In this section, I look at the emerging discipline of folkloristics, focusing roughly on the same time span that I covered in the last section, the 19th century. In the last section, I tackled the early history of folkloristics, or proto-folkloristics if you will, only marginally as a part of the cultural nation-building process. In this section I reverse the emphasis; now cultural policy is the background to the process which leads to the establishment of an academic discipline of folklore.
In contrast to others, I argue for a rather late beginning of folklore as a discipline in Romania. I apply here the same criteria which I will also use to establish the beginning of Romanian ethnomusicology, emphasizing the process of institutionalization. According to this criterion, folklore became a discipline in the 1880s, roughly the time of its institutionalization in Romanian academia and the emergence of the term "folklore" in Romanian academic discourse. Before that folklore was already discussed, but under different labels, such as popular poetry (poezie populară). While this discussion was important and clearly defined the later study of folklore, it lacked the autonomy of a discipline or subdiscipline and rather constituted an interdisciplinary field of discussion.
FOLKLORE RESEARCH AVANT LA LETTRE
Romanian historiographers of folkloristics often trace their discipline back to around 1800 (e.g.
Bîrlea 1974, Bibliografia generală a etnografiei şi folclorului românesc 1968, Taloş 1966). But what exactly began then, almost half a century before William Thoms invented the word
"folklore" and barely more than a decade after Johann Gottfried Herder established the notion of folk song? Certainly not the lore itself, since practices can easily be traced further back in time;
and certainly not any strong academic interest in folklore. In 1800 there were no professors of folklore, no folklore curricula, and no institutions solely devoted to the study of folklore in Romania, and probably nowhere else – neither under this label nor a similar one.
According to Bîrlea (1974:22), what changed around 1800 was that folk culture and oral traditions were paid more respect. That may be, but it is a rather vague criterion. Not only is this claim difficult to prove, an increased interest in things intellectuals later called folklore does not necessarily show an emerging discipline – at least not in the way that I understand "discipline," as an institutionalized discourse in academia. Undoubtedly, however, what remained from the time are texts (including non-textual documents such as drawings) that later were regarded as sources on Romanian folklore.
One early example of such a text is Dimitri Cantemir's Descriptio Moldaviae, written originally in Latin at the beginning of 18th century on request of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. This text surveys Cantemir's country - Cantemir was briefly the prince of
for the nascient folklore discourse in an early phase. Later in the 19th century, philology will become a more important surface of emergence for Romanian folklore research.
Moldavia - covering a variety of different topics, such as geographic details, the inhabitants, their customs, material culture and folk music. This report is neither limited to nor focused on what later was called folklore or popular poetry. In other words, the notion of folklore (or one of its close relatives such as popular literature) was neither implicated nor explicitly used as a guiding principle here; instead the Description of Moldavia is a country's geographic and politic description, as the subtitle of the German translation from 1771 indicates (Cantemir 1771, Cantemir 1973 [1771]).
Before 1800, Romanian historians and philologists who wanted to prove the Latin decent of the Romanian people, such as Samuil Micu (1745-1806), referred to language, customs and folk tales in their argumentation (Bîrlea 1974:34). This group of scholars is often referred to as the Latinist school. Although Franz Joseph Sulzer does not belong to the Latinist school, one could mention his Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens (History of the transalpine Dacia; Sulzer 1781-1782) in this context since Sulzer discusses many of the Latinists' claims. A later example of the Latinists' treatment of folk customs is Vasile Popp's doctoral thesis in medicine written in Vienna in the beginning of the 19th century. It describes Romanian funeral customs and compares them with their Roman equivalent (Papp 1817).
Undoubtedly, what these writers describe - mostly customs, less often concrete texts of folk songs, etc. - will later belong to discussions on popular poetry and folklore. However, the context in which Latinists and their contemporaries thought and published was rather different from similar discussions in 1830s and later. They were no full-time scholars employed in universities because there were no universities in Romania yet. Micu was a man of the church, a monk, and that was about as scholarly as it got in a time before the Western scholarly infrastructure was implemented in Romania. The range of accepted and institutionalized disciplines was much smaller than today, so it is not surprising that the Latinists are typically associated with the discipline of history. This was also the discipline that Sulzer referred to in the title of his book.
Customs and folk songs function here as windows to the past of the Romanians. This discussion was important for the later study of folklore because it established an academic role for discussing customs and other specifics of the Romanian nation. In other words, it served as a surface of emergence for later discussions of popular poetry and folklore.
By the 1830s, the situation had already changed considerably, as a call for the collection of diverse folk materials by George Bariț in the journal Foaia pentru minte, inimă și literatură (Paper for the mind, heart and literature), published in the 1838, shows:
"[M]ai poftim încă pe fiii românilor cei înţelegători din toate patriile, ca să [nu-și pregete de aci nainte a însămna şi] aduna din gura și conversația cu poporul nostru feliurimi de obiceiuri vechi, povestiri, care ar avea ceva însămnare istorică și arheologică şi care ar vădi trăsuri de character pentru noi, precum şi cîntece populare de care la noi sînt foarte multe şi interesante, şi iarăş unele frasuri, proverburi, ziceri originale româneşti, care ar fi mai puţin cunoscute sau numa într-un dialect obișnuite (Bariț quoted in Bîrlea 1974:58).
We still thirst for Romanians [literally: sons of Romanians], those with knowledge of the whole homeland, to […] gather from mouth and conversation with our people a variety of old customs, [and]
tales which could have historical or archaeological relevance and which might show our [Romanian]
character, [and to gather] also folk songs, of which there are very many and interesting ones, as well as original Romanian phrases, proverbs and sayings, which could be little known or are used only in a dialect.
In the use of first person singular to imply the nation, this quote already shows the passionate, patriotic language of the national discourse. Explicitly, it refers only to the disciplines of history and archaeology, but considering the emphasis on phrases and dialects it might also allude to philology. Moreover, Bariț published this call for collections in a literary journal, which might be interpreted as a link to literature, another context in which the emerging debates on folklore often took place (as seen in the case of Kogălniceanu's and Alecsandri's publications, discussed in the previous section). Bariț clearly implied interdisciplinary uses of the material he wanted others to collect.
One can observe that this short quote does not allude to the older theme of Latin decent. The debate about people's songs and poetry surpassed that original debate, in which they were linked almost exclusively to illustrate connections with the Romans, implying that Romanian customs and folk poetry by this time had already emancipated themselves from this earlier theme. Instead Bariț refers here to the writing of Romanian history and a search for features of Romanian character.
The central point of this quote is the enumeration of objects Bariț wanted to collect.
Interestingly enough, he did not mix material culture with customs and oral traditions, as Cantemir and other earlier sources do. Instead he focused on that what can be written down and assembled: customs (obiceiuri) and various language-based expressions. The terms he uses are povestiri (tales), cîntece populare (folk songs), frasuri (phrases), proverburi (proverbs), and ziceri (sayings).
Bîrlea discusses other collections being made before 1848, although few were published (Bîrlea 1974:60–61). Although Bariț's call did not result in significant published collections, it indicates that by this time there was already a wider discussion. One can also assume that Romanian intellectuals – most of whom spent considerable time abroad - were by this time not completely unaware of similar projects in other countries, such as Vuk Stefanović Karadžić's collections of Serbian folk songs. Thus, in the 1830s the Romanian discussion about folk songs and popular literature was part of an international debate.
Bariț's call for collections further indicates that in the 1830s, more than a decade before the first anthologies of Romanian folk songs and folk poetry were published, there already was an interdisciplinary and international field with an emerging and somewhat stable terminology (e.g.
folk poetry, folk song, tales) and methodology (collect, select, assemble and publish folk tales, folk songs etc.). And as discussed in the previous section, these activities were conducted in support of the national project in Romania.
At this stage the discussion was not yet a discipline because the new field did not yet have an established position in academia and the field was still only vaguely delimited. Rather folklore at this time still fell in between several academic disciplines, principally history and philology.
The fact that the new field did not yet have an established label further indicates that it was not yet accepted as a field of scholarly study at this time. Also missing was a form of institutionalization:
there were no journals, associations, university courses or archives which exclusively devoted themselves to folklore, popular poetry or folk songs at this time in Romania. Instead, the discussion often took place in literary journals, and often outside academia.
However, in contrast to earlier discussions in the Latinist school, the customs of the people were no longer an object that was treated merely as a superstition, nor were they merely an argument in the discussion of one specific theme, Latin decent. Instead, folk songs and folk poetry were then discussed for different reasons, arguably mostly as sources for history, archaeology and literature.
At the time Bariț published his call to collect customs, tales, sayings, etc., many writers participated in the discussion. If one concentrates only on the names which appear even in the shorter histories of folkloristics in Romania (e.g. Dobre 1999b), - names such as Nicolae Bălcescu, Alecu Russo and Vasile Alecsandri - one can notice a number of striking similarities in their biographies. They received education in the West. They came from relatively well-off boier families, the lower élite of large estate owners. They were not only scholars, but also active on the political stage, and they vigorously supported the 1848 revolution and, with it, liberal ideals and the Romanian nation. Many of them were also authors; they wrote literature and earned public recognition (and probably at least occasionally an income) from these non-scholarly writings.
Alecsandri first gained fame as a playwright and poet before he embarked on his quest to collect folk songs in the countryside as sources for his literature. Of the above mentioned names, only Alecsandri lived long enough to become a founding member of the Literary Society in 1866, a precursor to the Romanian Academy.
In the 1830s and 1840s, the terms "cântec popular" (folk song) and "poezie popurală"
(popular poetry) became commonly used terms. For example, "poezie popurală" appears in an article by Alecu Russo of the same name, published posthumously in 1868, but possibly written as early as 1839 (Bîrlea 1974). "Poezie populară" appears in the title of Alecsandri's influential monograph (Alecsandri 1866). Alecsandri uses "cîntec popular" (folk song) in a journal in 1844 (quoted in Bîrlea 1974:75).73
INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF FOLKLORE RESEARCH
The next significant change did not occur until the 1870s, when the next generation of scholars, such as Alexandru Odobescu (1834-1895), acquired university positions. Odobescu had studied archaeology in Paris in the 1850s and then, like many proto-folklorists before him, had a political career throughout the 1860s. In 1870 he became a member of the Societatea Academică Română (Romanian Academic Society), a precursor to the Romanian Academy, and in 1874 the first professor for archaeology at the University of Bucharest (Datcu 1998b:122), signaling that - as elsewhere74 - the university disciplines were in flux. Obobescu was also interested in Romanian oral traditions, which he compared both with classic texts of antiquity and with other oral traditions in southeast Europe (Bîrlea 1974:168–171).
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838-1907) belonged to the same generation as Odobescu. Like his earlier colleagues, he also wrote literature and had a political career which peaked before he
73 It is unlikely that these quotes reflect the first instances where these terms are used in Romanian discourse. I quote them merely to prove that they were used at this time. A more systematic survey of 19th century discourse would be necessary to prove that the use of these terms became common place in certain circles.
74I am alluding here to the new disciplines which became established in Western academia during the second half of 19th century, such as psychology and musicology (cf. Koch and Mengel 2007).
became a state-employed scholar: in 1876 Hasdeu was appointed as the first head of the State Archives in Bucharest. Two years later, in 1878, he became professor of comparative philology at the Bucharest University. Hasdeu did not study in the West in his youth, but later travelled extensively through Western and Eastern Europe (Datcu 1998a:306–307).
According to Bîrlea (1974:173), Hasdeu introduced the term "folklore" (spelled as in English) into Romanian discourse. In his opus magnum Etymologicum Magnum Romaniae (1885), Hasdeu defines folklore as: "intimate beliefs of the people, its customs and manners, its sighs and pleasures" (credinţele cele intime ale poporului, obiceiele şi apucăturile sale, suspinele şi bucuriele [sic], quoted in Bîrlea 1974:173).
This definition roughly resembles Thoms's original suggestion, which enumerates "manner, customs, observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc." (Thoms 1965:5), but Hasdeu adds an emotional level here (sighs, pleasures). Also, considering that Thoms only wanted to replace the terms "popular antiquities" and "popular literature", Hasdeu's definition is considerably wider. It is not strictly limited to oral texts, but includes beliefs. In fact, Hasdeu does not mention any of the usual text-like units, such as the proverb or the folk song, which makes his definition more reminiscent of early anthropological definitions of culture.
Elsewhere in the same publication, Hasdeu offers another definition of folklore:
"toate prin cîte se manifestă spiritul unui popor, obiceiele [sic] lui, ideile-i despre sine-şi şi despre lume, literatura lui cea nescrisă, mii şi·mii de trăsure [sic] caracteristice cu rădăcini în inimă şi cu muguri în grai".
Everything through which the spirit of a people manifests itself, its customs, its ideas about itself and about the world, its oral [literally: unwritten] literature, and thousands of characteristics with roots in the heart and with seeds in the mouth. (Hasdeu quoted according to Bîrlea 1974:173)
This definition is slightly more precise, as it refrains from enumerating a list of examples, and instead gives a general criterion to which the items in the list have to comply, the people's spirit.
The people's spirit is, of course, reminiscent of Herder's concept of "Volksgeist", but Hasdeu was also familiar with more recent theories such as the "Völkerpsychologie" (literally "people psychology") propagated by Wilhelm Wundt (cf. Bîrlea 1974:173). This quote also uses the term
"unwritten literature" again. Hasdeu employs it frequently in places where his contemporaries refer to popular literature.75 It is further remarkable that Hasdeu insisted on the emotional side and use of metaphors - in spite of the positivistic trends of his time (see below) -, alluding to the essence of a people.
Hasdeu transformed university curricula on folklore. Bîrlea describes him as the first to teach a course covering all areas of folklore ("în totalitatea lui", Bîrlea 1974:189) as part of philology curriculum at the university in 1893-1894 (cf. Datcu 1998b:306–307). Hasdeu treated folklore as a subdiscipline of (comparative) philology, institutionalizing the study of folklore as a subdiscipline of philology. As an academic subdiscipline, the study of folklore embarked - like so
75 Interestingly enough, this definition might encompass material culture, if one wants to understand objects as manifestations of people's spirit (as Adolf Bastian argues around the same time in Germany Bastian 1869:xxv–xxvi, cf.
Koch and Mengel 2007:116). However, material culture does not play an important role for Hasdeu.
many other young disciplines - on a process of professionalization.76 For folklore research professionalization effected especially the methodology of collecting documents in the field. A hallmark of this development was the phonetic script in which folklore sources were from then on increasingly notated. Editing folklore sources for aesthetic purposes had been the norm in earlier years, for example, in Alecsandri's publications, but now this practice was frowned upon and regarded as unscientific. One of the results was that the distinction between amateurs and professional university-trained folklorists became more important. The underlying idea here is that of the authenticity of sources. One important proponent of this movement is Ovidiu Densusianu, who succeeded Hasdeu at the philology department at the University of Bucharest in 1900.
MUSIC IN MID-19TH CENTURY FOLKLORE DISCOURSE
In most of the 19th century, the notion of folk music either did not yet exist or the expression was not yet used as a technical term, neither in Romania nor elsewhere. Curiously, this does not mean that nobody thought or wrote about music in the domain of folklore in the 19th century or that music was completely absent from the discourse on folklore, but only that it was not yet the very specific and technical concept of folk music that became popular sometime around 1900.77 My argument parallels the thesis that the notion of the nation was a 19th century import to Romania:
this fact likewise does not imply that before this import there was no concept of Romanianness altogether. Just as Romanianness was not yet linked to the concept of the nation before this concept arrived in Romania, I argue that vernacular music was not yet thought of as folk music in 19th century Romania and that the emergence of this notion marks a paradigm shift in the emerging discipline of folklore.
I believe that the notion of folk music became a central notion in a new paradigm of folklore research, one which imported ideas from the still-young discipline of musicology (as another scholarly, recently institutionalized, and professionalized field) and thereby transformed an already existing, although somewhat dormant debate on music in the field of folklore. The key concept that that was transferred to the domain of folklore was a formal concept of music, as typically associated with Eduard Hanslick (and his successors, such as Guido Adler).
Internationally, this fusion between musicology and folklore research probably began not long before Bartók entered the debate in the first decade of the 20th century78. The result of this
"marriage" would eventually lead to the development of a new subdiscipline that was contemporarily and internationally often referred to as "musical folklore".
One characteristic of the new debate was that musical specialists, like the composer Bartók, featured more importantly in it than in earlier debates on folklore, when the discussion was often led by literary experts. Another characteristic of the new approach was that music was now perceived in a stricter, more technical and formal sense as that which can be heard, recorded and
One characteristic of the new debate was that musical specialists, like the composer Bartók, featured more importantly in it than in earlier debates on folklore, when the discussion was often led by literary experts. Another characteristic of the new approach was that music was now perceived in a stricter, more technical and formal sense as that which can be heard, recorded and