Operetta and Concert Hall

Hungarian Music

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · Operetta & the Twentieth-Century Concert Hall

Hungarian musicians made some of their biggest international successes in places and forms that are not obviously "Hungarian": the operetta stages of Vienna and Berlin, the concert halls of Europe and America, and the avant-garde festivals of the post-war decades. This chapter follows two groups: the operetta composers Franz Lehár and Imre Kálmán, and the concert-hall composers Ernő Dohnányi, György Ligeti and György Kurtág. It asks what made them Hungarian and what it meant to work abroad. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Operetta

The genre

Operetta is a light musical stage work with spoken dialogue, popular tunes and dance numbers. Its centres were Vienna, Budapest and Berlin from the later nineteenth century through the 1930s (check). The "silver age" of Viennese operetta in the early twentieth century had many Hungarian composers.

Franz Lehár

Born in 1870 in Komárom, then in Hungary and now in Slovakia, to a military bandmaster father (check). The Merry Widow (1905) was an international sensation. He worked mainly in Vienna and wrote in German.

Imre Kálmán

Born in 1882 in Siófok; wrote Die Csárdásfürstin (The Csárdás Princess, 1915) and Gräfin Mariza (1924), full of csárdás rhythms and Hungarian colour (check). He worked in Vienna and Budapest and left Austria in 1938 as a Jewish composer (check).

  • Language and place. Most of these works were written in German for Viennese and Berlin audiences, with Hungarian settings and music in the café style of Chapter 2.
  • "Hungarian" or not? Their Hungarian identity lay in birth, background and musical colour, while their careers and audiences were international. The question echoes Liszt (Chapter 3).
  • The Nazi period. The regime banned Jewish composers, including Kálmán, and the story of how their work was treated, and how Lehár (whose wife was Jewish) was treated, is complicated and debated (check carefully).
  • Afterlife. Operetta remains in the repertoire of theatres in Budapest and Vienna, and the Budapest Operetta Theatre keeps it in regular performance (check).

The Concert Hall

Composer (check dates)CareerNote
Ernő Dohnányi (1877 to 1960)Pianist, composer and teacher in Budapest, director of the music academy; left Hungary in 1944 and later taught in the United StatesA leading figure of Hungarian musical life between the wars; his reputation was damaged by wartime accusations, of which he was cleared (check the details).
György Ligeti (1923 to 2006)Left Hungary after the 1956 uprising and worked in Vienna, Cologne and HamburgKnown for dense, shifting textures; his music was used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (check).
György Kurtág (born 1926)Studied in Budapest and Paris, taught at the Budapest academyShort, intense pieces and a highly concentrated style; Kafka Fragments and Játékok (Games) for piano are well known (check).
Peter Eötvös (1944 to 2024)Composer and conductorWorked in Germany and France as well as in Hungary (check).
Leaving and staying Hungary has seen waves of departure: after the First World War, in the 1930s and 1940s, and after the failed uprising of 1956, when many artists left (check). Ligeti left in 1956 and made his career in the West, while Kurtág stayed and built his reputation partly through teaching and chamber music. Both are counted as Hungarian composers, which shows that the national label depends on origins and training as well as residence.
A British comparison Compare Gilbert and Sullivan's light operas in Britain and their long afterlife in amateur theatres (check). Operetta in Vienna and Budapest played a similar role: a popular form, much loved, sometimes scorned by critics, and bound up with a national audience.
Check the details Dates, birthplaces, accounts of the Nazi and communist periods and the careers of composers who emigrated are from general knowledge and are sensitive. Verify against reliable biographies, and treat accusations and rehabilitations with care.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain in what sense Lehár and Kálmán were Hungarian composers, even though they wrote mainly in German for Vienna.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Compare the careers of Ligeti and Kurtág after 1956 and say what each tells us about leaving or staying.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Choose one composer from the chapter and write a short plan for checking how far their reputation abroad matches the record at home.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Operetta: Lehár (The Merry Widow, 1905) and Kálmán (Die Csárdásfürstin, 1915) (check)
  • Concert hall: Dohnányi, Ligeti, Kurtág, Eötvös (check)
  • 1956: a wave of departures including Ligeti (check)
  • Settings: Vienna and Berlin as well as Budapest
  • The caution: national labels depend on birth, training, language and residence