Imre Elme's Hungarian Cantor's Book Collection

Abstract

In December 2020, I came across the five-volume cantor book collection of the late Imre Elme—formerly assistant cantor in Senta and later chief cantor in Temerin—by chance in the parish church of Saint Rosalia in Temerin, near Novi Sad (today Serbia). This Catholic hymn collection, recorded in 1870 and 1872, had apparently lain forgotten and unused since the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, discarded in the interior of an old organ bench. The cantor books contain a repertoire consisting primarily of Hungarian-language vernacular church hymns, with a smaller selection of German hymns, encompassing the entire liturgical year. The collection includes hymns from both the Theresian-Josephinist and late Josephinist periods. Elme's cantor books are valuable and rare documents of church music from this era, and they also provide a starting point for new hymnological research.