Hungarian Folk music

The Hungarian people, who belong to the Finno-Ugric language group, arrived in
their present homeland from the east and occupied it definitively in the 9th century.
Earlier, their residence on the borders of Europe and Asia had brought them into
contact not only with closely related peoples (the Vogul and the Ostyak in western
Siberia, the Mari in the Volga valley) but also with many other groups, especially
Turkic peoples. The roots of Hungarian music go back to this period of direct contact
with Asians. In their new central European home they adopted Christianity during
the 10th century, and thus came into closer touch with the musical life of Europe.
This had an increasingly decisive influence on the later evolution of their music.

According to the definition of Kodály and Bartók, Hungarian folk music is the
unwritten music surviving in the peasant tradition. It is generally distinguished from
those melodies created in the 19th century (mainly in the second half of the century)
by middle-class amateur composers which also spread largely in unwritten form: in
contemporary collections these songs were also called folksongs. The modern
specialist term for them is népies dal (‘song in the folk style’), though they are also
known as nóta (popular melody) or magyar nóta (Hungarian melody). As Gypsy
bands led the way in popularizing them, they are also referred to as cigányzene
(Gypsy music). The musical aspect of Hungary’s working-class folklore – apart from
its obvious international connections – is related partly to the folk tradition and partly
to popular art song.

1. Vocal music.

Children’s songs and some ritual songs are performed in rhythmically inflected
speech. The most characteristic tonal system of such songs is that of the major
hexachord, although two-note, three-note, tetrachordal and pentachordal melodies
are also common. The pentatonic system is not found in children’s songs and regös
songs. Units of two 2/4 bars, or motifs, are repeated in varied form according to the
rhythm demanded by the text, and are supplemented by fresh motifs according to
the demands of the action (in children’s games). Among ritual songs, similar in
structure to the children’s songs, are the regös songs. The regölés ritual takes place
between Christmas and the New Year (preferably the day after Christmas Day): a
group of older boys or men go from house to house, greeting the villagers with the
good wishes expressed in the regös song. Like the Slav koleda and the Romanian
colindat customs, the regölés once formed part of fertility rites performed at the
winter solstice.

The only totally improvised genre in vocal Hungarian folk music, the Lament, is
performed during mourning of the deceased by the adult female relatives. They use
traditional formulae, improvising both text and melody in recitative style. Descending
melodic formulae used in laments are either penta/tetrachordal or pentatonic. In a
considerable number, a descending melody based on a major pentachord is
repeated a variable number of times arriving by irregular sequence on the second or
first note of the pentachord. This melodic pattern may be extended downwards
through the whole octave (ex.1). The pentatonic model in its wider form may fall by a
major 9th and in its narrower form by a 5th or 6th. In laments with a wider compass,
recitation generally takes place between the third degree and the tonic, whereas in
those with a narrower compass it tends to occur on the fifth and fourth degrees
below the tonic.

Ex.1 From lament, transcr. Z. Kodály (Rajeczky and Kiss, 1965)

Folksongs not linked to specific occasions, together with some of the ritual songs
(mainly wedding and matchmaking songs), are strophic in form. With relatively few
exceptions the verses consist of four lines and are mostly lyrical. The loosely
connected lyrical verses can be sung to various melodies. The songs – as is usual
in Hungarian folk music – are monophonic. In traditional Hungarian singing there is
no shading of dynamics except in the laments. The ideal voice is steady and
vigorous, slightly harsh or tense (as if forced from the throat), free of sentimentality,
chiefly male and high in register.
2. Bartók’s classification of musical style.

Bartók distinguished two main styles of Hungarian folksong, the ‘old’ (‘class A’) and
the ‘new’ (‘class B’). However, according to Bartók’s statistics, these two types
comprise barely 40% of the corpus of songs. The most distinctive features of the ‘old
style’ are the anhemitonic pentatonic scale and a descending melodic structure, in
which the second half of the melody is a transposition (if not always exact) of the
first, a 5th lower. Following Bartók and Kodály, it has been speculated that the 5th-
shift structure was a result of direct contact between the Hungarians and ethnic
communities from East Europe, such as the Mari and Chuvash of the Volga region.
This remains speculation.

Recent research indicates that even in Bartók’s ‘old style’ diverse strata may be
discerned. In addition, 60% of vocal melodies referred to by Bartók as a mixed class
(‘class C’) could be arranged in definite style categories. In his work A magyar dal
könyve (‘An anthology of Hungarian songs’, 1984), László Dobszay distinguishes
about 17 style-classes of Hungarian melodies including orally-transmitted hymns.
These style-classes include the diatonic lament, ‘psalmodizing’, descending (5th-
shifting) pentatonic songs, bagpipe and ‘swineherd’ songs, ecclesiastical and
secular songs from the 16th to 18th centuries, 18th-century student songs, 19th-
century popular art songs and Bartók’s ‘new style’ songs. The diatonic lament and
the pentatonic lament with its ‘psalmodizing’ parts relate also to strophic songs
(ex.2).
Ex.2 From ‘old-style’ song, transcr. B. Sárosi

Similarities with Gregorian chant are found in the ‘old style’ which may stem from an
earlier common source. The roots of folk hymns also lead back in part to Gregorian
chant. The folk hymn, which has not yet been adequately investigated, basically
followed the same path of development as the folksong: if the texts of the hymns
were to some extent laid down by ecclesiastical practice, their melodies varied
considerably, intermingling with secular tunes over the centuries and repeatedly
coming under new influences. In this way not only did a specific Hungarian repertory
evolve, but (as with secular folk music) distinct regional dialects developed within it.

The musical currents and fashions of western Europe from the Middle Ages
onwards also influenced Hungarian folk music (ex.3 shows a volta tune printed in
1588 and its variant as a Hungarian children’s song), as did the music of
neighbouring peoples – Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, South Slavs, Romanians and
Germans. The sparse and largely incomplete written records of Hungarian music
history can be supplemented or even reconstructed with the aid of folk music (in
ex.4 for instance, a 17th-century melody is shown in its early 18th-century notation
and in the version that has survived in oral tradition).

Ex.3 Volta tune with Hungarian children’s song variant (Kodály, 2/1971)
Ex.4 17th-century song in notation from 1813 and its 20th-century variant (Kodály,
2/1971)

A decisive majority of more recent Hungarian folksongs can be classified in Bartók’s

‘new style’. According to his calculations some 800 groups of variants, or basic
melody types, belong to it. The chief characteristic of the style is the repetitive,
arched melodic structure. The main types of structure are AA5A5A, ABBA, AA5BA
and AABA (A5 indicates an upward transposition by a 5th). In this style the rhythm is
almost exclusively of the rigid, dance-like variety, adapting to the text as it goes. The
modes may be pentatonic, D, A or G mode, or even the common major scale. At the
beginning of the 20th century Kodály and Bartók witnessed the flourishing of the
‘new style’, particularly among the young villagers. The style’s roots, however, reach
far back into European and Hungarian tradition. The upward transposition of a 5th
and the symmetrical, arched melodic structure probably belong to the European
tradition; there are examples to be found in the sequences and hymns in Hungary
from the 12th century onwards. The upward transposition of a 5th can also be
considered a reversal of the downward 5th-shift structure of the ‘old style’.
Pentatonic patterns, common in ‘new-style’ folksongs (ex.5), similarly provide an
organic connection with the ‘old style’.

Ex.5 ‘New-style’ song (Járdányi, 1961)

An important part in the definitive evolution of the ‘new-style’ folksong was played by
the popular art song, the magyar nóta, which was a characteristic urban song of the
second half of the 19th century. It is distinguished from the folksong in musical
approach rather than form; its melodic figures are determined by the system of
functional harmony based on the major–minor system (ex.6). In practice, however,
there is no sharp division between folksong and popular art song. A number of these
popular art songs have spread into rural areas, have been altered and simplified,
have been adapted to traditional folksong patterns and have merged into the mass
of newer folksongs; they have also influenced traditional folk music in moving
towards the major–minor system and they have accelerated the development of the
‘new style’.

Ex.6 Popular 19th-century art song (Kerényi, 1961)

(…….)

4. Instrumental music.

Traditional instrumental music, used in village communities mainly to accompany

dances, is played by shepherds, agricultural labourers and village craftsmen. During
the 20th century the Moldavian Csángó (a Hungarian ethnic group in Moldavia-
Romania) used the flute to accompany dances, while dances performed on the
farms of the Hungarian Plain were accompanied by a zither played by each dancer
in turn. In the early 20th century those performed at weddings and other major
events in the Hungarian Plain were accompanied by a single reed instrument
(clarinet) and hurdy-gurdy.

In addition to Gypsy bands, ‘peasant bands’ were fashionable in all parts of Hungary
during this period. These were mostly brass bands comprising six to eight members,
but many also incorporated the string instruments of Gypsy bands. Professional
Gypsy musicians replaced the bagpipe, the traditional dance instrument of past
centuries, with the violin. The bagpipe is known to have survived only in northern
Hungary, where it was still being played in the period between World War I and II to
accompany wedding dances. An ancient melodic motif occurs in the bagpipe
repertory: an interlude called aprája (‘diminishing’) in which loose two-bar structures
are repeated at random (ex.9). Most instrumental melodies are based on vocal
tunes. Some vocal melodies, such as duda nóta (‘bagpipe song’; ex.10) and kanász
nóta (‘swineherd song’; ex.11), are also used to accompany dances.
Ex.9 Aprája motifs, played on bagpipes

Ex.10 ‘Bagpipe song’, Dévaványa, county Békés, coll. (1960) and transcr. B.
Sárosi
Ex.11 ‘Swineherd song’, Corpus musicae popularis hungaricae vi/2

Knowledge of dissemination of the Gypsies in Hungary prior to the 19th century is

incomplete. According to the adventure story Ungarischer oder Dacianischer
Simplicissimus (Konstanz, 1683), almost every Hungarian nobleman in Transylvania
(now a Romanian province) had a Gypsy violinist or locksmith. Kodály’s comment
that at the beginning of the 20th century a Gypsy fiddler, also the blacksmith of the
village, was the only musician at a Székely-Hungarian wedding in Transylvania,
suggests that these two skills were probably combined in a single person. Gypsies
also performed as duos.

Transylvanian village Gypsy bands performed dance melodies that have been
influenced by 18th- and 19th-century verbunkos music as well as by ancient
Hungarian melodies. In the second half of the 18th century, the influence of 18th-
century Viennese serenade ensembles is evident in the instrumentaion of the Gypsy
bands, to which extra bowed instruments and, from the third decade of the 19th
century, one or two clarinets were sometimes added. To satisfy the demands of the
developing Hungarian bourgeoisie and particularly the Hungarian nobility, who were
the promoters and patrons of Gypsy orchestras, an increasing number of musicians
acquired skill in western European musical styles, learning to read music and to
apply the rules of classical 18th-century functional harmony. By the end of the 18th
century verbunkos (derived from Ger. Werbung: ‘recruiting’), a new genre of
instrumental music, had developed. Of the many verbunkos composers the following
three are considered most outstanding: a Hungarian nobleman János Lavotta
(1764–1820), the Gypsy virtuoso bandleader János Bihari (1764–1827) and Antal
György Csermák (c1774–1822), presumably of Bohemian origin.

Hungary Magyarország II. Folk music 2. Bartók’s classification of musical style. 4.

Instrumental music.: Ex.6 Popular 19th-century art song (Kerényi, 1961)

From the mid-19th century, the instrumental verbunkos fashion was succeeded by a
vocal one: magyar nóta (‘Hungarian song’), also referred to as népies dal (‘popular
song’) or népies műdal (‘popular art song’). Like verbunkos music, it was composed,
produced by amateurs, and disseminated mostly by Gypsy bands. Consisting of the
slow, rhythmically free hallgató (‘for listening’, see ex.6) and csárdás with duple-
metre dance rhythm, this genre made up the bulk of the ‘Gypsy music’ repertory
until the late 20th century. The best known composers are Béni Egressy (1814–51),
Kálmán Simonffy (1831–88), Elemér Szentirmay (1836–1908), the Gypsy Pista
Dankó (1858–1903), József Dóczy (1863–1913), Lóránd Fráter (1872–1930) and
Arpád Balász (1874–1941).

A Gypsy band consists of at least four members: two violins, one double bass and
one cimbalom. The prímás (‘leader’) plays the melody on the violin, while the
kontrás (a violinist or more recently a viola player) adds part of the harmonic
accompaniment by double-stopping in the required rhythmic pattern. The cimbalom
is used primarily as a harmonic instrument, although it also lends itself to playing the
melody or a virtuoso variation of it. A representative Gypsy band, however, has at
least seven or eight members, including a clarinettist and cellist. The composition of
the Gypsy band established in the verbunkos period is characteristic of late 20th-
century village Gypsy bands.

In Central Transylvania, three-member ensembles were established consisting of a

violinist, a kontrás player (using a viola rather than a violin) and a bass (mostly the
size of a cello). The harmonization used by these ensembles is, however, not
functional as with urban Gypsy bands but by a modal succession of chords that
allows retention of old, even pentatonic melodies. These bands have preserved the
style of improvised dance music to a greater degree and have been used as a
model for the ‘dance house movement’ of urban youth (see §7 below).

5. Instruments.

This section considers instruments that played a role in traditional musical life,
whether home-made in the traditional way or manufactured commercially. The
simplest and oldest instruments (such as the reed-pipe, flute, bagpipe, wooden
trumpet and the swineherd’s cow horn), which were easily made at home, were
played mainly by shepherds. Day labourers, farmhands and poor peasants (the
poorest social stratum of the villages) also used the most inexpensive means of
music-making, from improvising rhythmic accompaniments (by tapping or rubbing
pots or furniture), to playing the citera (zither), furulya (shepherd flute) and the
gombos harmónika (button accordion).

(i) Idiophones.

The facimbalon (‘wooden dulcimer’ or xylophone) is primarily the instrument of

cimbalom players. The position of its keys is like that of the cimbalom, hence its
name. It is chromatically tuned, with a range of g′–a‴. Some simpler and more
developed types of struck idiophone are also used, for signalling and for frightening
away animals. Of these the kalapácsos kereplő (hammer-clapper, fig.1a), a wooden
hammer swinging in a shaft and banging on a wooden board, is used in Catholic
church services. The szélkereplő or szélkelep (wind-clapper, fig.1b), used to frighten
birds, is operated by a wooden propeller, and its clappers can be made of metal or
wood.

4. (a) Kalapácsos kereplő (hammer-clapper) and (b) szélkereplő (wind-clapper)

Jingles fastened to a stick are sometimes used by shepherds for frightening away
animals and are also included in the regölés ritual (traditional New Year greeting;
see §2 above). Copper bells and all kinds of iron cattle bells were especially
important in the days of extensive animal husbandry. They had not only a signalling
but also an aesthetic function: bells of varying shape and size, hence of different
pitch, were hung on the animals’ necks, giving an idea of harmony. Cog rattles of
different size and shape are used as ritual instruments in the Catholic Church before
Easter, as a means of frightening away animals and as children’s toys. The jew’s
harp (doromb) was used by country children at the beginning of the 20th century. In
regions where the population was poor, troughs were used as scraped idiophones
for the accompaniment of dances.

(ii) Membranophones.

Smaller double-headed cylindrical drums (dob) are used by the public announcer to
attract attention in villages. The nagydob (bass drum) with cymbals is used in
country brass bands. Traces of the zörgősdob (frame drum with jingles), the
successor to the shamanic drum and used for ritual purposes, have been found by
ethnographers among peasants even in the 20th century. There are two types of
friction drum: the köcsögduda, consisting of a pot (köcsög) with a wooden stick that
pierces the skin; and the bika (‘bull’), the size of a bucket, with a horsehair cord. The
latter is used only by the Csángó people, a Hungarian ethnic group living in
Romania. Friction drums are mainly restricted to rituals of the New Year greeting.
Mirlitons are usually children’s toys and include a reed tube about a span long,
whose hard covering is cut off at one side so that only a thin layer remains
underneath, and the tubular part of a hollowed-out gourd with one end covered by a
membrane and a round opening at one side serving as a mouth-hole.

(iii) Chordophones.

The kukoricahegedű or cirokhegedű (‘corn fiddle’) is an idiochord instrument about a

span long (with one to three strings) made of sorghum stalk or corn stalk, serving as
a toy for children. Two are used together, one as the ‘fiddlestick’, the other as the
‘fiddle’ itself. The citera (zither), the most widely used instrument among Hungarian
peasants, is closely related to the 17th-century German Scheitholt, the Swedish
hommel or hummel and the Norwegian langeleik; diatonic variants have a single row
of frets, while chromatic variants have two. The strings for the drone accompaniment
are tuned to the note of the melody strings, and to the 4th above and the 5th below.
The cimbalom is the same type of instrument as the saṇtūr of the Middle East, the
German Hackbrett and the English dulcimer. Its use in Hungary may be traced back
to the 16th century. The present type of cimbalom used by Gypsy bands was
established by Schunda, a manufacturer of musical instruments, in about 1870 in
Budapest. The range of this chromatic instrument, equipped with a damper pedal, is
usually D to e‴.

The tekerő (hurdy-gurdy) became popular in the central regions of Hungary, on the
Great Plain, most probably in the 18th century. Semi-professional peasant
musicians play mainly traditional dance music on it, either as a solo instrument or,
more often, with a melodic instrument (usually the clarinet). If its melody string is
tuned to f♯′, the tuning of the two accompanying strings, which provide a drone
accompaniment, is B and b: characteristic ‘brayed rhythm’ tunes are produced using
the b string.

Hungarian peasant or Gypsy violin players in Transylvania sometimes fit on to their

violins (of standard shape and tuning) a sympathetic string tuned to a′. Gypsy bands
also use the viola, cello and double bass (tuned to standard pitch). Central
Transylvanian ensembles put a flat-cut bridge on to the viola performing harmonic
and rhythmic accompaniment, so that a triad can be played on its three strings at
the same time. In this case the tuning of the viola is g–d′–a.

The gardon, a cello-like instrument, is used as a percussion instrument, with a violin

performing the melody, by the Székelys, a Hungarian ethnic group in Transylvania;
its three or four strings, in most cases tuned to d and D, are on the same level and
are sounded with a stick (not a bow), providing a rhythmically articulated drone
accompaniment.

(iv) Aerophones.

The pliant ‘bark whistle’ or ‘leaf’ (the leaf of a tree, a piece of birch bark, a piece of
celluloid etc.) is used as a melodic instrument mostly by shepherds: the leaf is
placed against the lips and blown on its edge. The bullroarer (zugattyú) is a
children’s toy. The tube formed by removing the bark of willow branches in spring is
used by children to make an end-blown duct flute without finger-holes. Some of the
small pottery globular flutes (cserépsíp) made by potters are provided with one or
two finger-holes: most of them are in the shape of animals, such as birds or bulls.

The duct flute (furulya) with six finger-holes is the flute most often used to perform
melodies: it is 30–50 cm long and its diameter is 14–18 mm. It produces a diatonic
major scale. The rarely found double flute (kettős furulya) consists of two pipes, one
like that of the furulya and the second of the same size and structure but without
finger-holes. The long flute (hosszú furulya), the instrument of Trans-Danubian
shepherds (i.e. from south-western Hungary) and a characteristic member of the
family of fipple flutes, has five finger-holes, a diameter of 16–18 mm, and is 90 cm
long. Its basic scale is f–g–a (or a♭)–b♭–b–c′.

Apart from its blowing mechanism, the side-blown flute (harántfurulya or oldalfuvós
furulya) has the same structure as the furulya with six finger-holes. Instruments
more rarely found are the small peremfurulya or szélfurulya (rim-blown flute) with six
finger-holes and, among the Csángó people, the larger rim-blown flute with no
finger-holes (‘overtone flute’). In the south-east of the Great Hungarian Plain
notched flutes were found, made of calabash or sunflower stem.

Children make single-reed idioglot instruments from a goose feather or reed. The
nádsíp (reedpipe with a single reed) with six to eight finger-holes is used as a
melody instrument by shepherds. Modern A and B♭ clarinets are favoured by Gypsy
bands while E♭ clarinets are preferred by peasant brass bands. The Tárogató is an
instrument similar to the ordinary clarinet in structure but with a conical bore and
accordingly overblows at the octave. It was constructed by Schunda at the end of
the 19th century. The Hungarian duda (bagpipe) with three pipes is also a single-
reed instrument. Its melody pipe can produce a mostly diatonic G mode with an
octave range. If its basic note is g′, the one-holed second pipe, called kontrá (with
the melody pipe forming a double chanter), sounds g′ and d′ alternately; the note
made by the separate bass pipe (called the bordó pipe) is G. Mouth-blown bagpipes
are played in northern Hungary, while bellows-blown types are found in southern
Hungary and the Great Hungarian Plain.
The end-blown cow horn (tülök or kanásztülök) and the wooden trumpet (fakürt) –
1·5 metres or more in length – are chiefly a means of signalling for shepherds. The
fakürt was also used, again for signalling, by isolated peasants on the Great
Hungarian Plain. Of the brass wind instruments manufactured in factories, peasant
brass bands mostly use the B♭ saxhorn or trumpet, the B♭ bass saxhorn, the
euphonium, the E♭ trumpet and the F helicon.

6. Recent trends.

(i) Dance house movement.

The early 1970s gave birth to the ‘dance house’ movement, which aimed to
revitalise the Hungarian folk music tradition. Its name is rooted in the Transylvanian
tradition, where ‘dance house’ refers both to the occasion of dancing and its
location.

The movement emerged as young intellectuals and artists searched for modern
Hungarian expressions to resist the materialistic and individualistic ideologies
accompanying the recent socioeconomic changes. Groups such as Illés and Omega
fused Western pop-rock music with Hungarian folk melodies and lyrics, creating
local permutations of an international form. Amateur folk dance groups, although
initiated during the 1950s ‘revival’ movement under the political terror of Stalinist
cultural policies, also remained popular among the urban population. Other ‘official’
Hungarian popular musics included magyar nóta, enjoyed by the older lower-middle
classes and urbanising rural audiences, and Hungarian folksongs, which had been
taught in a simplified way by the Kodály method of music education (emphasizing
musical structure rather than performance) and had consequently not become
widely accepted.

The two originators of the dance house movement, Béla Halmos and Ferenc Sebő,
were trained musicians who experimented with different musical styles. Initially,
Sebő set the poems of Attila József to his own compositions for guitar. Halmos
researched into László Lajtha’s pre-World War II collections (mostly transcriptions)
from Szék in Transylvania, encouraged by the Transylvanian musicologist Zoltán
Kallós, the Hungarian dance researcher György Martin and the musicologist Bálint
Sárosi. Sebő and Halmos then spent long periods in Transylvania with musicians
(mostly Roma) whom they regarded as respected teachers, a practice followed by
succeeding dance house musicians.

In Budapest, Sebő and Halmos accompanied the dance groups of the

choreographer Sándor Tímár, and in 1972 Ferenc Novák with the Bihari Dance
Group created the first dance house in association with other folk dance ensembles,
which later opened to the general public. The first two dance houses were
accompanied by the Sebő-Halmos duo, later joined by the Muzsikás, Jánosi, Téka,
and the south-Slav group, the Vujcsis. The ensemble of three string instruments,
Szék, became the model for dance house, achieving an ‘avant-garde’, ‘exotic’ and
‘modern’ musical expression which was nevertheless Hungarian. Dance house also
encouraged collective music-making and dance which entailed years of committed
learning rather than instant, passive consumption.

Although the aim was to maintain the genre’s rural form and function, the move to
an urban environment necessarily involved change. For instance, the onus of
decision-making for music-making, repertory and teaching methods moved from
dancers to musicians. Dance house musicians, as with their Transylvanian
equivalents, are mostly semi-professionals but are Hungarian rather than largely
Roma as in Transylvania.

Most of the initiators of the early dance house movement continue to combine field
and archival research, performance, dance and music-making, teaching and
analysis. In the early 1990s, the Muzsikás recaptured aspects of an extinct tradition
through their study of old Roma musicians (who played for Jewish communities in
Transylvania). In their recent musical activities, inspired by the relationship between
Bartók’s composition and his folk music research, they have been joined by the
Romanian born violin player Alexader Balanescu. In 1985, Sebő edited Lajth’s
collection from Szék; in recent years, Halmos has made documentaries (in co-
operation with the film director György Szomjas) on Transylvanian musicians, such
as the Hungarian Márton Maneszes, the cantor and prímás from Magyarszováta,
and János Zurkula, the Roma prímás of Gyímes.

In contemporary Budapest, dance houses are held daily for Hungarian,

Transylvanian, Romanian, Bulgarian and even Irish and Scottish dances. In the mid-
1990s a new dance house venue, the Fonó, was established. It launched ‘Last
Hour’, which invited musicians from Transylvania and other Hungarian-speaking
parts to play for Budapest dance house enthusiasts. Many of these were produced
on CD by Fonó.

The flourishing of the dance house movement into the 21st century has fulfilled the
aspiration of Bartók and Kodály to create not only a Hungarian or central-eastern-
European tradition but one that expands beyond national and geographical
boundaries. Its success lies in making a rich local music and dance tradtion the
basis of an urban and international form that allows the participation of all.

(ii) Lakodalmas (wedding rock).

If the dance house movement is a continuation of Hungarian folk music by the urban
intelligentsia, wedding rock is a continuation of the magyar nóta tradition by
‘ordinary’ Hungarians. This genre originated in 1985 in the Hungarian-speaking
areas of Vojvodina (Serbia) and quickly spread to Hungary by the late 1980s. It
forms part of an urban tradition of mixing and modernizing popular vernacular
musics and is comparable to wedding music genres found in Bulgaria, Macedonia,
Serbia and other parts of the Balkans.

Older Hungarians enjoy its nóta-based repertory and young people its synthesizer
and drum instrumentation. Its thick sound texture is similar to that of the traditional
Gypsy band, with bass lines moving in glissandos, and chordal portamente filling the
musical space with ornamentation. The melody may be provided by a singer or
additional keyboard instrument; a traditional clarinet or violin may also be added.
Dance-songs are accented on the off-beat. Although it shows some affinities with
the in-group practices of the Romungro (see §4(iii)), lakodalmas rock, mostly
performed by and for Hungarians, is a distinct genre. Song lyrics range from sex to
computers and black-market activities resulting in the genre being excluded from the
state run radio and recording industry for over a decade. It was propagated entirely
through privately recorded cassettes sold at local markets and by band
performances at concert venues, restaurants and weddings. Political changes since
1989 have had little effect on the attitudes of cultural bureaucrats; it is only in recent
years that one of its long-ignored proponents, Lagzi Lajcsi, has been granted a
weekly television programme on which wedding rock is performed by himself and
invited musicians.

7. Collectors, collections, research.

Interest in folk music in Hungary developed in roughly the same way as it did in
western Europe. Before the 19th century Hungarian folk music was noted down
infrequently and haphazardly, although there are a few printed collections of
religious songs including folk hymns from the 16th and 17th centuries – some of
them Hungarian in origin, some of foreign origin but adapted to Hungarian taste.
Dance melodies noted down and published at the end of the 16th century by
foreigners, following the west European fashion for Hungarian dances under such
titles as Ungarescha, Heiducken dantz or Ungarischer tantz, show striking
resemblance to Hungarian bagpipe melodies collected in the 20th century. There
are also miscellaneous Hungarian manuscript collections from the 17th and 18th
centuries with notations or tablatures. In terms of vocal folk music, the student
songbooks that have survived from the end of the 18th century are important; these
were compiled in simple notation by students for their own use. In its melodic scope
and its method of notation, Ádám Pálóczi Horváth’s great manuscript collection of
357 melodies, completed in 1813, can also be classified among these student
manuals. Besides the fashionable Hungarian songs of the period and Pálóczi
Horváth’s own compositions, it contains many songs from previous centuries, and
can thus be considered the first great achievement in Hungarian folk music
collection. Information about the wealth of songs current in the first half of the 19th
century, mainly in middle-class circles is, with the exception of that noted by János
Arany (Kodály and Gyulai, 1952), still found only in manuscript collections such as
those of István Tóth, Sámuel Almási, Dániel Mindszenty, Dénes Kiss and János
Udvardy Cserna.

Since 1832 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has undertaken the collection and
publication of folksongs. The most impressive 19th-century publication was the
seven-volume Magyar népdalok egyetemes gyűjteménye (‘Universal collection of
Hungarian folksongs’, 1873–96), prepared by István Bartalus. This extensive
collection contains some 730 melodies; most of them are 19th-century tunes,
including recent popular Hungarian ones by known composers. Earlier, in 1865,
Károly Színi’s collection A magyar nép dalai és dallamai (‘Songs and tunes of the
Hungarian folk’), containing 200 melodies, had appeared. It presents a range of
songs without piano accompaniment. Only Áron Kiss’s Magyar gyermekjáték
gyűjtemény (‘Collection of Hungarian children’s games’, 1891) was a pioneering
work.

Béla Vikár (1859–1945) was the first to collect folksongs with a phonograph, starting
in 1896. János Seprődi (1874–1923) began noting down folksongs methodically in
1897. Modern Hungarian folk music scholarship commenced with the systematic
collecting trips of Kodály and Bartók in 1905 and 1906 respectively. The recordings
and original transcriptions of Vikár, Kodály and Bartók are held in the Ethnographic
Museum in Budapest. It also holds the only collection of Hungarian folk instruments
that can be considered complete. They divided the area geographically: Kodály was
concerned primarily with Hungarian musicological considerations while Bartók dealt
with international comparative study. After they jointly edited a collection of ‘old-
style’ Transylvanian folksongs (1923), Bartók summarized the results of their joint
collecting; in his work A magyar népdal (‘Hungarian folksong’) of 1924, he gave a
methodical exposition of the vocal material. Ten years later, after a thorough
observation of the music of neighbouring countries, he wrote a detailed analytical
account of the relationship between Hungarian folk music and that of neighbouring
peoples (Népzenénk és a szomszéd népek népzenéje). Kodály’s study A magyar
népzene (‘Hungarian folk music’, 1937), besides presenting the various branches
and strata of Hungarian folk music and their interrelationship, also illuminates the
most important links that connect Hungarian folk music organically with Hungarian
and international culture: it remains the basic textbook of Hungarian folk music.
According to a plan outlined in 1913, between 1934 and 1940 Bartók completed the
editing of Hungarian folk melodies (about 14,000) collected up to that time on behalf
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; publication of the general edition (as A
Magyar Népzene Tára/Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae) was delayed until
after World War II.

In 1953 the Folk Music Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was
formed under Kodály’s leadership. Since January 1974 this institution has continued
its activities as the Folk Music Research Department of the Institute for Musicology,
publishing among other things the Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae. The first
ten volumes, completed by 1999, include children’s songs grouped according to
melodic motifs, together with their related games, songs connected with folk
customs, and folksongs grouped according to melodic contours.

The archives of the Folk Music Research Department have expanded rapidly and
now contain about 150,000 melodies. It is still possible to gather substantial
amounts of rural vocal and instrumental music in Hungary, Hungarian-speaking
Transylvania and Romanian Moldavia. The Institute of Musicology also contains a
department of dance research.

Since 1950 research perspectives have included the history of Hungarian folk music
(by Rajeczky, Dobszay, Vargyas, Szendrei); the systematization of folk music
(Járdány, Dobszay, Szendrei, Sárosi); and study of instrumental folk music (by
Lajtha and Sárosi). Outside Hungary intensive research into folk music has been
carried out notably by the Romanian Hungarians, especially in the 1950s, at the Cluj
section of the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore under János Jagamas.

The first series of Hungarian folk music discs, the Patria series, began to be
produced in Budapest in 1936. Under the original direction of Bartók and Kodály,
and later of Lajtha, 250 discs in the series had been completed by the end of the
1950s. The first disc for widespread distribution was issued in 1964 in honour of the
conference of the International Folk Music Council held in Budapest; this disc was
followed by three series, edited by Rajeczky, to give a cross-section of Hungarian
folk music styles and genres. An anthology from material in the Institute of
Musicology began to be published in 1985 representing the musical styles of the
Hungarian language area accompanied by informative multilingual documentation.
By 1992, four series had been issued, a further two series followed in 1993 and
1995, and one more series is intended to complete it.