figures comprising many of
the original illustrations have been altered. The photograph omissions from the French
article comprise Figures 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 , 8, 10, 12, 18, 19 and 20. The Figures utilized in
the present translation are given with reference to their appearance in the French edition:
Figure 1 was 4 (p. 242)

Figure 2 was 7 (p. 246)

Figure 3 was 9 (p. 248)

Figure 4 was 11 (p. 250)

Figure 5 was 13 (pp. 252, 253)

Figure 6 was 14 (p. 255)

Figure 7 was 15 (p. 257)

Figure 8 was 16 (p. 257)

Figure 9 was 17 (p. 259)

Figure 10 was 21 (p. 263)

Figure 11 was 22 (p. 265)

Figure 12 was 23 (p. 266)

We have added Figure 13 as an important aid to the reading of this article. Before
commenting upon the paper in question, the following preliminary remarks are offered:
Constantin Br%loiu was born in Bucharest, Romania on the 26th of August, 1893.
He studied in Austria, Switzerland and France, and began his professional pursuits as a
composer, critic and professor at the Bucharest Conservatory of Music. It was here where
he became increasingly interested in the study of folk music, a study to which he
ultimately devoted his entire life. His strong inclination toward folk music, already
evident in his early compositions, led a critic of that time to classify him among "les
compositeurs A l'ime folkloriste (Schaeffner 1959:3-4)."
Briiloiu was one of the founders of the Society of Romanian Composers and one
of the main promoters of both Romanian art and folk music. In 1928, he succeeded in
creating the Archives of Folklore of the Society of Romanian Composers, and years later
gave a course in folk music at the Conservatory in Bucharest.
As the resources of the Archives were being increasingly enriched through varied
and intensive field research, Brzloiu lectured in Romania and abroad, and published a
number of remarkable studies and collections based on his first-hand experience. These
efforts earned for him a place of high esteem in the scholarly world.
In 1944, Briiloiu realized a project he had conceived with Laszlo Lajtha some time
previously, i.e., the founding of Les Archives Internationales de Folklore Musical (Briiloiu
1945), which formed part of the Musde d'Ethnographie in Geneva, whose Director,
Professor Pittard, offerred much assistance. A few years later, Briiloiu was appointed to
such renowned institutions as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the
Ddpartement d'Ethnomusicologie du Musde de l'Homme, and the Institut de Musicologie
de la Sorbonne-all in Paris. He was one of the organizers of the Colloques de Wdgimont
and had an active role in the meetings devoted to musicology and ethnomusicology.
During this time he produced a number of important works, which included published
studies and recorded (disc) collections (for a complete bibliography and discography of
Briiloiu's works see Schaeffner 1959). Briiloiu died in Geneva in 1958.
Undoubtedly one of the foremost features of Britiloiu's scholarship was his concern
for methodology, which involved field work, the organization of folk music archives and
research studies. Andrd Schaeffner pointed out the Briiloiu "avait le genie de la methode
(1959:7)."
 Factors contributing to this methodology were: 1) a synthesis of what B r a o i u had
chosen from the activities of his Romanian predecessors, mainly D. G. Kiriac, and from
foreign scholars, among whom Bdla Bartdk was highly admired; 2) Briiloiu's own field
experience; and 3) his cooperation with the Romanian school of sociology, headed by
Dimitrie Gusti.
The first field trip made by Professor Gusti's sociology seminar was to a
north-eastern Romanian village. BrZloiu was invited to participate in this first endeavor,
which became a strong stimulus for creating the Archives of Folklore. He continued to
co-operate with this seminar in succeeding years. Along with the sociologists, other
specialists, such as ethnographers, linguists, musicologists, etc., participated in this team
project, which influenced Br%loiu's future field work.
With the growth of the Archives and the broadening of his practical experience,
BrCloiu's efforts at a greater methodological clarification became the subject of several
lectures (Prague, 1930; Paris, 1930 and 1931), and of the "Outline of a method of
musical folklore." This modestly entitled "outline" is directed to the idea of "archive"
and not of "academy" as he points out. However, this is more than an outline, because
in a x r g e r sense it deals with the organization of an archive. Additional details were
discussed by the sociologist, H. H. Stahl (1934), who was one of Briiloiu's closest
co-workers in the research group.
In order to formulate and apply an adequate method, Briiloiu fust discusses the
object of research. Folk music is considered as a social phenomenon, having a certain
function in human life; therefore, it has to be observed and referred to in its context.
The functional character of folk music was also emphasized in his later works. "Here, art
does not reign as a master and does not seek beauty as its single aim. Its role is to serve
(BrBiloiu 1959)." This is the reason for the importance of abundant documentation with
regard to the melodies, because the musical notation, as accurate as it may be, does not
bespeak completely the song. Such aspects of folk music, like: the poverty of a
repertoire, specific musical elements, certain regional distributions, etc., cannot be
commented upon without examining the economic and social life as well. In a survey on
this subject, Ovidiu BGlea (1969) points out that in Romania, Briiloiu expanded the
study of folk music from morphological studies (comparable to the philological method)
to the investigation of phenomena, of processes. The research had no further goal than
style, together with a scrutiny of its changes from one generation to another.
At the same time, Briiloiu was careful about the autonomy of "musical folklore,"
a study which should cover, not only the context of the material, but also the structure
of the material itself. Folklore is a social and aesthetic phenomenon and must be
regarded under both functional and aesthetical aspects. A relevant example of this
twofold approach is found in his book concerning the lament in the village of Drigug
(Briiloiu 1932) of which he presented both the phenomenon of lamenting and the
structure of the lament, including its morphological and aesthetical aspects based on the
informant's own criteria. Among other scholars, Bartdk expressed his admiration for this
work, especially Brhloiu's concern for minute details. Furthermore, according to Bartdk
(1956:48-49), it was an exemplary description of a folk custom.
Considering the syncretism of folklore, several interdisciplinary specialists co-
operated in this endeavor. The cautious exclusion of subjectivity is reflected in every
stage of the research process, i.e., collection, classification, and interpretation of the
material. The respect for authenticity impels the recording and photographing of the
subject. Folklore is collected both by interview and direct observation, the latter concerns
registering chronologically, the evolution of the event at the time of its observation. The
means of investigation is the "informant-type," i.e., the informant as a representative of a
particular human group (noting such particulars as sex, age, profession, education, etc.),
repertoire, style, or any phenomenon of folk life. A complex set of cards with various
sub-topics provides a manifold documentation on each item-on the collected data itself
as well as the informant. The frequency of occurrence of each item in folk life is
systematically investigated. Thus, the frequency card becomes the means of reconstruct-
ing the entire repertoire of a village, discerning statistically its extant and forgotten parts,
as well as that part which is passing into oblivion.
 BRAILOIU: METHOD O F MUSICAL FOLKLORE

BrMoiu made use of the experimental method in ethnomusicology, by recording

the same song in its varied instrumental and vocal performances, as well as from the same
performer at different times. Such attempts had been made before by other scholars, but
he was the first t o apply this method consistently in Romania. A greater consistency was
also achieved in confronting the dictated and sung versions of the texts, or the versions
before and during the recording.
Extreme care should be taken in the transcription of melodies, to avoid the bias of
the transcriber's training in Western music and to approach folk music from its own side.
Briiloiu devised a synoptical and detailed system of notation which provides a unique
proffie of the complete song, offering at once a picture of its melodic, ornamental and
rhythmic structure as well as its varied and stable formal structures. He shared the
opinion of other scholars that the study of variation leads to the very sources of the folk
creation. While relying mainly on transcriptions made from recordings, Briiloiu did not
reject completely the notations made on the spot by dictation. These latter notations
were referred to as "auxiliary sources" and filed separately in the Archives.
Additional guidelines for field work appeared in other books, as for example,
questionnaires for weddings and funerals, published in co-operation with H. H. Stahl
(Stahl 1940). Much importance was given to the editing of recordings, presenting folk
music on the basis of geographical locations and genres; thus, at least providing the total
picture concerning the repertoire of a country as well as the regional distribution of
genres.
The investigation utilizing informant-types, frequency cards and statistics was
systematically applied by BrMoiu in a special study of the musical life of a Romanian
village (1960). This research was based upon a quantitative canvassing of group samples,
completed with a qualitative checking of frequency of occurrence and knowledge
gathered concerning each item. Being assigned a task of a sociological nature, his problem
now was not the identification of genres, styles, and their distribution, but the
description of the musical life, i.e., of the musical behavior of a social unit, restricted
here to one village (Stahl 1940). This time "the conditioning of artistic facts prevailed
over the facts themselves."
Briiloiu's field research, which lasted for several years began with an exhaustive
investigation of the repertoire of sixty informants, chosen at random, and a compiling of
the inventory of melodies and texts. By confronting the individual repertoires and
gathering data from direct observation at the occasions of their performance, he
calculated the frequency of each melody and in this manner he determined the repertoire
which was representative of the village. The next problem was the actual status of each
melody in the village. Since it was impossible and worthless to interview all the villagers,
he adopted the statistical method of selection, practiced by the sociologists, which proved
adequate for his own research. Based upon the statistical grouping of the village made
formerly by sociologists, Brgloiu chose individual informant-types to represent a cross-
section of the village. The criteria for his selection were: age, sex, schooling, travels,
profession, military service (for men), talent (for girls, according to the villagers'
evaluation). The problem was t o detect how many informants knew the melodies listed in
the inventory, and to what extent. When he analyzed and interpreted the collected data,
he tried to formulate rules concerning their oral transmission. This resulted in a
remarkable sociological study of music, applied particularly to folk music which many
scholars regarded as the peak of Briiloiu's research.
The principles stated in the "Outlines. . ." provided the foundations for later
investigations. In subsequent works, Briiloiu gathered enough data to support the theory
of collective creation and he developed a theory that folk and primitive music were based
upon rigorous and, at times, remarkably subtle systems (rhythmic, melodic, etc.),
governed by elementary rules (Braoiu 1969). The fundamental elements of the
systems-patterns common to the social group-are necessarily rigid to enable the
transmission of repertoire from one performer to another. At the same time, they are
susceptible to individual treatments, thus providing the possibilities of variation in each
performer's need of expression, to remain a music "of all (Braoiu 1959)." In the studies
devoted to these systems, Briiloiu presented mathematical tables, and showed the trends
of folk music through the methodical and exhaustive use of the resources of a system. A
thorough transcription and analysis is required, because these systems are sometimes
obscured and cannot be revealed except by minute analyses.
Many of Constantin BrMoiu's numerous papers, dispersed in journals, pamphlets,
collected works, etc., have not as yet been translated into other foreign languages. Two
volumes, bringing together several of his works written in French, have been published in
both French and Romanian, and the series will continue (Braoiu 1967-69). Valuable
ideas and applications of methodology have appeared in almost all his works. It is
regrettable that the premature death of this scholar prevented him from synthesizing his
life-time experiences and conceptualizations on this subject.
The Institute of Ethnography and Folklore [Institutl de Ethnografie gi Folclor]
created in 1949 in Bucharest, is based upon the former Archives of Folklore of the
Society of Romanian Composers, and includes, in addition, the former Phonogram
Archive of the Ministry of Arts, headed by George Georgescu Breazul. Briiloiu's
methodology, inherited and further developed by the Institute, continues to exist even
after the scholar's death.

REFERENCES CITED IN EDITORS' NOTES

Bartdk, BBla
1956 Insemnari asupra cintecului popular, Bucharest, which is a Romanian translation
of the original Hungarian, Midrt es hoyan gyujts-ilnk ndpzdnet [Why and how to
collect folk music?]. Budapest: Ed. Seml6, 1936. This was subsequently
translated into French, Pourquoi et comment recueille-t-on la musique
populaire? Geneva: Imprimerie Albert Kundig, 1948.
Bklea, Ovidiu
1969 Metoda de cercetare a folkclorului [The method of research in folklore].
Bucharest.
Briiloiu, Constantin
1932 "Despre bocetul de la Drigug (jud. Figdras) [On the lament in D r i g u ~(the
county of Fagaras)] ," Archiva pentru stiinti gi reformd sociali, 10, nrele 14.
1945 "Les archives internationales de musique populaire," Bulletin mensuel des
musdes et collections de la Ville de GenBve, mars.
1959 "Folklore musical," Encyclopddie de la musique. Paris.
1960 Vie musicale d'un village. Recherches sur le rdpertoird de Drigug (Roumanie),
1929-1932. Paris.
1967-69 Constantin Briiloiu, Opere - Oeuvres. Emilia Cornisel, transl. Bucharest, vol. 1,
1967; vol. 2, 1969.
1969 "Musicologie et ethnomusicologie aujourdhui," Bericht Uber den siebenten
internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress, Koln, 1958. I n Constantin
Brgoiu, Opere, vol. 2.
Schaeffner. Andre
1959 "Bibliographie des travaux de Constantin Braoiu," Revue de musicologie
43:3-27.
Stahl, H. H.
1934 Tehnica monografiei sociologice [The technique of the sociological mono-
graph] . Bucharest.
1940 Indrumari pentru monografiile sociologice [Guidelines for the sociological
monographs]. Bucharest.
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Outline of a Method of Musical Folklore
Constantin Br#iloiu
Ethnomusicology, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Sep., 1970), pp. 389-417.
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Bibliographie des travaux de Constantin Brailoiu

André Schaeffner
Revue de musicologie, Vol. 43e, No. 119e. (Jul., 1959), pp. 3-27.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0035-1601%28195907%292%3A43%3A119%3C3%3ABDTDCB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H