Doina
The doina is Romania's emblematic free-form lament song, an improvised parlando-rubato melody of longing, dor, sung or played without fixed metre and saturated with ornament. Originating as the shepherd's solitary song to the fluier, it became the expressive centre of Romanian folk music, performed by village singers and professional lautari alike on voice, violin, nai panpipe, cimbalom or clarinet. *B茅la Bart贸k*, who collected hundreds of examples, ranked its hora lung膬 ancestor among the oldest strata of European song. Its phrases sigh, sob and soar in turn, making the doina the purest distillation of Romanian musical feeling.