Proceedings at the Fifth Meeting (1973) of the Conference

PROCEEDINGS AT THE FIFTH MEETING (1973) OF THE CONFERENCE This meeting was organized by John McCoy at Cornell University. In addition to the three papers reproduced here the program included the following: David E. Bynam, Curator of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University, sketched the history of four generations of oral literary studies at Harvard over the past century. This began with Francis James Child who collected and compared all obtainable written versions in his The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. He was followed by George Lyman Kittredge who expanded the field to include other genres besides ballads,and other regions beyond Britain. Then came Milman Parry, the classicist who, in order to test his theory that the Iliad and Odyssey were products of an oral tradition, inspired by Antoine Meillet of Paris and Matthias Muske of Prague, went to Jugoslavia to study a living oral tradition of heroic poetry. In 1934 and 1935, using an early sound recording technique he achieved the first large scale recording of an oral tradition, some 665 hours of Jugoslav epic songs. This collection is the nucleus of an ever-expanding archive of recordings. In describing the present status and activity of the Milman Parry Collection as a center for the study of oral literature, Bynam emphasized a number of points: 1. the perfecting of the tape recorder has revolutionized the field; 2. it is no longer a question of chance picking up of material-we must aim at gaining a full portrait of a given tradition and of genres within a tradition e.g. the Collection has recently recorded 120 hours of Greek shadow theater; 3. the work must be multi-cultural--Africa and Asia, for instance, must be studied along with Europe; 4. sound recording is only the beginning--the material must be transcribed, catalogued, analysed, cross-indexed, published; 5. cooperation is essential-the Milman Parry Collection looks for help outside Harvard and aims to help other collectors. An example of how the experienced collector can help appeared when the discussion that followed turned to practical problems such as the rights of informants, ownership of tapes, copyright of tapes and transcriptions etc. Bynam made many valuable suggestions based on his own extensive field work in the Balkans and on his later experience as administrator . f I f f I I I I 7 Daniel Yang, Professor of Theater at the University of Colorado gave an accoun 4 illustrated with videotapes and still pictures, of his staging of the Peking opera, "Black Dragon Residence" ,ft;ff,f.ft, with an all American cast. Most of his report is incorporated in an article in Renditions No.3, Autumn 1974 pp.102-114. See above in Letter from the Editor. Ch'ung-ho Frankel read the first part of a study, "The evolutio~ of Singing Style and the Nota;ion ,of Operatic, -~J Arias" It} ,1/J\t] t!rJ 9 $J;,tJJl-J - A -eff ~ ~f:W·J JW. ~ and illustrated it by examples of k'un ch'u. We hope to publish the full text in a later issue. Hans Frankel, Professor of Chinese Literature at Yale University, discussed the yUeh fu genre in the context of world literature. Bruce Brooks gave an interim report on his work on the arias in Yuan opera. His previous paper which is summarized in News No.4 pp.64-75 attempted to identify the underlying melody of a given aria. Here he considered certain factors, and especially the tone of the words, that affect the shape of the melody as finally realized. A regular feature of CHINOPERLmeetings has come to be known as Chinoperl Frolics in which, after dinner together, the members, as the spirit moves them, do their particular oral and/or performing thing. Favorites in the past have l5een Pflking opera selections by Ch'eng Hsi and Richard Yang. High points this year were k'un ch'u selections by Ch'ung-ho Frankel and t'ai-chi-ch'uan and dance performances by Sophia Delza who is a professional in Chinese dance and a welcome recruit to CHINOPERL. ...