K FONOGRAFICKÝM NAHRÁVKAM KAROLA ANTONA MEDVECKÉHO NA HOREHRONÍ. PIESNE Z BEŇUŠA (1903)

The collection of phonograph cylinders used by the Slovak ethnographer Karol Anton Medvecký (1875 – 1937) documents the first sound recordings of traditional music made on the territory of Slovakia. Content reconstruction has been performed on this collection, providing information about the documented repertoire and clarifying the contemporary context in which the recordings were undertaken. Medvecký carried out sound recordings of folk music using a phonograph, especially in the places where he was employed. Having done this in the villages of Detva (1901) and Veľké Pole (1902 – 1903), in the course of 1903 he realized a sound documentation of Slovak folk singing in the village of Beňuša in the Horehronie region. Although the physical decay of the recordings has gone so far as to make a restoration of their sound impossible, preserved historical sources and comparative material have enabled a hypothetical reconstruction of the documented repertoire to the extent of eight songs. This repertoire refers to the genres of love songs, military songs, humorous songs and narrative songs.