Romania: Hub of Latin Folk Music

In many Romanian regions, each village would have its particular dance, music, and festival traditions; the dances are split into a few different categories: only for men (bărbătească), only for women (femeiască), and for younger boys (feciorească).

In bărbătesc dances, it would be the grown men of the village (heads of households) who would dance together, following generally two dance styles. One style is a variant of the Hora, as danced by Jewish communities at weddings, which in fact originated from this region (Greater Romania), in which dancers put their hands on each others’ shoulders, and move in a 4/4 rhythm with two steps to the right, one to the left, and a pause to complete the measure. The other main dance style is a danced in pairs, following a line, in which the dancers step right, step left, moving forward in a circle all the while.

From the musical point of view, the piece is based off of an 8-measure unit, which begins by jumping from the tonic to the subdominant, then resting on the upper tonic (one octave higher than the starting note), followed by a repetition of the climb, but resting on the third, subsequently rising to the subdominant again and descending smoothly back to the tonic. The rhythm is mostly based on quarter notes, eighth notes, and half notes at the end of musical phrases or subphrases. The first theme repeats, followed by a second theme, more of a variation of the first. The variation changes the initial subphrase into using a syncopated repetition of the subdominant, and instead of climbing to the tonic it instead descends to the supertonic (second). After a few triplets-ending-in-a-quarter-note patterns that echo the first theme, the last subphrase is the same, returning to the tonic. The variation is then varied to form the third theme, where it is transposed up a fifth, resolving to the dominant. The fourth theme is most similar to the first one, simply with ornamentation from a trill and swing point of view.

To see the sheet music for this piece, click here.

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