Folk songs and material culture in medieval Central Europe

About this book

Presenting the past in terms of conceptual tools and manners of dealing with cultural material in order to understand the present is the purpose of this book.00This book takes a unique approach to the study of folk music in Central Europe. Through an analysis of this cultural tradition, and of how words and ideas that were first introduced in Latin Antiquity became increasingly cultivated, refined, and established in the centuries that followed, the volume also questions present-day studies of sound and its organization into the field of so-called ?folk music?. In so doing, it breaks down boundaries that separate historical studies from ethnomusicology, and sheds light on what music continues to mean in daily life.00While the focus is primarily on Central European folk music, and in particular on material found in the Hungarian archives, the approach taken here also points to a fruitful comparative methodology that could be employed on a larger scale, enabling scholars to consider broader chronological and geographical contexts.