Martori ai unei relații „interetnice” speciale: scrisorile lui Bartók păstrate de Brăiloiu
Witnesses of a special 'interethnic' relationship: Bartók's letters preserved by Brăiloiu

Summary/Abstract: The scientific relationship between Béla Bartók and Constantin Brăiloiu represents a beautiful and extremely instructive episode in the history of 'borderless' ethnomusicology. Brăiloiu was Bartók's most important collaborator in the research of Romanian folk music, a devoted supporter of his work, and a propagator of his most important achievements. Bartók, in turn, considered the documentation system applied by his younger colleague's research group as an exemplary method in his 'precepts of musical folklore' (Why and How to Collect Folk Music). The correspondence between these two authorities in folk music research offers a deep insight into their collaboration. Ferenc László, the most diligent editor of these letters, dedicated a comprehensive and systematic article to discuss the main lessons of these documents available until 1980. However, the collection of 36 letters by Bartók, kept in Brăiloiu's possession in Paris and discovered relatively recently, has received considerably less attention in the literature. These letters, mostly written between 1933 and 1939, offer a new perspective on Bartók's late folkloristic activities: for example, issues related to the revision of Bartók's collection of Romanian folk music transcriptions, questions related to some phonograph and gramophone recordings, or discrepancies between the two's opinions on the transcription and analysis of folk music. In this article, I would like to draw attention to some particularly interesting points of this material.

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