5 Folk Songs and Dances from the Tesín Region (1936)

Kdyz jsem byla mamince na kline

Svatební

Kozaka by tancovala

Sidej na vuz

Pasala volky

For the greater part of his career Schulhoff was more interested in jazz than folksong. In the 1930s, however, as a Czech and a Jew all too aware of the dangers represented by the rise of German fascism, he was moved to align himself with the opposing politics of the Soviet Union. Dropping jazz, he embraced socialist realism and devoted himself to readily accessible symphonies inspired by such events as the hunger riots in eastern Czechoslovakia and the Spanish Civil War. It was in line with the socialist realist policy of making folk music available to the urban population that, in 1936, he wrote his Folk Songs and Dances from the Tésin Region.

Like all the best examples of their kind, Schulhoff’s arrangements of folk material from the North-West region of Czechoslovakia present the tunes in their original form with little harmonic or textural elaboration but with the occasional witty comment. Kdyz jsem byla mamince na kline, which has no pretensions to gentility, is accompanied by the same crude ostinato rhythm throughout. The piano offers a modest counterpoint to the expressive melodic line of Svatební and, after initiating a reel in Kozaka by tancovala, gets deliriously carried away by its own virtuosity, but only when the song itself is over. Sidej na vuz is another lyrical song with a lightly articulated piano counterpoint and Pasala volky a dance accompanied not only by a simple ostinato but also by figuration suggestive of the cowgirl’s fiddle tune.