There is contradictory information about a recording of Mîndrele by the orchestra of Ion Albeșteanu on the LP Electrecord ST-EPE 01734 (Jocuri populare Româneşti, discul nr. 4 – Oltenia – Gorj, 1982) and about the associated dance. This is the same recording that Mihai and Alexandru David used for their Mîndrele variant. Other tracks of this obviously popular LP have also been used by Theodor Vasilescu and Silviu Ciuciumiș.
Question: 5/8 or 6/8?
The LP sleeve mentions that the recording No. 4 – Mîndrele – comes from Bîrca, a municipality in the district (județ) Dolj. The music is played in 6/8 time in the rhythm 1+1+1+2+1 (with upbeat). There are handwritten dance notes by Constantin Costea (1), a Romanian dancer and ethnochoreologist, who also wrote the liner notes to this LP. This dance notation is titled:
„JOCURI POPULARE ROMÎNEȘTI – DISC NR. 4 – DOLJ
MINDRELE (4)
GIUBEGA – DOLJ
5/16 (♪ ♪.)“
So, to the Mîndrele recording of the LP from Bîrca (Dolj) in 6/8 time, Costea describes a Mîndrele from Giubega (Dolj) in 5/8 time. (2) How are these contradictions to be understood?
Since the villages of Bîrca and Giubega in the district of Dolj are barely 40 km apart as the crow flies, the difference in source village should not pose a big problem; the music for Mîndrele published on the LP comes from Bîrca (Dolj), the dance Mîndrele, that Costea ascribes to this music, comes from Giubega (Dolj).
The difference in rhythms of music and dance, on the other hand, could be rather irritating. The 5/16 measure, noted by C. Costea, consists of two unequal parts in a ratio of 2:3 – an „odd“ measure, called „aksak„, as we know it from the Bulgarian Pajduško. The 6/8 bar is divided into two parts of 3/8, whose unequal pulsations (e.g. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♩ ♪ ) are in the ratio of 1:2.
However, both measures represent the rhythm „short-long“. C. Costea may have found that his Mîndrele from Giubega matches the music of the Mîndrele from Bîrca. The dance he notated can be easily danced to the music of the LP Electrecord ST-EPE 01734. In the liner notes he writes:
„The original assymetric rhythm 5/16 (♪ ♪.) turned into 3/8 (♪ ♩).“ (3)
Anca Giurchescu also reports that musicians have changed from the original aksak rhythm (5/8) to a more modern ternary rhythm (6/8) – as we wrote about it in our Pajduško article. The 6/8 measure can be understood as „ternary“ (three-part) as it is composed of 3/8 parts.
Answer: „short-long“
While A. Giurchescu only finds a change of measures, other ethnomusicologists go one step further. They are already questioning the representation of the odd measures by exact eighth or sixteenth formulas (5/8, 9/8, 10/16, 11/16, etc.) (4). Their microanalyses of numerous recordings and their thousands of bars do not result in an exact ratio of two (♪) to three (♪.); the long pulsations do not necessarily have 1.5 times the length of the short (rather not!), so that in our example „5/8“ (2:3 or 1:1.5) and „6/8“ (1:2) only represent the two ends of a continuum of the music making practice; the reality lies somewhere in between. An argument about the „right“ measure is therefore idle. István Pávai puts it this way: „… The basic metric unit is not the 1/8 note or 1/16 note, but the quarter note value, divided into two different, alternating lengths.“ (5) The fact that we find indications of time signature in the musical scores and dance descriptions is simply because the notation system offers no better alternative that would do justice to real, living music. The rhythm „short-long“ can be described in 5/8 or 6/8, and what exactly „short“ and „long“ means ultimately depends on what (the musicians play and) the dancers hear.
Stamp or bounce?
In C. Costea’s dance description we find another striking difference: Stamps on beat 1, exactly where other versions of the dance have a jump (hop) on the supporting foot (6). But this also seems to be a negligible detail. For if we replace the stamps with hops or brushes in Costea’s description, we get a dance that hardly differs from the one that Mihai David taught to the same music (7) and whose figures are similar to those of other variants of the Rustem family (including the various Mîndrele).
What we see about this example (again!) is the flexibility and variability of living folklore, which cannot be sufficiently captured by our limited music notation system. For us practitioners this means: Let us not be more Catholic than the Pope.
We thank Radboud Koop for valuable information and advice.
(1) See: Jacques Loneux: Rumänien – ein Land und seine Tänze (1995) p.7.
(2) Whether one writes eighths or sixteenths, within certain limits, is quite obviously a question of individual decision or even of convention. We discussed this topic in our article „Two quarters“.
(3) „Ritmul, la origine, asimetric de 5/16 (f) a inceput să se transforme in 3/8 (g).“
(4) Goldberg, London, Green, Pavai. See also ein-merkwuerdiger-rhythmus-4-3 and Herwig Milde: Die_bulgarische_Tanzfolklore, PDF-edition p. 74, footnote 66.
(5) István Pávai: Hungarian Folk Dance Music of Transylvania, Budapest 2020, p. 247.
(6) Dance description: Mîndrele_CCo.pdf
(7) Dance description: Mindrele_AMD.pdf