Folk and Verbunkos

Hungarian Music

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Folk Song, Verbunkos & Roma Bands

What most of the world calls "Hungarian music" is not the same as the folk song that Bartók and Kodály later recorded in the villages. Two quite different things sat side by side in the nineteenth century: an old tradition of peasant song and dance, and a fashionable urban style played by Roma bands and written down by town composers. This chapter separates them, describes the verbunkos and csárdás, and asks who made the "Hungarian style" that European audiences came to know. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Peasant Song

Old layers

Bartók and Kodály distinguished an older layer of Hungarian folk song, often with pentatonic melodies and a free, descending shape, from a newer style with more regular rhythm and Western major or minor scales (check how they described the layers; Chapter 4).

Occasions

Songs belonged to the year and the life cycle: weddings, harvest, laments, ballads, and soldiers' and shepherds' songs (check the categories). They were sung unaccompanied, or with simple instruments such as the bagpipe, the zither or the fiddle.

Dance

Village dances, with regional styles in Transylvania, the Great Plain and Transdanubia, were played by small groups of fiddle, bass and a second string instrument (check the regional names). These are the sources of the dance-house revival (Chapter 6).

Peasant song was little known in towns in the early nineteenth century. Educated Hungarians, who often spoke German or Latin, heard a different music, which is the subject of the next section.

The Verbunkos

The name. From the German Werbung, "recruiting". The verbunkos was the dance and music performed to recruit soldiers for the imperial army in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (check).
The sound. A slow, proud section (the lassú) followed by a fast, lively one (the friss), with dotted rhythms, ornamented melody and characteristic cadences (check the terms).
Who played it. Mostly Roma bands, who had long worked as professional town and court musicians, with violin, cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer) and bass (check).
Why it mattered. It became the sound of Hungarian national feeling in the early nineteenth century, played at celebrations and gatherings of the reform era and used by composers (Chapter 3).

The Csárdás

Feature (check each)	Detail
Name	From csárda, a country inn; the dance appears as a national dance from the 1830s and 1840s.
Form	Like the verbunkos, a slow part followed by a fast part, with the speed building to a climax.
Role	Spread through town ballrooms and became the national dance in Hungary and abroad.
In art music	Used by Liszt, by Brahms in his dances and by operetta composers, and heard widely in Europe as "Hungarian".
Relation to village dance	A stylised, town version drawing on village material, not a direct record of it (check the scholarly view).

Roma Bands and the "Hungarian Style"

Whose music was it? The popular style of the nineteenth century was created and played largely by Roma musicians, whose bands were hired by the gentry, taverns and cafes for entertainment, and who adapted tunes by Hungarian composers and popular songs into their own manner (check). Hungarian composers wrote "in the Hungarian style" for those bands. Later, Bartók and Kodály argued that this urban music was not true peasant folk music, and the point was sharply put against Liszt's claim that the "Gypsy" bands expressed the Hungarian soul (check; Chapter 3). The disagreement shows how music can be called "Hungarian" in more than one sense.

Professional musicians. Roma bands were skilled professionals, with family traditions of training, and often had more technical training than village players (check).
Two repertoires. Roma bands also had their own music, sung and played within Roma communities, which was often different from the music they performed for Hungarian patrons (check, and see the terms in Chapter 1).
Status. The musicians were admired as performers while often facing discrimination in daily life. Both facts belong in the account.
The legacy. The restaurant-and-cafe band tradition lasted into the twentieth century, and Roma musicians remain central to Hungarian folk and popular music (Chapters 6 and 9).

A British comparison The relationship resembles that between Scottish traditional fiddle music in the home and the polished "Scotch" style of the Victorian drawing-room, or the music-hall version of Irish songs (check the comparison). In each case a popular, stylised version came to stand for the nation to outsiders, and later collectors went back to find the older material.

Check the details Dates, terms and the roles of different groups are from general knowledge and are debated by ethnomusicologists. Use older sources with care, since many use outdated terms and make claims about "race" and music that are not accepted today.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain the difference between peasant folk song and the verbunkos or csárdás style, naming who performed each and where.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Describe the two-part structure of the verbunkos and the csárdás and say what the contrast does in performance.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Write a short, balanced paragraph on the role of Roma musicians in what was called "Hungarian music" in the nineteenth century, covering both their achievement and their social position.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Peasant song: older pentatonic layers, sung at life events, village dance (check)
Verbunkos: recruiting dance, slow lassú then fast friss (check)
Csárdás: national dance from the 1830s and 1840s, slow then fast (check)
Roma bands: professional musicians who created and played the urban "Hungarian style" (check)
The caution: "Hungarian music" meant different things to different listeners