GYÖNGYVIRÁG

Taken together, the ten volumes of the Virágos (Flowers) series comprise a large collection of over 1000 folk songs. In the 1920s, it was considered increasingly important in Hungarian musical life that young people should sing more Hungarian songs, rather than ones borrowed from abroad. This purpose was served by Lajos Bárdos's pocket-sized book 101 Hungarian Folk Songs, which was published at the end of the 1920s with a preface by Kodály. As Bárdos later said: ''It was not me but Szabolcsi and others, who claimed that this laid the foundations of the singing of folk songs by young people in the towns, and through them adults too.'' Later, following the pattern of this volume, the Virágos series was launched, with the first two volumes published in 1952 and 1957, again edited by Lajos Bárdos. Subsequently, with contributions from outstanding specialists like Benjamin Rajeczky, György Deák Bárdos, Károly Mathia and others, the series grew within fifteen years to ten volumes.