 The Library
of Congress >> Research Centers |
|||
|
Finding Aids to Individual Collections in the Archive of Folk CultureTHE GHEORGHE AND EUGENIA POPESCU-JUDETZ COLLECTIONAFC 1990/022Prepared by Michelle FornerLibrary of Congress, Washington DC May 1998 SUMMARYThe Gheorghe and Eugenia Popescu-Judetz Collection consists of manuscript materials, audio recordings, graphic materials, and moving images that document primarily Romanian folk dance and music. The materials span the years 1938-1974 and 1995. The bulk of the materials were collected between 1950 and 1972 by Gheorghe and a fieldwork team that sometimes included Eugenia. Their goal was to gather traditional folk dance and music to serve as the basis of choreographies for their government-sponsored performance ensembles. Through this effort, Gheorghe amassed a collection of at least several thousand notated folk dance variants, more than 3,200 audio-recorded melodies, and approximately 4,000 notated dance melodies, from all regions of Romania. The collection focuses on the folk song and dance of the Romanian people. Materials documenting costume, rituals, and customs are also included. Music arrangements, choreographic diagrams, photographs, and show programs document activities of the Ciocîrlia and Perinitza Ensembles. The collection also provides insight into the lives of the Popescu-Judetzes through manuscript and photographic documentation of their work as ethnographers, dancers, choreographers, and teachers. The initial collection of audio recordings and some manuscript and graphic materials were donated bto the Library of Congress by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz in 1990. Subsequent additions of manuscript and graphic materials were accessioned in 1995 and 1997. Oral history interviews with the donor in 1995 complement the collection. Access and Reproduction: Listening and viewing access to the collection is unrestricted. Duplication of the recorded materials may be governed by copyright and requires prior permission from the donor. In addition to standard permission requirements, publication of the materials requires prior permission of the donor. Key Subjects: clothing and dress; costume; dance notation; East Indian songs; instruments; melodies; performance ensembles; Romanian folk dance and music; Romanian songs; social life and customs; Turkish songs Primary Languages: Romanian, Turkish
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTEIntroductionThe Gheorghe and Eugenia Popescu-Judetz Collection spans the years 1938-1974 and 1995, with the largest portion dated 1950-1972. It is arranged into two groups or series. Series I, the bulk of the collection, consists of the documentary materials donated by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz and includes manuscripts, audio recordings, graphic materials, and moving images. Series II consists of material about the collection, primarily generated by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, such as manuscript material, audio recordings, graphic materials, and moving images. Series III contains additional manuscripts, photographs, and emphera the were donated by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz in 1997. It is an open series. The Popescu-Judetzes were Romanian dancers who worked primarily as choreographers
and teachers. Series I contains the accumulation of decades of Gheorghe's
notes, research, and choreographic work as well as examples of Eugenia's
dance work and research. It includes at least several thousand notated
folk dance variants, more than 3,200 audio-recorded melodies, and approximately
4,000 notated dance melodies. The bulk of the recordings resulted from
fieldwork Gheorghe and his team conducted to collect Romanian folk dance
and music in all regions of the country. Gheorghe and Eugenia used these
materials primarily to create choreographic works for their government-sponsored
performance ensembles, and also to develop curricula for dance workshops,
to publish dance instruction books, to provide methods to teach Romanian
character dance, and to record an endangered dance culture. In addition
to documenting and providing examples of traditional Romanian folk dance
and the work of the Ciocîrlia and Perinitza Ensembles, material in
the collection includes theoretical research, ethnographic descriptions,
and a unique dance notation system that they developed. The breadth of materials in this collection demonstrates a progression of scholarly research and performance development, and provides insight into dance research and performance in communist Romania. The manuscript materials range from rough field notes describing folk dance variants in various villages to colored diagrams of choreographic works staged for professional performance. Since the dance notations included progress from early field sketches to publication-ready drawings of fully-notated dances, the development of the dance notation system itself is also documented. Series I The collection was donated to the Library of Congress in 1990 and 1995 in batches that included parts of each subseries of material, i.e., one shipment contained some music arrangements and notebooks; another shipment included the rest of the arrangements and notebooks. The inventories for the audio recordings and manuscript materials (such as the dance and music notations) were prepared by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz to accompany each shipment. Since she was able to spend more time on the initial inventories, the first parts of these documents are more detailed than later addendums. Furthermore, introductions to the inventories refer to the items donated at the time the initial inventory was written but not to later additions. The field transcriptions of music are contained in notebooks and sheet sets. The 113 music notebooks are bound, paper volumes that contain holographic scores and sketches of more than 3,000 Romanian dance tunes and songs transcribed in the field between 1949 and 1972. The 40 sets of sheet music (referred to by the donor as "music sheets") are bound and unbound sets of pages that contain more than 250 melodies transcribed between 1950 and 1970. The notebooks and sheets were used to record songs performed on request in the villages and during on-going events such as festivals. They document the work of the fieldwork team's music transcriber, primarily Grigore Suchici, fiddler, and Constantin Arvinte, the composer/music arranger for the Ciocîrlia Ensemble. The transcriber notated the melody played with the dance under study, either on the spot or later by listening to a field recording. Each book and sheet set contains a number of melodies. Later, under Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz's direction, Arvinte and others used these materials to write arrangements and scores for stage performances of the ensemble. In fact, many pages contain notes and references that were added later by Gheorghe. The 50 music arrangements in the collection represent compositions that were prepared for performing purposes. They consist of harmonizations, scores, and compositions created by various composers for dance performances of the Ciocîrlia and Perinitza Ensembles, primarily based on fieldwork conducted by the Popescu-Judetzes. Some of the arrangements were used for rehearsals and to teach Romanian folk dances and suites to other dance ensembles. The notation that documents the Romanian folk dance in this collection is found in the field notebooks and notation files. Gheorghe created this unique system of notation out of his need to record the dances in the field accurately and quickly, at villages, festivals, and competitions. From 1949 to 1955, Gheorghe worked on a system that focused on footwork, including the positions and movements of the passive (non-weight-bearing) foot. The system could be used to make quick notes in the field or notate complete dances. Gheorghe refined the system and used it in choreography work for the ensemble, published books, and teaching. Eugenia also used the notation for the same purposes and continued to draw on it when teaching and choreographing Romanian folk dance in the United States. After further developing the system, she published Judetz Folk Dance Notation in 1979 (see folder 32). Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz's 45 field notebooks are rich in dance notation and other information. He used the notebooks, which date between 1950 and 1970, to document his dance research and professional activities. They serve as the primary source of field documentation and provide an insight into his life and creative process. Arranged in random order (some volumes contain multiple years), the notebooks contain a variety of information such as names and addresses of informants; quick sketches of dance notation accompanied by written descriptions; notes from his participation on dance competition juries; notes describing performance groups and dances at folk festivals; sketches of costumes, textile patterns, and motifs; and descriptions of informants documented in photographs. The notebooks also contain information relating to professional ensemble activities, such as dance rehearsal schedules, casting lists, and production notes. The 33 dance notation "files" (the donor's groupings) contain hundreds of leaves primarily of notation and written descriptions of at least several thousand Romanian folk dance variants, from rough drafts to final forms. They were made by Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz between 1949 and 1972, either in the field or transcribed later, and include camera-ready versions prepared by a cartographer for publication. The dances are mainly grouped by region, and represent field work and choreographies for the stage. Of special note are seven files of calus dance variants, and the staging diagrams for choreographic works Gheorghe created for performing ensembles, predominantly Ciocîrlia. The dance notation files include materials other than notation. "Nunta la Beleti," a 26-page, handwritten manuscript, describes a wedding ritual in Beleti village (Gheorghe's birthplace), Muscel district, as it was performed between 1900 and 1940. Gheorghe formally researched this event between 1960 and 1964. The ethnographic document includes descriptions of the participants, costuming, orations, dance, music lyrics, and explanations of the rituals involved. "Mic Dictionar al Jocurilor Populare din Zonele Folclorice Neamt si Bacau" (Small Dictionary of Folk Dances from Neamt in Bacau District) is a 421-page handwritten manuscript. Gheorghe wrote it as part of a larger ethnographic work on the folk arts of the Bicaz-Neamt area, Moldavia, that was never published. Based on research he conducted for 17 years, it contains an alphabetically-arranged description of almost 800 dance variants from the area, including type of dance, posture, place, dance name synonyms, accompanying lyrics or chants, and so forth. (Elsewhere the collection includes graphs, maps, and indexes intended to accompany this chapter.) The last nine files in the series are devoted to Gheorghe's work on the metric and rhythmic analysis of Romanian dance. He held the theory that the roots of Romanian dance rhythms share a common origin with classical Greek poetic meters. The files contain classifications of dance rhythms; taxonomic, rhythmic, and metric diagrams; and specific dance examples. One of Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz's goals was to make a general catalog of all Romanian folk dances and their variants. To that end, with Eugenia's assistance, he drew on the research described above to compile iterations of lists of dances on index cards and paper sheets. Dances listed individually on index cards often include descriptive information. At least 4,000 dances are listed. Some of this material appeared in the glossaries and indexes of his published books. The audio recordings in Series I were made in the field by Gheorghe and Eugenia Popescu-Judetz between 1950 and 1972. They contain more than 3,200 melodies of Romanian, Turkish, and East Indian folk and traditional music, with some informant interviews. The bulk of the recordings are Romanian dance tunes, songs, and ballads performed by folk musicians, singers, and ensembles from all regions of Romania and Yugoslavian Banat. The collection also includes recordings made by Eugenia of Turkish folk music in Dobrudja, Dervish ceremonies in Anatolia, and samples of folk and classical music in India. The 118 graphic images in this series are primarily black and white photoprints of various sizes and include some collages made of photoprints, drawings, postcards, and text. They are arranged in five groups: fieldwork, Gheorghe Popescu-Judetz and the Ciocîrlia Ensemble, portraits of the Popescu-Judetzes, series for sketches of the Doiul dance from Banat, and Eugenia Popescu-Judetz. The images span the years 1938 to 1974, with the bulk dating between 1950 and 1970. The collage pages, created by Gheorghe, were taken from scrapbooks he kept to document fieldwork projects, dance competitions, and world dance tours. The moving images in the collection consist of three short, silent, black and white films (two 8 mm and one 16 mm). They provide a glimpse of several dance styles and costuming as well as views of the Romanian countryside. Series II Series II consists of materials about the collection generated by the Library of Congress. It contains manuscipt material, audio recordings, graphic materials, and video recordings concerning the March 1995 interviews with donor Eugenia Popescu-Judetz. The interviews provide background information on the collection, biographical information about the Popescu-Judetzes, and further insight into the relationships between the materials in the collection. This series is open. Series III Series III consists of additions donated in 1997 to complete the original
collection in Series I. Eugenia Popesu-Judetz submitted the remainder of
the dance notations collected by her and her husband. The series also contains
fieldnotes organized into dance indexes. There are also some materials
such as postcards, photographs, publicity pamphlets, and sheet music organized
by Eugenia Popescu-Judetz into the category of ephemera. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GHEORGHE AND EUGENIA POPESCU-JUDETZGheorghe Popescu-Judetz (1911-1972) was born in the village of Beleti-Negresti, Muscel district, in the Muntenia region of Romania. He became interested in folk dancing as a teenager, and began performing as principal dancer with amateur ensembles in Bucharest. He obtained degrees from several universities, and entered the teaching profession. In the 1930s and 1940s he was leader of and dancer with a number of organizations, including Asociatia Alunelul, the Dance Group of Liga Culturala Association, and the soldier dancers from the 30th Dorobantzi Army Unit. Gheorghe toured with some of these groups nationally and abroad. From 1949 to 1966, he was the choreographer and director of the Ciocîrlia Ensemble dance group, and made a number of foreign tours with them. Throughout the years, he also served as guest choreographer for other dance groups, professor of folk dance at various schools and seminars, and jury member at national folk arts competitions. In 1948 he married Eugenia Marisescu, who became his dance partner and research associate. In 1950 they won first prize in the International Folk Dance Competition in Prague for excellence in character dance performance. Early in his career, Gheorghe became fascinated with his country's abundance of folk dances. Consequently, he dedicated his life to compiling a complete catalog and ethnographic description of all Romanian dances and variations. With no formal ethnographic training, he conducted extensive fieldwork throughout Romania between 1949 and 1972, often accompanied by a music transcriber, costume designer, ensemble dancers, and Eugenia. He published some of his research in ten books on folk dance (see "Related Publications") as well as in many journal and magazine articles. Gheorghe received numerous artistic awards throughout his life, and was honored in 1957 with the title, Artist Emeritus of Romania, for his work in the field of folk dance. Eugenia Popescu-Judetz (1925-) was born in Giurgiu, a town on the Danube river in the Muntenia region of Romania. Although she trained in classical ballet as a child, Eugenia always had an interest in folk dance, which increased after she married. In her early career, she was a professional dancer and folk dance teacher with the National Theatre Ballet of Bucharest, performed with the Opera Theater, and taught dance in the High School of the Arts and in the Folk Ensemble of Bucharest. For a time she conducted research with the Romanian Folk Lore Institute, which gave her valuable training for future fieldwork. From 1954 to 1970 she was ballet master and choreographer of the Perinitza Folk Ensemble and toured internationally with them. Throughout these years, she taught workshops for folk dance instructors and amateur choreographers, created many choreographies for film and television, conducted field research, and lectured in Europe. As part of a cultural exchange program, Eugenia traveled to the United States in the late 1960s to teach Romanian folk dance workshops. In 1973, she returned to the United States on an invitation from the Duquesne University Tamburitzans in Pittsburgh, PA. She became an adjunct professor at Duquesne and continued to teach and choreograph for the Tamburitzans. Eugenia received a master of arts degree in theology from Duquesne University and a doctorate in theatre criticism from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of numerous articles and books and continues to pursue intellectual interests. For more detailed biographical information on the Popescu-Judetzes, see folder 16, "Curriculum vitae," and folder 196, "Oral history interview." COLLECTION INVENTORY AND DESCRIPTION
RELATED PUBLICATIONSThe contents of the following books were drawn from field research conducted
by the Popescu-Judetz, Eugenia. Sixty Folk Dances of Romania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Tamburitzans, Institute of Folk Arts, 1979. GV1685.P67 Popescu-Judetz, Eugenia and James Roncovic, ed. Judetz Folk Dance Notation. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Tamburitzans, Institute of Folk Arts, 1979. GV1587.J82 Popescu-Judetz, Gheorghe. Brîul (Dance on Belt). Bucharest: Editura de Stat Pentru Literatura si Arta, 1956. ________. Dansul Popular Românesc - StudII (Romanian Folk Dance Studies). Bucharest: Editura de Stat Didactica si Pedagogica, 1958. ________. Jocuri Din Banat (Dances from Banat). Bucharest: Editura de Stat Pentru Literatura si Arta, 1956. GV1685.P64 ________. Jocuri Populare Din Dobrogea (Folk Dances from Dobrudja). Dobrudja: Casa Regionala a Creatiei Populare, 1965. GV1679.P66 ________. Jocuri Populare Din Oas Si Maramures (Folk Dances from Oas and Maramures). Maramures: Casa Regionala a Creatiei Populare, 1963. GV1686.M37P66 1963 ________. Jocuri Populare Din Regiunea Arges (Folk Dances from Arges Region). Bucharest: Editura Muzicala, 1963. GV1686.A73P66 1963 ________. Jocuri Populare Din Regiunea Bucharesti (Folk Dances from Bucharest Region). Bucharest: Editura Muzicala, 1961. ________. Jocuri Populare Oltenesti Vol. I. (Folk Dances from Oltenia). Bucharest: Editura de Stat Didactica si Pedagogica, 1958. GV1686.044P67 1958 ________. Jocuri Populare Oltenesti Vol. II. (Folk Dances from Oltenia). Bucharest: Editura de Stat Didactica si Pedagogica, 1959. ________. Jocuri Populare Românesti (Romanian Folk Dances). Bucharest: Editura Muzicala, 1959. GV1685.P66
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Back to
Top
| ||||