ABSTRACT. Zlateva contends that folk music gained its real importance in Enescu's work when he began to develop his own Western musical language. Beissinger holds that oral composition in Romanian epic is characterized by a congruity between textual and musical ideas (singers clearly sense a relationship between text and music and utilize complex patterns of interaction as they construct their traditional songs). Catarella stresses that categorizing the oral ballad as a genre is difficult because it is interdisciplinary and all-encompassing.